LIBERIANS Celebrate Centenary Session T

he Centennial Celebration of the Annual Session of the Liberia Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention (LBMEC) was held over several weeks in the month of March. Baptist work began in Liberia at the founding of the colony in the 1820s by freed enslaved persons from the United States. Though LBMEC was formed in 1880, several years would lapse between meetings due to various reasons. The 2014 celebrations included “pilgrimages” to the Good Hope Baptist Church in Marshall City where, in 1880, the first session of the LBMEC was held and to First Baptist Church Edina in Grand Bassa County, where the LBMEC was conceptualized.

The celebrants went on an eight-mile Freedom Walk from the Baptist Compound in Congo Town, a section of Monrovia, to the Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary (LBTS) and the adjacent Baptist Youth Camp. The work and ministry of Baptist women were also celebrated at Shiloh Baptist Church in Virginia, Montserrado County, where the LBMEC charter was signed in 1880.

BWA Director Receives Honorary Doctoral Degree

Emmett Dunn, director of the Baptist World Alliance Youth Department, was one of six persons conferred with an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree by the Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary (LBTS) on March 31. “The Board of Trustees with the Administration of the Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary recognizes Emmett Lafayette Dunn’s distinguished labor in His Service, the commitment to humanitarian advances and excellent leadership to the church, the community, the nation, and the world,” the citation reads. Dunn, a Liberian and alumnus of LBTS, showed “excellence and promise” from early. This promise has been fulfilled in his studies, life and work as he “has increased in wisdom and stature and in favor of God and humanity.” Despite his involvement on the global stage, the BWA director “has not allowed his global identity to detract from his local commitments to the Body of Christ” in Liberia. Dunn was chair of the Board of Advisors of the Ricks Institute School in Liberia from 2006-2012 and serves on its Board of Trustees. Ricks,