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Please pray for these leaders as they energetically pursue Christ's mission for His church, nationally and internationally.
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Jerry Sheveland
President |
Paul Johnson
Senior Vice President,
National Ministries |
Ray Swatkowski
Executive Vice President, Director of Mobilization |
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Stephen Doggett
Vice President,
International Ministries |
Lewis Petrie
Vice President,
Ministry Advance |
Steve Schultz
Vice President,
Finances |
Click on the picture for a biographical sketch of each person.
Dr. Jerry Sheveland
President
Baptist General Conference
Birthplace – Minneapolis, Minn.
Children – Jerry has a son, Jerry Jr., who is married
to Maureen and they live in Southern California. Jerry Jr and Maureen
are parents to Aiden Micah. They also have a daughter, Melissa, married
to Dan Riley, and are parents to twin daughters Elizabeth and Caitlin.
Melissa and Dan live in San Diego, CA.
Education – Bachelors Degree from Grand Rapids Baptist College;
Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; and
Doctor of Ministry from Denver Seminary.
Ordination – Mission Hills Church, Littleton, CO in 1975
Churches – Served as a pastor for twenty five years:
- First Baptist Church in Estes Park, Colorado.
- Berean Baptist Church in Burnsville, Minnesota.
- College Avenue Baptist Church in San Diego, California.
- Mission Hills Church in Littleton, Colorado.
Current position – President of the Baptist General Conference.
Purpose of the ministry – Helping BGC churches and leaders fulfill Christ’s mission in their communities and around the world.
Church membership – Elk Grove Baptist Church, Elk Grove Village, IL
Paul Johnson
Senior Vice President
National Ministries
In June 2003, Paul Johnson was elected to the position of Vice President of BGC National Ministries in the Baptist General Conference.
Paul brings with him a lifelong passion for evangelism and church planting. Community Baptist Church in Shawano, Wisconsin is the first church that Paul helped to plant with the Baptist General Conference back in 1975. This church was started with the help of his home church, Bethel Baptist Church, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which served as a personal model for church growth through evangelism. In 1980, Paul and his wife, Darla, moved to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin for a pioneering ministry which is now Community Church. While there, Paul was able to help launch churches in Beaver Dam and Milwaukee and ten others in the Fox River Valley which was the answer to a high school vision of reaching his football conference area with the Gospel. In 1990, Paul and Darla and their three children moved to Minnesota and joined the staff at Wooddale Church as their New Churches Pastor heading up the beginning of the daughter church movement there. Paul currently serves as senior pastor of Woodridge Church in Medina, Minnesota, the first daughter church.
Paul has served on the Home Mission Board of the Baptist General Conference, part of the Global Church Planting staff, and as the director for TeAMerica since it began. His desire to see new churches started and doing it better than the one before by sharing resources and tools led to the development of training seminars and the Assessment Center. Believing that together we can do things we cannot do individually became the base for TeAMerica, our national movement to plant healthy, effective new churches that will impact their communities for Christ. TeAMerica has seven strategic components to accomplish this mission: Spiritual Dynamics, Scripture and prayer are built into all we do; Recruitment, searching the country for leaders who want to mobilize and multiply reproducing churches; Assessment, objectively determine a leader’s call, giftedness, and preparation for ministry; Training, planning events to equip leaders with current information and tools; Coaching, to provide spiritual guidance and support in ministry; Funding, movement and personal financial support systems, and Resourcing, a commitment to share state of the art resources to reach our communities for Christ. TeAMerica is structured around LEAD teams which are groups of about ten leaders in a particular geographical region seeking to live out these systems and provide support and accountability to one another. This national church planting movement has grown and encouraged other teams to develop around the world. Paul has shared these ideas in Japan and the Philippines.
Paul received a B.A. from Lawrence College and an M.Div. from Bethel Theological Seminary. He serves as adjunct faculty at Bethel Theological Seminary periodically teaching classes in Evangelism for Discipleship and Church Planting.
Paul and Darla live in Minnesota with their three children: Elizabeth, Drew, and Graham.
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Rev. Raymond Swatkowski
Executive Vice President
Baptist General Conference
Ray has served as executive vice president of the Baptist General Conference since January, 1995. Previously Ray served as a BGC church planter and pastor in St. Louis, Missouri, as a BGC missionary to France, and as director of church relations for the BGC. Ray and his wife Kay both graduated from Fort Wayne Bible College in Indiana. He later received his M. Div. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Kay serves part-time as director of women's ministries for the Midwest Baptist Conference. Ray and Kay have four children: Jennifer (Hessenthaler), Jonathan, Julie and Joy, and 2 grandchildren, Nicole and Kevin. They reside in Zion, Illinois, and are active at Faith Baptist Church in Grayslake, IL.
As executive vice president, Ray is responsible for the operations side of BGC ministries, including the Conference Center in Arlington Heights. He oversees communications, information systems, legal services, human resources, facilities, annual meeting program and logistics, and Harvest operations. Working closely with the vice presidents of finance and fund raising, he also oversees budget and financial planning. Another key role is in the coordination of strategic planning for all national and international ministries.
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Stephen P. Doggett
Executive
Director
BGC
International Ministries
Listening…
learning… catalyzing… figuring out how to deal with challenges… travel… people
development… these are the motivating things for Steve Doggett – the very skills
and abilities needed to help him meet the responsibilities of serving as the
Executive Director/Vice President of International Ministries at Baptist
General Conference.
Elected
to the position in June 2006, Steve and Debbie moved from Minnesota
to the Chicago area, where Steve leads the IM
staff out of the BGC office in Arlington Heights.
Steve
has a long history of leading people in the work of God’s kingdom. Graduating from high school and college in
northern Missouri, Steve went on to Seminary
in Kansas City MO,
and then Dallas TX for post-graduate work.
Steve
and Debbie served for 11 years with Campus Crusade for Christ in university
ministry. Their first introduction to
the BGC came with their first assignment with Campus Crusade – directing
Crusade work at Bethel College (now University) in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Sensing
the time had come for a change of direction, God opened doors for Steve and
Debbie to pursue overseas service. They
were appointed as missionaries with the Evangelical Free Church and served in Belgium, a
French and Flemish-speaking nation, as part of the international field
staff. They helped plant an
international church in Brussels,
led ministries among employees of the European Union, and later served as the
country leader of the 25-member team there.
The Doggetts lived in Brussels
for seven years, after which time the EFC office of International Ministries
asked them to consider accepting home office responsibilities.
Accepting
the assignment to help with recruiting new missionaries, Steve and Debbie found
themselves transitioning to life in the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul (Minnesota) area. While there Steve’s responsibilities
increased, leading him to serve as an Area Director in Central
Asia, as well as larger responsibilities in the Recruiting and
Mobilizing division of Evangelical Free missions.
This background
of experience has prepared Steve well for his current responsibilities. Campus Crusade gave him wide experience in
evangelism, discipleship, and growing a ministry. He has been through the rigors of language
learning and cultural adaptation and understands the challenges of long-term
living in a culture not your own. He has
served in both areas of mission – missions on the field and national leadership
– and proved to be a leader wherever he was assigned. Not only does Steve know the world of
para-church ministry, he also is well versed in the world of church
associations, working with U.S.
churches and partnering with them to realize their own mission goals and dreams.
Steve
and Debbie have one daughter who is married, and three grandchildren.
Dr. Lou Petrie
Vice President,
Mission Advance
Dr. Lou has been involved in full-time Christian ministry for 24 years. He comes to the ministry with a rich background of life experiences as a prison guard, firefighter, constable in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a pastor of three local churches which have been revitalized in their ministries under his leadership. Dr. Lou served as the Director of Development of the North American Baptist Conference for seven years and is presently the Vice President of Mission Advance of the Baptist General Conference.
Dr. Lou has been blessed with the gift of communicating God's Word in a wide variety of ministry settings. He has preached the Word of God in Nigeria, Russia, Bulgaria, Cameroon, South Korea, the Philippines, Mexico City, Canada and the United States. His wife, Linda, and he have been happily married for 33 years and they have three beautiful daughters.
Dr. Lou has a heart for the local church. He believes God is on the verge of sending a great revival to the American church.
Dr. Lou, in commenting on his ministry, states, "I describe myself as a theological conservative, holding to the fundamentals of the faith, and I affirm the authority of Scripture in the life of the believer. I stress the possibility and necessity of victorious Christian living through a personal identification of the believer with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6). I emphasize the importance of the local church as being the primary agency by which His "Great Commission" is to be fulfilled. In order for this objective to be fulfilled, there must be a complete commitment to the ministry of the local church and a consecrated dependence on the leading of the Holy Spirit."
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Steve Schultz
Vice President,
Finances
Baptist General Conference
Education: Graduated from Bethel College in December, 1987 with a BA in business and with an accounting and finance emphasis. Passed his CPA in November, 1988.
Steve received his MBA in May, 1999 from Northern Ill. University
Present: Has worked at BGC since August, 1989. Serves as Vice President of Finance and Operations for the Baptist General Conference, President of the Cornerstone Fund, Plan Administrator for the Baptist General Conference Retirement Plan and Treasurer for BGC Foundation.
Family: He and his wife, Karalyn, are the parents of seven children. They live in northern Illinois.
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