R. PHILIP ROBERTS, 50, has been named as president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. Midwestern is one of six seminaries affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Roberts has been vice president of strategic cities for the SBC North American Mission Board. Roberts coordinated the drafting of a June 2000 declaration on religious freedom after an outcry over Southern Baptist plans to evangelize in Chicago. His selection must be confirmed at a January meeting of Midwestern’s trustees.
JAMES WILLIAM McCLENDON JR., Baptist theologian and educator, died October 30 in Altadena, California, after two years of declining health. McClendon, 76, taught at ten different theological schools and universities. For the last ten years, he was a scholar-in-residence at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. McClendon finished the final book in his three-volume systematic theology before he died.
GUY CONDON, 46, died as the result of a two-car traffic accident on November 11 in Loudoun County, Virginia. Condon was the president of Care Net, a Sterling, Virginia-based affiliation of more than 600 crisis-pregnancy centers. The Care Net board has named vice president Robert Harvey as interim president. Condon previously was president of Americans United for Life, based in Chicago.
BOB MacKENZIE, a Christian music executive, died October 20 of heart failure in his Brentwood, Tennessee, home. During the 1960s and 1970s, he produced albums for the Imperials, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Buddy Greene. MacKenzie was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame posthumously on October 30.
