Bob White retiring; Ministerial Association seeking new chairman
Lewisport Baptist Church’s retiring pastor, Bob White, is looking for someone to volunteer and fill his role as Chairman of the Hancock County Ministerial Association. “It’s a valid ministry in the county,” he said, “and it is needed. It’s a good opportunity for somebody to serve the Lord.”
Bob began attending ministerial association meetings in 1998, and has served as chairman for around 8 years. He said there are 3 events they hold every year in the county: a National Day of Prayer at the courthouse lawn on the first Thursday in May, a Good Friday Service, and a County Fair Service (on the Wednesday evening of the Hancock County Fair).
The donations raised at these services go to The Good Samaritan Fund, which then helps people in the community and from this area who have been displaced in some way, such as from a fire or other tribulation.
Lewisport Baptist Church Communication Secretary Ragan Powers has served as Treasurer of the Hancock County Ministerial Association for three years. She will be stepping down from her volunteer position as treasurer when the new chairperson takes over for Bob. She said the new chair will likely want to choose a treasurer to work with at their home church.
Ragan said there was a good turnout for the service before the Hancock County Fair this year. Six or seven churches provided a sermon and praise & worship music, and over 100 people were in attendance. “I hope more counties will do the same thing,” she said. “It’s al- ways a good time. There are about 30 churches in our county, and those are all different types of churches. All of the minis- ters are a part of this ministerial association. What the association does is, twice and sometimes 3 times a year, we’ll have a non-denominational prayer service.
One is at the first night of the fair, on Wednesday night. We have a prayer service and each minister of each church takes a turn delivering a sermon, and we also ask different churches to provide music. You get to hear different types of speaking and different types of music.
Good Samaritan Fund
Each time we do these, we take an offering. That offering goes into the Good Samaritan Fund, which was created for people to ‘Get Back Home’ –meaning, somebody who is traveling through the county, if they need help or a place to stay, we help with a hotel room. Prisoners who’ve just gotten out of jail and need to get back home, we help them. With the way everything has changed, with cell phones and the ability to wire money, etc., we don’t do a whole lot of that anymore.
Now, some of the Good Samaritan Fund will go to helping people who are dis- placed from, maybe their house caught on fire, or domestic violence situations, etc. It is just a way to help and get someone at least one or two nights of somewhere safe to be, until they can kind of figure things out. With that, we have to check out the person’s background. Before we pay for any hotel rooms, we always check with the Sherif f’s Office and make sure there aren’t any warrants out for this person, and that they’re not running from anything that maybe they’re not telling us about, and that they are who they say they are.
The main reason we do these prayer services is to get all denominations together and worship together as one united Christian fellowship. It works out so well because it’s so interesting to hear different preachers and different pastors speak. You see that we’re all serving the same God and we’re not so different. It’s nice to hear different music – different churches have different music and it’s always nice to hear different stuff like that too. And, we take up a donation so that we can help and make sure that the people who come through our county know that we’re a Christian county and a loving county, and we want to help people if we can.”
The new chairperson and treasurer who volunteer to take over can be from any of the churches in the county.
Please call Lewisport Baptist Church at 270-295-3322 to submit your name for the chair position. Or, you can visit the Hancock County KY Ministerial Association Facebook Page and send your submission via a di- rect message. If more than one submission is received for this volunteer position, the churches in the county will conduct a vote to choose.
By Jennifer Wimmer
