Bart Barber has served as the pastor of First Baptist Church in Farmersville, Texas, since 1999. At the SBC Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, June 14-15, 2022, Bart was elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Bart was born in Lake City, Arkansas to Jim and Carolyn Barber. He was the third of four children. His father was an entrepreneur and his mother was a homemaker. Bart was saved in December 1975, not long before his sixth birthday. He was baptized at Bethabara Baptist Church, just outside of Lake City. At an associational summer camp at the Mount Zion Baptist Camp in Walcott, Arkansas, Bart surrendered to pastoral ministry in the summer of 1981. He assumed the pastorate at New Hope Baptist Church in Black Oak, Arkansas, in June 1987, which was the summer before his senior year at Riverside High School in Lake City.

Bart was a National Merit Scholar and went in 1988 to Waco, Texas, to attend Baylor University on a scholarship. The sophomore who was director of the freshman Sunday School class that he joined at FBC Waco was Tracy Brady, whom he married in 1992. Bart completed a BA at Baylor majoring in the University Scholars program with an emphasis in Greek and Hebrew. During his senior year, Bart served as the pastor of the Pleasant Valley Baptist Church in Jonesboro, Texas.

After they married, Bart and Tracy assumed the pastorate of Mill Creek Baptist Church in Mill Creek, Oklahoma. From there, Bart commuted to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas for two years. They then moved to Royse City, Texas, where Trinity Baptist Church called Bart as pastor. Bart graduated in 1996 with the Advanced Standing MDiv with Biblical Languages.

In 1997 the pastor of First Baptist Church in Bart’s hometown of Lake City, Arkansas, left to serve with the International Mission Board in Zambia. At the same time, Bart’s father was diagnosed with metastatic cancer and given six months to live. Bart and Tracy moved to Lake City, took up the interim pastorate of Bart’s home church, and he worked bi-vocationally for the family business during his father’s illness and death while Tracy completed her MSE at Arkansas State University.

Bart and Tracy returned to Texas in 1999, when he answered the call of First Baptist Church of Farmersville, Texas, to serve as their pastor. He enrolled in PhD studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, majoring in Church History and minoring in Theology. He completed his degree in 2006. During this time they welcomed into their home two children, Jim and Sarah.

 Bart has served in various denominational capacities with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention. Since 2006, he has been active online in blogging and social media. Tracy is very active in Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Child Care.