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CBMW appoints Kotter as new executive director

June 13, 2007
By CBMW
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The board of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) recently appointed church leader and former businessman David Kotter as the organization’s new executive director.

The board of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) recently appointed church leader and former businessman David Kotter as the organization’s new executive director.

Randy Stinson, who has served as executive director of CBMW since 2000, will continue as president of the organization and will maintain its vision. Last August, Stinson was appointed dean of the School of Leadership and Church Ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

“David Kotter’s life experiences, gifts, and skills, are providentially suited for his new role with CBMW,” Stinson said. “I have spent many hours with him and his family and can attest to the fact that he will bring godly leadership and credibility to this organization.

“I am confident that his business background coupled with his pastor’s heart is exactly what CBMW needs to increase our effectiveness and broaden our rapidly growing influence.”

Kotter received an engineering degree from the University of Illinois in 1987 and an MBA in 1989, and master of divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1999 and a master of arts degrees in New Testament from Trinity in 2000.

From 1984-1989, Kotter worked as a financial specialist for the Ford Motor Company, and from 1994-1996, he was finance director for Cadiz Electronica in Cadiz, Spain, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ford.

From 1999 to the present, Kotter has served as pastor of discipleship ministries at CrossWay Community Church in Bristol, Wis., a church he helped plant. At CrossWay Church, Kotter oversees men’s and women’s ministries, biblical counseling and small groups. Periodically, he also preaches and teaches in the church.

Kotter says he graduated from seminary in 1999 with the intent of remaining in full-time ministry in a local church setting for the rest of his life, but God had different plans. Biblical teaching on gender at CrossWay Church over the years opened Kotter’s eyes to the critical nature of the issue and prepared him to consider the CBMW position.

“I also saw the tragic effects of people who were not informed on biblical manhood and womanhood, and the effects it had had in their lives whether married or single,” he said. “I can see how God prepared me for this position over many years.”

The gender issue is one that has its most profound impact—both positive and negative—at the level of the local church, Kotter points out. Encouraging pastors while keeping an active hand in biblical scholarship continue to be CBMW’s primary tasks, he said.

“It seems to me there are new fronts that need to be advanced. There are many areas of opportunity related to strengthening pastors who might be complementarians, yet they have churches that are significantly influenced by an egalitarian culture,” he said.

“We want to strengthen that pastor’s hand and give him the resources for clear biblical teaching. We also want to encourage him to invest in his associate pastor or successor to equip the next generation of church leaders.

“I also want to see a new generation of young scholars who will take up this standard, because Wayne Grudem and John Piper have carried it for decades, but unless we see some strong scholars emerge who are in their thirties and forties, it will be difficult to teach persuasively on biblical truths on gender and respond to the ongoing challenges to male leadership in the church.”

Kotter says the health of families is a major factor in play in the gender debate. Kotter and his wife Ana have three children, Joshua, Caleb and Lydia.

“The consequences for families of unclear or unbiblical teaching on this issue are painful and can last for generations,” he said. Even more fundamentally, the purity of the Gospel as it is depicted by the home and the church and the authority of Scripture are at stake in the gender debate, he said. “At the core of this is the authority of God’s Word,” Kotter said.

“Is there propositional truth in Paul’s epistles? The authority of the Word is critically important. This authority is undermined when we don’t get the gender issue right in the home or in the church.

“Further, Jesus Christ eternally submits to the Father, and he is also the Head and Savior of the church. Therefore, it is worth the effort to represent Christ well in the church and home through joyful, intelligent submission and loving, sacrificial headship.”

Like other debates throughout church history, the gender issue is one that may be resolved by fidelity to the Scripture, Kotter said. He describes CBMW as “a service organization helping churches to bring the truth of God’s Word to bear on issues of gender,” and says that once the gender issue is settled, there will be no more need for CBMW.

“This issue is one of a spot or a wrinkle on the bride of Christ that is being worked out of the church. There are many controversies like this in the history of the church that are not being argued any more. They have been resolved,” Kotter said.

“I would love to be the last executive director and see this issue resolved in the church. Obviously, that is in God’s hands. But I think it is important at CBMW to have the mindset that we are here to serve the church by solving a specific problem and when that problem is solved—and it will be whether in my lifetime or a successor’s lifetime—and the church will be presented to Jesus Christ, holy and without blemish, a perfect bride.”

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