(RNS) The Rev. Julius R. Scruggs was formally inaugurated as president of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. during a four-hour service Tuesday (Jan. 19) at the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tenn.
Scruggs, 67, pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville, Ala., for 32 years, will lead the 7.5 million-member denomination for a five-year term. He has been a vice-president for 10 years, serving alongside retiring Rev. William Shaw.
Some 400 members of Scruggs’ congregation drove to Nashville for the event, including more than 100 members of the choir who overflowed the choir loft, said the Rev. Earla Lockhart, the congregation’s minister for congregational care.
“It was a signal event, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing,” Lockhart said, explaining why she made time to attend on a weekday night. “Of course, at First Baptist, we know what kind of man Dr. Scruggs is, what kind of integrity he brings to his ministry.”
Scruggs won election to the office last September by a vote of 4,108 to 924 over the denomination’s former president, Henry Lyons, who had served prison time for embezzling from the NBCUSA.
Scruggs, who helped the Alabama Baptist Convention return to solvency, has said he plans to build on Shaw’s efforts to stabilize the denomination, which is one of the country’s largest African-American churches; to increase denominational support for NBCUSA’s American Baptist College in Nashville; and to form a public policy commission in the NBCUSA to coordinate socio-economic issues.
