Interim Regional Minister*
Dr. Joseph M. Smith
Dr. Joseph M. Smith has been named the Interim Regional Minister for the District of Columbia Baptist Convention. He will serve on a half-time basis, providing overall staff support and leadership to two of the Convention’s ministry center teams, the Center for Ministerial Leadership (CML) and the Center for Representative Process, Administration and Governance (CRAG), as well as consultation services to the Search Committee as efforts proceed to determine the next permanent Executive Director/Minister.
Smith, a graduate of the University of Louisville and of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (BD, 1963, and DMin., 1975), has been a campus minister in Kentucky, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and served on the D. C. Baptist Convention staff 1976-1986 as Director of Ministries in Higher Education. Following his tenure at DCBC, he accepted the call of Takoma Park Baptist Church, in Washington, D.C., to serve as its senior pastor. After retiring from the pastorate in 2004, he became part-time Executive Director of the D.C. Baptist Convention Foundation, a sister organization to the Convention, a post from which he retired at the end of 2009.
In addition to providing interim pastoral leadership or sustained preaching services to nine Baptist churches in the Washington metropolitan area, Smith has also frequently taught Baptist Polity at Wesley Theological Seminary in the District. He has been involved with several D. C. Baptist, American Baptist, and Southern Baptist organizations, and recently completed three terms as a trustee of John Leland Seminary in Arlington, Va.
Smith and his wife, Margaret, are the parents of two adult children, Bryan E. Smith (Jacqueline) and Karen S. Rondeau (Don), and have three grandchildren. They are members of Montgomery Hills Baptist Church, where Margaret serves as a deacon, a trustee, and the coordinator of the Garden Team, and where Joe is organist, midweek Bible study teacher, and a volunteer Associate Pastor.
*The D.C. Baptist Convention is currently in the process of searching for a new Executive Director/Minister. Dr. Smith will be Interim Regional Minister until a permanent Executive Director/Minister is named.
Message from the Interim Regional Minister
When I first came to do ministry in the Washington area, nearly forty years ago, I encountered and become involved with an entity unlike any I had ever experienced. It was a Baptist organization, but it was open to cooperation with other believers. It was a state convention, but it acted a good deal like an association. It was connected with the old familiar Southern Baptist Convention, but it was also connected with the American Baptist Churches, a group largely unknown to me. I had not known anything like this was possible.
More than that, this fellowship brought together churches whose membership was exclusively Caucasian and churches whose membership was entirely African-American, plus some others whose language was other than English. There were even a few churches, in those long-gone days, where the membership was racially mixed – truly innovative for this Kentucky-born boy!
I speak, of course, of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention. From what I saw in 1971 we have grown and matured in many ways, adding yet more Baptist connections, affirming yet more language congregations, and embracing multicultural congregations all across the region. We have a glorious history to celebrate, and must in so doing celebrate the leadership of extraordinarily capable Executive Director-Ministers – Rufus Weaver, Chandler Stith, James Langley, Jere Allen, and Jeffrey Haggray. Each has brought distinctive styles and contributions to our life together.
Now we are engaged in discerning the next phase of our future. What God has wrought is prelude to what God wants yet to do through us. I have been asked to serve as Interim Regional Minister to provide leadership while we search for our next Executive. I feel privileged to have this opportunity, and want to share briefly what I hope to accomplish.
One mandate is to provide support, encouragement, and counsel to the rest of the Convention staff, all of whom are working almost non-stop these days. I will try to carry some of their load and to provide coordination for their efforts.
A second concern will be to offer resources to the DCBC Center for Representative Process, Administration, and Governance. That means I will do my best to keep the organizational structure of the Convention alive and well, supplying information, encouragement, and ideas.
The third responsibility will be to work alongside the DCBC Center for Ministerial Leadership team to provide counsel, insight, resources, and encouragement for the pastors and staff ministers of our churches. I will be available to consult with search committees or to offer help when there are relationship problems in the churches.
I have served on the Convention staff, have been a senior pastor, have worked as an interim pastor, and have led the DCBC Foundation. And yet I am aware that I have not “seen it all”, nor do I know it all. At the age of 72 I may not have the energy I once had, even to do a half-time job. But I do pledge to you to be attentive, prayerful, resourceful, and, above all, passionate about the cause of Christ here in the nation’s capital. As energy permits and the Spirit leads, I will connect with as many of our churches’ leaders as possible over the next several months, hoping not only to offer encouragement, but also to cement the ties that bind our churches and our people together, so that when a permanent Executive is found, s/he may find a community committed to a powerful Christian witness.
I hope that you will pray both with me and for me for the days ahead.
Your brother in Christian ministry,
Joseph M. Smith
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