Myers Park Baptist Church calls 35-year-old senior minister who promotes social justice, seeks millennials

After a two-year search, Myers Park Baptist Church has called the Rev. Benjamin Boswell to be its new senior minister. At 35, he’ll be the youngest person to ever lead the 72-year-old church.

Boswell is currently the senior pastor at Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in Cary. On Feb. 1, he’ll become the sixth senior minister at Myers Park Baptist, long one of Charlotte’s most prominent and progressive churches. His first Sunday in the pulpit: Feb. 7.

On Sunday, during a congregational meeting at Myers Park Baptist, the committee that recommended Boswell to the 2,000-plus members cast him as a good fit for the church: a young pastor who gives inspirational and learned sermons, has a passion for social justice and is “unafraid to take a stand on controversial issues.”

As an example, they cited his leadership in opposing Amendment One – the N.C. constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that passed in 2012 but was later thrown out by a federal court.

Members asked the committee questions about issues ranging from Boswell’s commitment to protecting the environment to his musical preferences during worship.

But it was Boswell’s relatively young age that appeared to get much of the attention from those at the meeting. Asked about it, Todd Rubenson, chair of the board of deacons and a member of the search committee, said Boswell is “a different sort of 35-year-old, with a maturity beyond his years.”

Boswell did not attend the Sunday congregational meeting. But reached by phone Sunday, he said one of his goals will be to “get the word out” to those in their 20s and early 30s about “what Myers Park Baptist is about and has always been about.”

“The things we hear that millennials are looking for are already in place at Myers Park Baptist. We need to let them know who we are and what’s going on,” he said. “They’re not necessarily all attracted to the mega-church model. They want liturgy and authenticity and real community.”

Boswell also said he wants to continue and step up the church’s push for racial reconciliation, its support for the LGBT community and its partnership with other houses of worship.

And though he’s been an active minister for just 12 years, “I’ve lived around ministers all my life,” he said, alluding to his grandfather and uncle – both Methodist ministers. “I’ve learned a lot from them over the years.”

It’s been nearly three years since the church’s last senior minister, the Rev. Steve Shoemaker, left after seeking treatment for stress-related struggles with depression and anxiety.

“I’m physically, psychologically and spiritually depleted,” he wrote in a Dec. 28, 2012, letter to his flock. “And (I) must get help.”

The search committee’s Janet Miller assured congregants meeting Sunday that it was “very much on our mind” that those at the church support and make sure their new senior minister is committed to the kind of “self-care” that would avoid future burnout.

The committee had planned to show a video Sunday of Boswell offering a message for church members. But the audio failed.

Still, those at the meeting voted unanimously to call Boswell to the post, and the mood was upbeat and hopeful.

Said Rubenson: “This is a great day – technological glitches aside – for our church.”

High profile for liberal stands

Founded in 1943, Myers Park has had a high profile since then, often for the church’s liberal stands.

Under Shoemaker, who led the church for 13 years, Myers Park Baptist – affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA, not the conservative Southern Baptist Convention – got kicked out of the state Baptist Convention in 2007 for welcoming gays and lesbians.

The church has formed partnerships with Temple Beth El and Masjid Ash Shaheed – Jewish and Muslim congregations. And its sometimes controversial roster of outside speakers has included some – retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong and scholars from the Jesus Seminar – who questioned basic tenets of Christianity.

Boswell is affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, a progressive group.

He was was raised in Pennsylvania, but his family moved to Kannapolis when he was in high school. His mother, Diane Browder, is still a professor of special education at UNC Charlotte. His father, Wally Boswell, is retired but taught at Central Piedmont Community College.

And then there was his grandfather and uncle: “He grew up in a family of Methodist ministers and then saw the Baptist light,” Miller joked.

Boswell himself has an ecumenical educational background: A graduate of Campbell University, a Baptist school, he also has a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University, which has Methodist roots. And he completed coursework toward a doctorate in moral theology from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

While at Campbell, Boswell served as second lieutenant and platoon leader of an Army National Guard Unit in Lumberton. He entered seminary planning to become an Army chaplain. But he shifted his focus to academia at the urging of his mentor, Duke Divinity School professor – and noted author – Stanley Hauerwas.

Divorced and the father of a 5-year-old daughter, Lucy Joy, Boswell is scheduled to get married in January to Katie Hughes, now an assistant district attorney in Johnston County. They will relocate to Charlotte in February.

Myers Park Baptist will be the third church Boswell has led. He was senior pastor at Commonwealth Baptist in Alexandria, Va., from 2006 to 2011, and has held the same post at 400-member Greenwood Forest Baptist in Cary since 2011. There, he is organizing an effort with 12 other pastors in Wake County to turn his church’s old sanctuary into a rescue mission for women and children.

The nine-member search committee that recruited Boswell for Myers Park Baptist looked at 172 applications from three continents. It then whittled that down to a short list of 10 finalists – five women and five men.

This story was originally published November 22, 2015 at 2:38 PM with the headline "Myers Park Baptist Church calls 35-year-old senior minister who promotes social justice, seeks millennials."