Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Short Articles About Heroes of the Faith – Ben M. Bogard – Baptist Educator – Part FOUR of FIVE

Thomas E Kresal January 24, 2020

Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Short Articles About Heroes of the Faith – Ben M. Bogard – Baptist Educator – Part FOUR of FIVE

Wherever Bogard pastored, he conducted revivals in other churches. Shorter successful pastorates between which he was a full-time evangelist characterized his ministry until 1920.Then he was called to pastor Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Little Rock and was there for 27 years.

In 1933 he completed 45 years of ministry. He then recorded this record. He had pastored 18 churches, held 279 revivals, conducted 193 debates (with Methodists, Church of Christ and other denominational leaders, even the famous Aimee Simple McPherson, founder of the Foursquare Church in Los Angeles). He had preached or lectured 14,741 times, seen 2,146 people saved under his ministry and baptized 693. Nearly 4,000 people had joined his churches over that span of years.

Bogard the Educator

While he participated in helping many colleges and conducted “Bible Schools” in various churches, his crowning endeavor was what is now the Missionary Baptist Seminary in Little Rock (begun in 1934). Its first president was J. Louis Guthrie, Ph.D., who knew seven languages and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible. Bogard later became president in the 1940s.

Thomas E. Kresal from: From Robert Ashcraft, Contending for the Faith, An Updated History of the Baptists, 2006, pp. 688-690.