INFORMATION SERVICE
Baptist World Alliance Eron Henry, Associate Director of Communications
Neville Callam, General Secretary
July 29, 2010
For Immediate Release |
Honolulu (BWA) --
Several persons were elected or confirmed into office before
and during the 20th Baptist World Congress in Honolulu, Hawaii, from
July 28 to August 1.
Raquel Contreras of Chile was elected president of the BWA
Women's Department during the BWA Women's Leadership Conference, held July
24-27. Contreras, who is president of the Union of Evangelical Baptist Churches
of Chile, was a BWA vice president from 2005 to 2010 and is former president of
the Union of Baptists in Latin America. She succeeds Dorothy Selebano
of South Africa who was elected president of the BWA Women's Department in
2005.
Owen Crooks, president of the Jamaica Baptist Union
Brotherhood, is the new president of the BWA Men's Department, succeeding
Forestall Lawton, president since 2005. Lawton, of Kansas City, Missouri, in
the United States, is now the new director of the Men's Department, taking over
from Doyle Pennington of Colorado in the US. Pennington is the new secretary.
Everton Jackson, elected by the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship
(CBF) as its executive secretary/treasurer during the CBF General Assembly in
March, was confirmed by the BWA General Council as BWA regional secretary for
the Caribbean. Jackson, the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Montego Bay,
Jamaica, is also a former president of the Jamaica Baptist Union. He succeeds Bahamian
Peter Pinder who was CBF executive secretary/treasurer and BWA regional
secretary since 1995.
The CBF also chose a new president during its March General
Assembly. William Thompson, outgoing BWA vice president and former president of
the Bahamas National
Baptist Missionary and Education Convention, succeeds Burchell Taylor from
Jamaica, a newly elected vice president of the BWA.
The incoming BWA General Council met before the start of the
congress in Hawaii, while the new Executive Committee will not convene until March
2011. Both governing bodies will include a number of persons who will take
their places as new chairs of various committees and other groupings within the
BWA, all expected to serve until 2015.
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