RICHMOND, Va. — At the age of 8, growing up in Stanley County, N.C., northeast of Charlotte, Diane Smith decided her goal in life was to teach children.
Diane Smith enjoys a laugh during a retirement celebration in her honor.
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On Dec. 16, Smith will retire after immersing her life in children’s spiritual education and formation — for the past 28 years as part of the staff of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board.
“I’ve had unbelievable experiences that have shaped me into the kind of person who God can use,” Smith said to friends and co-workers at a retirement celebration Dec. 2 at the Virginia Baptist Resource Center in Richmond.
In 1983, Smith joined the staff of the Virginia Baptist General Board, as it was then called, as director of the Sunday school children’s program. In the following three decades she served with three executive directors, saw the organization adopt a new identity as the Virginia Baptist Mission Board and witnessed a number of name changes in her own position — she’ll retire as children’s ministry strategist.
During her tenure she developed statewide preschool and children’s resource teams, created a process of certification in children’s ministry, directed annual mission celebration events at Eagle Eyrie Baptist Conference Center near Lynchburg, Va., and secured a children’s disaster relief trailer for the Mission Board’s disaster relief ministry.
Smith and Anderson Lee, the daughter of a close friend.
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“As a parent — not just as an executive — I want to thank you for teaching us how to be God’s people for these children,” said John Upton, executive director of the Mission Board, at the retirement celebration. “For your investment over the course of all these years — thank you.”
Smith’s first teaching experience was as a teenager with preschoolers in her church’s Vacation Bible School. Later, she spent two summers as a counselor at Camp Mundo Vista, a facility near Asheboro, N.C., owned by Woman’s Missionary Union of North Carolina.
Eventually she trained as an educator at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, with graduate studies in children’s Christian education at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She served on the ministerial staffs of the First Baptist churches of Jackson, Tenn., and Marietta, Ga., before joining the Mission Board’s staff.
She has trained children’s leaders in settings around the world and has served as a vice president of the Southern Baptist Religious Education Association, as president of the Georgia Baptist Religious Education Association and as both president and vice president of the Metro Richmond Religious Education Association. She also has been an advisor to two publishers — LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention and Smyth & Helwys.
In 1999 she was named Christian Educator of the Year by the Virginia Baptist Religious Education Association.
At its annual meeting last month, the Baptist General Association of Virginia adopted a resolution of appreciation for Smith’s “faithful and creative service” to Baptists in Virginia.