Former Atlanta pastor is new Montana executive director

MSBC

Fred Hewett spent three years in Naval Intelligence at the National Security Agency before moving to Gainesville, Fla. and marrying Cherryl Sanders. The couple has two grown children and one granddaughter.

BILLINGS, Mont. (BP) — Fred Hewett’s background stretches from the corporate world to cleaning cobwebs out of the baptistery in revitalizing an urban Atlanta church. Now his resume includes being named executive director for the Montana Southern Baptist Convention.

“It’s a great benefit for Montana that the executive director has the skills and background Fred has,” said William Johnson, church planter/pastor of Gallatin Valley Fellowship in Manhattan, Mont.; vice president of the state convention; and a member of the executive board search committee. “He’s expressed a passion for having healthy churches in Montana and that those healthy churches reproduce and start new churches, which will help our effectiveness in reaching the lost in Montana.

Hewett has a background in starting and strengthening churches, coming to Montana from the North American Mission Board, where he was a church planting coordinator for nearly four years in a 10-state/two-nation region stretching from Texas and Louisiana to Canada.

Hewett, a Florida native, previously had led in revitalizing the urban Morningside Baptist Church in Atlanta and in starting Church in the Farms in a West Palm Beach, Fla., equestrian suburb.

Backed into ministry

Morningside, where he had to clean cobwebs out of the baptistery, grew during the two years he was there from 50 senior adults to 165 people of all ages, Hewett said. In the last of his eight years at Church in the Farms, 650 people were attending Sunday morning worship and 92 people were baptized.

“There’s coming a day when we’ll need to intersect our church planting strategy with many of our churches that are in decline and want to start again or experience renewal,” Hewett said while sitting at the desk that has been his since mid-February.

Reared in a nominal Christian home, Hewett made a profession of faith at 19. Hewett had already enlisted in the Navy and was convinced he was going to Vietnam. Instead, he spent three years in Naval Intelligence at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md.

“God backed me into the ministry,” Hewett said. “It happened as I was leaving the U.S. Navy. The pastor of my home church knew I played the guitar, and the youth pastor had just left. It was the tail end of the Jesus movement and God blessed my three years there in youth ministry.”

Despite sensing a call to vocational ministry, Hewett instead “climbed the corporate ladder” for the next 12 years.

“While God allowed me to experience financial and business success, in my mid-30s I found myself very empty in my soul,” Hewett said. “Jan. 2, 1990, I got in my Jeep and drove to a little hotel on Lake Okeechobee with my Bible and a pad of paper. I said to Him, ‘God, I need to hear from You. Please show me what You want me to do with my life.’ He was calling me to leave the business world because that had become my god, and serve Him in vocational ministry.”

Hewett earned an M.Div. degree in 1992 from New Orleans Seminary by entering its Orlando, Fla.,-based seminary extension program. He earned a D.Min. degree in 2000 from Luther Rice Seminary.

The Montana convention, which attained that status six years ago, encompasses some 130 congregations in six regional associations. Out of every $100 in Cooperative Program giving from Montana churches, $22 is sent on to national and international missions and ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention. The remainder stays in Montana, as part of its $1.5 million annual budget. The state also remains heavily dependent on NAMB funding and on the support it receives from its partnership with Tennessee Baptist Convention, out-of-state churches, and associations, Hewett said.

“We are thankful for the generous giving of those who partner with us and their generosity in other ways, through mission trips that build churches, lead in backyard Bible clubs and Vacation Bible Schools, do surveys, and more,” Hewett added.