Oct. 28, 2021
By Collin M. Hain
GREENSBORO, N.C.–Former Baptist State Convention of North Carolina president Timmy Blair has announced his intention to nominate Conservative Baptist Network steering council member Stoney Benfield for North Carolina Baptist Pastors’ Conference president during this year’s November gathering. Benfield, who serves as a Conservative Baptist Network state chapter leader in North Carolina, pastors Prospect Baptist Church in Albemarle, N.C.—a role he has held since 2005.
Blair, who serves alongside Benfield as a leader in the Conservative Baptist Network’s North Carolina state chapter, led the North Carolina Pastors’ Conference as president in 2017. In comments to the Biblical Recorder, Blair praised Benfield’s eager and intentional efforts to foster revival in North Carolina.
“Stoney has a passion for preaching, evangelism, an uncompromising stand on God’s Word, a passion for revival and spiritual awakening in the church,” Blair told the Biblical Recorder. “He loves pastors and has become a leader and encourager among his peers. He is a man of prayer and practices Acts 6:4, ‘to give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.’ He has a passion to see the gospel spread across communities and reach the most remote people groups around the world.”
Benfield is a North Carolina native, and together with his wife Missy, has six children and one grandchild.
Benfield said the pastors’ conference serves an important purpose in refreshing and encouraging pastors who can then return to serve their churches with renewed passion and commitment.
“All pastors, regardless of whether or not they serve local churches full-time or part-time, in a large church or a small church have serious demands on them and they need an opportunity to come together, to worship, to pray, to praise, and be ministered to through the Word of God,” Benfield said. “They can then take this spirit of encouragement and refreshment back to their local churches.
“If elected, my top priority for the 2022 pastors’ conference would really be to engage the truth found in Acts 6:4: ‘But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.’ My heart is to see North Carolina pastors be encouraged, edified, and experience personal revival through praying, preaching, and praising. We are in desperate need of revival, and that includes pastors.”
Nomination for Vice President
Eric Cook, director of missions at Union Baptist Association, has announced that he plans to nominate for the role of vice president Eddie Powers, pastor at Sandy Ridge Baptist Church in Monroe, N.C., and moderator of the Union Baptist Association.
Cook told the Biblical Recorder that Powers is “biblically conservative, thoroughly Baptist, and emphatically mission minded.”
“He eats, sleeps and breathes Baptist doctrine,” Cook said to the Biblical Recorder. “He also desires to see our state convention remain steadfast to its historical legacy of biblical fidelity and recognizes that cultural changes are always best addressed with the unchanging and life-transforming gospel.”
Powers is married to Kelly, and they have two children and one grandchild. He has served Sandy Ridge Baptist Church since 2003 and has been involved with the local Baptist association for more than a decade. He also currently serves on the committee on convention meetings for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
“The Pastor’s Conference should not only feed the pastor’s soul but also [sic] a time to encourage one another and bear one another’s burdens. To connect across this great State of North Carolina with other men of God striving to do the same thing God would have us do–preach the Word,” Powers said.
When asked what qualities a speaker at the pastors’ conference should exhibit, Powers said that each man should be “conservative, believing in the infallible, inerrant, all sufficient Word of God, [having a] Philippians 3:10 focus, ‘That I might know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the knowledge of His suffering, being made conformable unto His death.’”
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