Rev. Junius Boyd Dotson, pastor of the 3,500-member multi-site Saint Mark United Methodist Church in Wichita, has been selected to lead Nashville-based Discipleship Ministries, one of the 13 general agencies of the denomination.
Dotson, senior pastor of Saint Mark United Methodist Church, was elected as the agency’s new General Secretary (chief executive) last week by the Discipleship Ministries Board of Directors. The United Methodist Church is the second largest protestant denomination, in mission in more than 135 countries with more than 11 million members world-wide. Discipleship Ministries has 160 employees.
UMC Discipleship Ministries provides UMC churches resources in the areas of Christian education, worship, music, evangelism, new church development, stewardship, funding and financial management, lay leadership development, age-level (children, youth, adult) and family ministries, small-group ministries, ethnic local church concerns, devotional life, spiritual formation, and other areas related to the lives of people and the ministries of congregations.
Dotson was elected to serve in the position by the Discipleship Ministries Board of Directors on April 1.
“I feel blessed to be chosen to lead Discipleship Ministries,” said Dotson, who is a speaker, trainer, consultant and coach for churches working to become vital congregations. “I am passionate about making disciples and welcome the opportunity to be relentlessly focused on providing the resources our leaders need to plant new churches and grow vital congregations.”
For 14 years, Dotson has made a noticeable impact on the Community of Wichita and state of Kansas. His leadership helped launch the #NoFergusonHere effort to bridge police and community divisions in Wichita and his work on the Kansas State Sentencing Commission has resulted into changes in the sentencing guidelines for persons facing incarceration.
“I have had the privilege of serving alongside transformative leaders here in Wichita and throughout our great State,” said Dotson. “I’m glad to have played a small part in the transformation of so many lives. This is an amazing place and we’ve done amazing work – I will miss Saint Mark and Wichita,” he said.
“Junius Dotson knows how to lead people inside the church to introduce people outside the church to Jesus and invite them into Christian discipleship,” said Bishop Elaine J.W. Stanovsky of the Mountain Sky episcopal area, who is president of the Discipleship Ministries board of directors. “Working with board and staff, we believe Rev. Dotson can focus the church on three missional fronts: strengthening partnerships in our increasingly global church, improving the effective on-going ministries in our churches, engaging the growing number of ‘spiritual but not religious’ people in the United States.”
An ordained elder in the denomination’s Great Plains Conference, Dotson earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, with a concentration in economics, from the University of Texas at Arlington and a Master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.
He begins his job as General Secretary on July 1.