NASHVILLE (BP)–Jim Hamilton, executive director-treasurer of the Dakota Baptist Convention, will be nominated for second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, a pastor in Rapid City, S.D., announced April 24.
Fred MacDonald, senior pastor of Westside Baptist Church in Rapid City, said he will nominate Hamilton for the post during the SBC’s June 10-11 meeting in Indianapolis.
Hamilton has led the Dakota convention since Jan. 1, 2004. Prior to that, he was senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Sellersburg, Ind., for four years.
A graduate of Bethany Theological Seminary in Dothan, Ala., Trinity Theological Seminary in Newburg, Ind., and Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, Texas, Hamilton has served as president of the Baptist conventions in Indiana and Alaska and chaired the Executive Committee of the Alaska Baptist Convention. He also has served on the Southern Baptist Convention’s Committee on Nominations and facilitated North American Mission Board leadership workshops.
He also has served as pastor of churches in Anchorage, Alaska, and Evansville, Ind., and worked in counseling roles for Alaska Baptist Family Services and Buckner Baptist Children’s Home in Lubbock, Texas.
MacDonald said one reason he is nominating Hamilton for the position is his passion for evangelism. “Under his leadership, the DBC has developed a powerful ministry at the world’s largest motorcycle rally,” he said. “Every August, as many as 500,000 bikers come to Sturgis, S.D. God has used the ministry that has been created to bring more than 1,600 people to faith in Christ over the past two summers.”
Hamilton also is an ardent advocate for the Cooperative Program, MacDonald said. He has challenged churches in North and South Dakota to increase their CP giving and is leading the Dakota Baptist Convention toward a 50/50 ratio in state and national missions giving through a series of five consecutive half-percent increases.
“Dr. Hamilton is also a practitioner of CP leadership on the church level,” MacDonald said. “A little over two years ago, he and his wife, working with another couple, planted a new work in Bismarck, N.D. They led this new church to give 15 percent to the Cooperative Program, 5 percent to the association, and 1 percent for church planting.”
Hamilton and his wife, Lisa, have three teenagers and two adult children.
Information from the 2007 Annual Church Profile for the congregation of which Hamilton is a member, Sioux Falls Cross Pointe Baptist Church, lists 24 baptisms and primary worship service attendance of 223. The church gave $15,020, or 7.89 percent, through the Cooperative Program from total undesignated receipts of $190,214. According to the ACP, the church also received $3,369 for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and $3,166 for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions.
Hamilton is the first announced nominee for SBC second vice president this year.
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Compiled by Mark Kelly, an assistant editor with Baptist Press.
