Rice The Organizer

Luther Rice emerged as a powerful organizer for Baptist missions, combining the skills of a polished diplomat and a grass-roots advocate in order to win men and women to the support of missions. Seeking financial backing for the Burman Mission, he recognized that interested individuals needed to be united in missionary societies, where shared information, concerted prayer, and co-operative giving could help mission concern take root and flourish. His distinctive achievement as an organizer was a plan to bring together representatives of these societies and other interested bodies into a single national organization to foster missions. That plan led directly to the formation of the General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States for Foreign Missions, known as the Triennial Convention. Rice believed that this body should also promote Christian education and religious publications, along with foreign and home missions, anticipating the kind of denominational structure later adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention through its various boards.

Kemp Mill, Maryland · United States