Former Congressman J.C. Watts takes over today (Feb. 1) as president and CEO of Feed the Children, a nonprofit relief ministry based in Oklahoma City.
J.C. Watts
Watts, an ordained Baptist minister who served four terms in the House of Representatives representing Oklahoma’s 4th congressional district, succeeds Kevin Hagan, who resigned last year to become chief executive of the American Diabetes Association in Reston, Va.
Watts, onetime quarterback of the Oklahoma Sooner college football team who went on to play professioally in the Canadian Football League, is a former youth minister and associate pastor of Sunnylane Southern Baptist Church in Del City, Okla.
Feed the Children fired its founder Larry Jones, a Southern Baptist minister who founded the charity in 1979 and made it a household name by appearing in television infomercials, following a leadership dispute in 2009.
In 2013 it was revealed that Feed the Children paid Jones $800,000 in severance payment to settle a wrongful termination lawsuit filed when he was fired.
Hagan, a graduate of Mercer University married to Elizabeth Hagan, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship minister, blogger and former pastor of Washington Plaza Baptist Church in Reston, Va., led Feed the Children for three years.