Jim Wooten will begin duties Dec. 1 as pastor of The Baptist Church of Beaufort. For the past 21 years, he has been pastor of Earle Street Baptist Church in Greenville.
Jim WootenWooten, a Laurens native, is a graduate of the University of South Carolina and Southern Baptist Seminary, where he earned master of divinity and doctor of ministry degrees.
He formerly was pastor of New Prospect Baptist Church in Laurens from 1978-82, and First Baptist Church, Winnsboro, from 1982-87.
He was recognized by the North American Mission Board for leading in the revitalization of Earle Street, whose membership of mostly senior citizens had dwindled through the years.
Wooten was selected as one of 37 “leading edge” pastors to participate in a three-year program of Sustaining Pastoral Excellence sponsored by the North Carolina Baptist Convention. He is a church development consultant and has lectured on church growth at Erskine Seminary.
He was named an A.H. Newman Scholar by Mercer University’s Center for Baptist Studies and for three months traced Baptist roots in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and New England during a sabbatical funded by the Lilly Foundation’s Clergy Renewal Program.
He is married to the former Becky Brabham of Greenville. They are parents of two children – Grant, a chemical engineer at PGI in Greenville, and Lee Ann, a third-year law student at the University of South Carolina.