Neville Callam has been elected as the new General Secretary Elect of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA).

|PIC1|Callam's groundbreaking election to the office of General Secretary took place during the BWA General Council meeting in Accra, Ghana, in West Africa earlier this month.

Callam, a Jamaican, is the first person outside of Europe or North America to be elected to the high office of General Secretary, making him the Chief Executive Officer of one of the largest Protestant church bodies in the world.

The BWA has a membership of more than 36 million baptised believers and represents a community of approximately 110 million Baptists worldwide that are part of more than 200 conventions and unions.

Callam's election comes after a year-long process that began at the last General Council meeting in Mexico City, in July 2006. Nominations for the position of General Secretary were invited from all over the world.

After the nomination deadline on 31 October 2006, a series of meetings and interviews were held by the Search Committee to determine the most appropriate candidate to succeed Denton Lotz. General Secretary since 1988, Lotz is the longest serving CEO in the more than 100-year history of the international church body.

Callam's name was forwarded to the meeting of the BWA Executive Committee in March 2007, which unanimously endorsed his nomination.

Callam, 56, is a respected theologian who has written five books and published numerous articles in journals. He has spoken at seminars, fora and symposia in countries as diverse as South Africa, Malaysia, and Germany, among many other countries, and is a respected member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches.

Ordained in 1977, he is senior pastor of the Tarrant/Balmagie Circuit of Baptist Churches in Jamaica's capital, Kingston, and previously served as senior pastor for the Grace/Mineral Heights Circuit in the central southern part of the country.

A lecturer and teacher, he has taught at the United Theological College of the West Indies, the leading institution of theological education and ministerial training in the English-speaking Caribbean, the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology, the Jamaica Theological Seminary, and as a guest lecturer at the Barbados Baptist College. He sits on the University Council of Jamaica, the major accreditation body for colleges and universities on the island.

He has held significant leadership positions within the Baptist family, having served as vice president of the BWA between 2000 and 2005, and has been a long standing member of the General Council, Executive Committee, the executive committees of the Divisions of Evangelism & Education and Study & Research, as well as several other committees, commissions and workgroups of the BWA.

A former vice president of the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship, one of six continental federations of the BWA, Callam has held every senior position within the Jamaica Baptist Union (JBU), including that of president between 1985 and 1987 and 2000 to 2002, as well as acting general secretary and general treasurer.

Callam is also a media manager, having founded, chaired and managed the religious radio station TBC FM in Jamaica. He also chairs the board of Public Broadcasting Corporation of Jamaica, was a founding director of National Religious Media Company of Jamaica, the largest religious radio and television broadcasting company on the island, and was chairman of the JBU media commission, which is responsible for the union's two radio programmes, website and publication ministries.

He has been married to Dulcie for more than 30 years, and is the father of an adult son and daughter.

The new General Secretary Elect assumes duties in September 2007 at the BWA headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, in the US.


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[Source: BWA]