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| DOM to Be Nominated For KBC 1st VP |
| Release Date: 10/01/2007 |
HAZARD—Jim Castlen, director of missions for Three Forks Baptist Association, will be nominated as Kentucky Baptist Convention first vice president during the Nov. 13-14 KBC annual meeting in Elizabethtown.
Castlen, a former Southern Baptist international missionary to the Philippines and Australia, has served Three Forks Association since 2002. He will be nominated by Alan Dodson, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Lexington.
Dodson said he believes Castlen “would bring a wonderful spirit and unique perspective to KBC leadership.”
According to Castlen, the proposal for his nomination “came out of the blue.”
“I was just sitting innocently at a luncheon one day and heard my name mentioned in this regard,” he noted. “I told them I’m not a political kind of person and had rarely held office of any kind.”
After agreeing to consider the possibility, Castlen said he “told Hershael York and the other guys to count me in.”
York, former president of the KBC and an associate dean at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, previously announced he will nominate Bill Henard, pastor of Porter Memorial Baptist Church in Lexington, and an assistant professor at Southern Seminary, as KBC president.
“There are some of us who get together two or three times a year to fellowship,” Castlen explained. “Bill Henard’s name had come up as a potential presidential candidate. I think there was sort of a self-appointed nominating committee that grew out of this group.”
If he is elected, Castlen said concerns he would seek to highlight include Kentucky Baptist churches’ low baptism rate and the need for “a more fully-orbed gospel of obedience and the discipling process and mentoring one-on-one.”
Castlen is a member of Big Creek Baptist Church in Hazard which gave 7.2 of undesignated receipts through the Cooperative Program and reported no baptisms last year, according to 2006 Annual Church Profile statistics.
Castlen has served churches in Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas in music, youth and education, including Harlan Baptist Church and First Baptist Church of Mount Washington. He also was a professor of music at Clear Creek Baptist Bible College in Pineville from 1990 to 2002. |
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