NASHVILLE – Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Executive Committee employee C. Ashley Clayton is now vice president for Cooperative Program and Stewardship Development, SBC Executive Committee President Frank Page has announced.
Clayton has helped guide Cooperative Program (CP) promotion and stewardship development since joining the Executive Committee in 2006 as associate vice president for Cooperative Program and Stewardship. After holding several related posts, he was named in March 2013 as special assistant to the president for CP and stewardship.
Page announced Clayton’s promotion at the SBC Executive Committee’s Feb. 17-18 meeting in Nashville.
“He has served faithfully our Executive Committee staff for several years and has grown in his strategic ability,” Page said of Clayton. “We’re proud of him and thankful.”
Clayton will continue working with pastors and cooperating state Baptist convention ministry leaders to strengthen Cooperative Program giving and encourage individual and church stewardship among cooperating churches.
“At the Executive Committee, we understand our primary and most important assignment is to advance SBC missions and ministries through the Cooperative Program,” Clayton said. “We are striving for consistent messaging and a simple plan for fueling Southern Baptists’ long-held values, international missions, church planting and evangelism across North America, church revitalization, theological education, biblical stewardship, meeting human needs, having a voice for morality and religious freedom, collegiate ministry, disaster relief, church strengthening, and so many other important ministries through our state convention partners.”
Stewardship, Clayton said, goes hand in hand with the Cooperative Program. From 2006 through 2010, his primary focus was on stewardship development, developing “It’s a New Day” stewardship resources and conducting workshops across the nation in partnership with Crown Financial Ministries.
In 2011, he transitioned into the Executive Committee president’s office to work more directly with Cooperative Program promotion; but has continued to coordinate stewardship conferences in concert with the six seminaries and many state Baptist conventions.
Clayton has an extensive background in church ministry, having served as minister to children, minister of education, and an associate pastor at churches in Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Georgia and Tennessee.
He is the author of several resources in church growth and the 2009 financial management book, Confessions of a Poor Money Manager, published by B&H Publishing Group.
(EDITOR’S NOTE – Compiled by Diana Chandler, Baptist Press’ general assignment writer/ editor.)