Executive Director Search Team members met with VLC members Tuesday, June 21, to present Rev. Jamie Rogers as candidate for the top leadership role within the Columbia Metro Baptist Association (CMBA) Family of Churches. VLC members voted to endorse the search team report, and announced a special called meeting on Tuesday, July 19, at 1:30 p.m. at St. Andrews Baptist Church, 230 Bush River Road in Columbia. Following current bylaws, the called meeting is for the pastor from each CMBA member church and one or two lay leaders, depending on the church size, to attend and hear from the team about their candidate selection, meet Rogers and cast an official vote.
Chair Ryan Dupree calls Rogers a relational leader active in denominational work who “has been a local church pastor, a church planter and has a passion for our churches to focus on discipleship. Jamie has a burden for the lost in Columbia, a passion for engaging and reaching ethnic groups in the Columbia area, and a love of global and local missions. He also loves pastors, has a servant’s heart, and sees the local association as a true family.”
Rogers has served as the Columbia Baptist Collegiate Ministry Director since 2018. In that role he led the campus ministry to adopt an outreach-focused strategy to reach lost students with the gospel, partnered with CMBA churches to engage local and international students, and saw the ministry almost triple in student participation during his tenure. Rogers was a church planter in New York from 2014-2018. He has served on staff with six South Carolina Baptist churches, including as senior pastor of Kershaw Second Baptist, Solid Rock Baptist in Aiken, Redd’s Branch Baptist in Aiken, and Union Baptist in Creedmoor, N.C.
A native of Camden, S.C., Rogers made his profession of faith and was baptized at Emmanuel Baptist. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education from the University of South Carolina Aiken and a Master of Divinity with Pastoral Ministry and Biblical Languages from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He married Natasha (Tasha) Hutson, of Barnwell, in 2000, and the couple has four children – Matthan (age 16), Anna Beth (14), Ruthie (12) and Josie (10). Rogers and his family are members of North Trenholm Baptist.
According to Dupree, in Rogers CMBA churches can expect an Executive Director who desires to truly know congregations and “not just the pastor.” Dupree says Rogers has a strong focus on engaging community, church planting especially among various ethnic groups, and will place emphases on strengthening churches through discipleship, missions partnerships, and fulfilling the Great Commission.
“I know that as our next Executive Director, Jamie will work with our churches to fully engage with their local communities to reach them for God’s Kingdom. He will work with our churches to plant more churches to reach more people, especially among the many ethnic groups in our city. Jamie loves Columbia, the association, and our churches, and will be a great partner to us all in our ministries,” Dupree says.
CMBA is an association of about 100 member churches and Church Network Connection churches from across the Midlands of South Carolina. For more information about CMBA, its ministries and related resources visit www.ColumbiaMetro.org.