ATLANTA (ABP)—Jim Smith, a Virginia native who serves as director of field ministries for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, has been named interim coordinator of global missions beginning July 1. Smith will assume the interim role as Rob Nash, global missions coordinator for the past six years, joins the faculty of Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology as associate dean on June 30.
Smith was among the first field personnel appointed by the Fellowship when he and his wife, Becky, were commissioned in 1993 as CBF liaisons to Europe based in Berlin, Germany. In 2000, they took on the role of associate coordinators for missions teams – Europe. In 2008 Smith was named director of field ministries. Becky Smith remains the associate coordinator for missions teams with responsibility for Europe and North Africa.
A native of Martinsville, Va., Smith resigned as a representative to Eastern Europe from the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1992. The Smiths had served in Austria from 1981 to 1988, and prior to that appointment, Smith was a SBC journeyman in West Germany from 1976 to 1978.
The graduate of Averett University in Danville, Va., is a former youth minister at Fieldale (Va.) Baptist Church.
Lance Wallace is communications director for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.