Notable Deaths of Church and Ministry Leaders in 2024

JANUARY

Donald Wildmon, a southern minister who rallied evangelicals to promote decency and reverse America’s moral decline by employing advertiser boycotts as a culture war weapon, died on Dec. 28 after a long battle with Lewy Body Dementia. He was 85. Ordained a pastor in the United Methodist Church, Wildmon felt a stronger calling to activism after he and his family members saw obscenity, adultery, and torture on primetime network TV just before Christmas 1976.

He organized a “Turn the TV Off Week” in Mississippi in 1977, and in 1978 founded the National Federation for Decency, renamed the American Family Association in 1988. In 2017, the National Religious Broadcasters honored Don Wildmon with the NRB Hall of Fame Award. He authored 22 books in his lifetime and led over 30 tours to the Holy Land and Western Europe. Wildmon is survived by his wife Linda, their four children, six grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren.

Junior Hill, a well-loved and well-traveled Southern Baptist evangelist, died Jan. 3 at the age of 87 in Hartselle, Alabama. In his 2005 autobiography “They Call Him Junior,” Hill estimated that he preached at more than 1,800 Sunday-to-Sunday revivals during his five decades of ministry. He was invited to speak at pastor’s conferences, state conventions, churches, colleges and seminaries throughout that time. In 1989, Hill was elected as the Southern Baptist Convention’s first vice president at the convention’s annual meeting in Las Vegas. Hill is survived by his wife of 66 years, Carole, plus two children and five grandchildren.

FEBRUARY

Joel Belz, founder of WORLD Magazine, died Feb. 4 at age 82 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. Belz left a rich legacy as a churchman, a leader in Christian education, and in other arenas in life, but it is his role as the founder of WORLD Magazine that had the biggest impact on me and – ultimately – on MinistryWatch.

Henry Blackaby, a pastor and author whose “Experiencing God” Bible study sold more than 8 million copies, died on Feb. 10 at age 88. Born April 15, 1935, in British Columbia, Blackaby had been serving as pastor of a church in California when asked to return to his native Canada and assist a small church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, that was on the verge of closing.

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At the time, Faith Baptist Church in Saskatoon had 10 members, according to a history on the website of Blackaby Ministries International. Under his leadership, the church not only grew, it eventually sponsored a college and 38 other churches. Blackaby, with the help of co-author Claude King, would distill the lessons from his pastoral experience in a Bible study called “Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God.” He summed up his approach to ministry with a short but memorable statement: “Watch to see where God is working and join him.”

Chad Hayward, who spent 17 years as CEO of The Accord Network died from lung cancer. He was 50. The Accord Network is a group of more than 100 Christian organizations involved in relief and development work. Accord brings its member organizations together to provide training and support, as well as create platforms for collaboration and knowledge sharing across their respective industries. In the 1990s, Hayward got his start in the nonprofit world doing marketing for organizations in Oklahoma and Colorado. In 2001, he moved to Washington, D.C. to work as communications director for Rep. Jim Ryun for two years. Following his tenure with Ryun, he became a senior advisor with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

APRIL

Pastor Antwane “AD” Lenoir, 41, was found stabbed to death on April 6, at Westview Baptist Church in Opa-locka, Florida, where he had served as senior pastor since 2009. The following day, police arrested a suspect—a homeless man Lenoir had been trying to help—and charged him with first-degree murder. Local news accounts described Lenoir as a “community activist” whose efforts to “model Christ in a practical way” made him a symbol of hope in a city better known for poverty and corruption.

Beverly LaHaye, influential conservative activist and founder of Concerned Women for America, died on Sunday at a retirement home in California. She was 94 years old. Her husband Tim LaHaye was a well-known pastor and co-author of the wildly popular Left Behind book series. Yet, despite his own platform and success, Tim was a vocal supporter of his wife’s activism. When she was 17, she enrolled in Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., where she met Tim LaHaye. They were married a year later. LaHaye became a political activist in 1978, and in 1979 she founded the Concerned Women for America (CWA), which was radically effective in influencing culture and enacting change. President Ronald Reagan was quoted as saying Beverly was “one of the powerhouses” of the conservative movement and she was “changing the face of American politics.”

Mica Miller, the wife of pastor John-Paul Miller, died by suicide on April 27. She was 30 years old. John Paul and Mica Miller got married in 2017. He had five children from a previous marriage. In media interviews, John-Paul Miller emphasized Mica Miller’s mental health issues and struggles with suicidal thoughts. He said she had been diagnosed with “bipolar II, schizophrenic and dependent personality disorder.” He said she would have dramatic episodes when she wasn’t consistent with her medication, and said this wasn’t her first time attempting suicide. But family members and friends of Mica Miller immediately pushed back on John-Paul Miller’s narrative, urging police to deeply investigate her death. They said the couple’s marriage had been on the rocks, they were no longer living together, and that Mica Miller had filed for divorce and a no contact order.

MAY

Charles W. “Chuck” Marvin, who led U.S. Missions Assemblies of God Chaplaincy Ministries for eight years, died May 5 in Poway, California, at the age of 88 after a lengthy illness, according to the AG News. It was after retiring from the military in 1998 that he became national director of Assemblies of God Chaplaincy Ministries. He left that role in 2002. He continued to support AG chaplains, visiting bases around the country and interviewing chaplain candidates.

Natalie and Davy Lloyd moved from Oklahoma to Haiti in 2022 to work for Missions in Haiti Inc. The third person killed was the Haitian director of the organization, Jude Montis. Davy’s parents, David and Alicia Lloyd, who founded the organization in 2000, shared the news of their death in a Facebook post, saying the couple had been shot by gang members.

JUNE

Paul Pressler, a retired Texas judge and one of the most influential evangelicals of the past 50 years, died June 7. He was 94 years old. Pressler was one of the chief architects of the “Conservative Resurgence” that changed the course of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s and 1990s, turning it into a decidedly conservative theological denomination with deep ties to the Republican Party. As a member of the Council for National Policy, a conservative think tank, he helped forge ties between the GOP and the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. Pressler was nominated to run the Office of Government Ethics under President George H. W. Bush but withdrew when a background investigation found “ethics problems,” the Washington Post reported. But in recent years, Pressler became known mostly as a symbol of the SBC’s sexual abuse crisis. In 2017, a former Pressler assistant named Gareld Duane Rollins Jr. sued Pressler, claiming the older man abused him for decades. The suit, which named Pressler, the SBC and other Baptist entities, was settled in December, with all the accused denying any wrongdoing. Pressler later agreed to pay $450,000 to settle Rollins’ earlier claim that Pressler had assaulted him in a hotel room. When Pressler stopped making the agreed payments, Rollins sued again, this time alleging sexual abuse.

JULY

Minh Ha Nguyen, 57, drowned at a North Carolina beach July 15. Coworkers learned of the tragedy from news reports and a message from International Mission Board President Paul Chitwood, who called Nguyen “a faithful and gifted team member.” His influence grew as he used his role as director of gift care and data stewardship for the IMB’s Ministry Advancement Team to provide statistics and research that influenced the way Southern Baptists view ethnic growth and biblical generosity. At the SBC Annual Meeting last month, Nguyen presented an update to BaptistResearch.com as president of the Ethnic Research Network’s Core Team.

SEPTEMBER

Tony Morgan died Sept. 4 following complications from a heart attack. Morgan was founder of the Unstuck Group, a church consultancy firm that “helps pastors clarify where God’s called the church to go in the future, and how you’ll get there.” Since its founding in 2009, the organization claims to have “helped over 600 churches solve the complexity of their staffing and structure and find greater ministry effectiveness on the other side.” Before passing, Morgan authored books and articles on leadership and served a combined total of 14 years on the senior leadership teams of three large churches. In 2009, he had a very public but amicable exit from NewSpring Church in South Carolina, when he and founding pastor Perry Noble (later fired from NewSpring for moral failings) agreed to part ways following a strategic difference of opinion.

OCTOBER

Bill Pannell, who made history by becoming Fuller Theological Seminary’s first black faculty member, died Friday, Oct. 11. He was 95. Known for his 1993 book, The Coming Race Wars: A Cry for Reconciliation, Pannell was born in Sturgis, Michigan, in 1929. His encounters with racial bigotry during the pre-Civil Rights Movement era colored his view of evangelism in a way that put him at odds with his white evangelical contemporaries but also helped pave the road to a future academic career. Pannell joined Fuller’s board of trustees in 1971, and in 1974 he joined the faculty as assistant professor of evangelism and director of the Black Pastor’s Program. He continued to teach there for 40 years, became dean of the chapel, and in 2014 was honored with emeritus faculty status. In 2015, the seminary renamed its African American Church Studies Program as the William E. Pannell Center for Black Church Studies. Pannell is survived by his son Peter and preceded in death by his oldest son, Philip (2015), and his wife, Hazel (2021), who he married in 1955.

NOVEMBER

Tony Campolo, an American Baptist minister and sociologist who spent decades trying to convince evangelicals and other Christians that their faith should motivate them to address social ills like poverty and racism, died Nov. 19 at age 89. A native of Philadelphia, Campolo was known for his charismatic preaching and sense of humor, which made him a popular speaker at college campuses, churches and Christian conferences — and equally at home giving an altar call or social commentary. The author of 35 books, Campolo held degrees from Eastern University, Palmer Theological Seminary and Temple University. He taught sociology first at the University of Pennsylvania and then for decades at Eastern Christian College, where he was named professor emeritus. He also served as an associate pastor at Mount Carmel Baptist, a predominantly Black church in Philadelphia, and in 2019 was named a co-pastor of St. John’s Baptist. He eventually became a spiritual adviser to then-President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Campolo is survived by his wife, Peggy; his son, Bart; and daughter, Lisa.

Hal Lindsey died Nov. 25. He was 95 years old. His book The Late Great Planet Earth is one of the best-selling Christian books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies. His book and television program popularized a prophetic, apocalyptic view of the end times that has had a significant impact on evangelicalism.

DECEMBER