My uncle was the Chairman of the Deacons and a close friend at Bellevue Baptist in Memphis where Dr. Rogers was the pastor for so many years. I had the good fortune to have Sunday dinner with him in my more formative years of the late 1970s. He really was a great guy as well as a wonderful teacher.

John

Adrian Pierce Rogers (September 12, 1931 – November 15, 2005), was an American pastor, conservative, author, and a three-term president of the Southern Baptist Convention (1979-1980 and 1986-1988).

Rogers was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, and decided to enter into the Christian ministry at the age of nineteen. He graduated from Stetson University. Rogers was ordained by Northwood Baptist Church in West Palm Beach. In 1972, he became the senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, where he remained until March 2005. During this period, the church's membership grew from 9,000 to 27,000, and the church moved into a new, megachurch facility.

Rogers was instrumental in the Southern Baptist denomination's shift towards the right that began in the late 1970s, as he was elected president of the denomination during a theological controversy within the denomination. He published eighteen books and is featured on the internationally-available radio and television program, Love Worth Finding http://www.lwf.org/">[2], which is broadcast in English and Spanish.

In November 2005, Rogers contracted pneumonia of both lungs as a complication of colon cancer treatments, and died following a period of mechanical ventilation at the age of seventy-four.