At the present time, Bacon’s Castle is led by five elders. Our pastor, Jimmy Acree, serves as the leader of our elder team. He has served here for over thirty years. For more information about elder leadership click here.
Dickie Pittman
Dickie grew up right here in Surry County. After attending Clemson University, where he met and married his wife Donna, Dickie returned home to take over the family farm. He has worked as a farmer for over forty years. He and Donna have three children, Landon and his wife Courtney, Ben, and Jennifer and her husband Jeremy. They also have been blessed with several grandchildren. Dickie became a follower of Jesus in the mid 1980s and he has served here at Bacon’s Castle as an elder from the appointment of our first elder team. He presently leads our young men’s small group on Sunday morning.
Jamey Cowan
Jamey and his wife Nancy have been a part of Bacon’s Castle since January of 2004 and three years later he began serving with us on our elder team. Jamey and Nancy have two children, Darin and Meagan and he works for Dominion Power at the Surry Nuclear Plant. Jamey also serves as our worship leader on Sunday. He enjoys golfing and fishing.
Micah Beachy
Micah recently began helping on the elder team in our training position.
Matt Washam
When Matt graduated from the University of Tennessee he moved to Surry to give leadership to a local Baptist camp. A follower of Jesus since his youth, he became a part of the Castle family back in 2008 and in 2012 he married his wife Meredith, a daughter of our church. Today they have two children, Sam and Adah. Matt left the directorship of the camp and today is doing something he’s wanted to do for a number of years—he’s a farmer! Matt enjoys just about anything that has to do with being outdoors.
The leadership of our church family is invested in a plurality of men we call our elders. More and more churches, including Baptist churches, are embracing the Biblical teaching that the church is to be led by not just one elder, the pastor, but by a group of men set aside as an elder team. Our pastor serves as the leader for the elder team, but our church is led by all our elders together.
According to 1 Timothy 3:1-7, 1 Timothy 5:17-22, and Titus 1:5-9, God appoints elders to pastor the church as a leadership team. Through out the New Testament the terms Elders, Pastors and Overseers are often used interchangeably of the same office so elders are to pastor and oversee. Specifically the Bible says that elders are responsible to provide leadership to the church by visiting the sick, judging doctrinal issues, teaching, preaching, protecting, exhorting, and praying.
Our pastor is a vocational elder. That is, he is supported full time by the church. The rest of our elder team are non-vocational. Together, under the Lord Jesus, our elders lead us.
No. At the present we only have one vocational pastor who also serves as the leader of the elders. However we believe that men can serve as assistant pastors without necessarily serving as elders. They will also provide valuable leadership.
Our elders are in agreement with our constitution and our doctrinal statement.
The qualifications for an Elder are listed in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. A church Elder shall be: “…above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to much wine or pugnacious, but gentle, uncontentious, free from the love of money, good manager of his household, not a new convert, having a good reputation outside the church, having children who believe, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled…”
Elders serving at the church meet the above qualifications. They are not perfect men but they are spiritual men, demonstrating a Spirit-filled life and a consistent walk with Jesus. They are men who have strong prayer lives, are committed to the authority of Scripture and have a witnessing lifestyle.