| BAPTISTS TODAY
News Release www.baptiststoday.org |
October 12, 2004
PLAINS, Ga. — After 22 years as pastor of a small Baptist congregation that includes former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, Dan Ariail plans to retire next year. The 135-member Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., is known for attracting thousands of visitors, including many internationals, each year to hear Carter teach weekly Sunday school lessons.
“Both Jimmy and I are in good health, but I feel that if I waited until he is no longer able to teach the class, that our church might not survive such a double whammy,” Ariail told the independent news journal, Baptists Today.
Carter, 80, who teaches Bible lessons most Sundays to a full sanctuary, and often an overflow crowd in the church’s fellowship hall, has not indicated any plans to quit soon. Tour buses and vehicles with car tags from across the nation are parked among the pecan trees outside the rural Southwest Georgia church on typical Sunday mornings.
Ariail has the unique responsibility to preach to more visitors than members with many of the guests experiencing a Baptist church for the first time. He and his wife Nell plan to continue living in Plains and being a part of the Maranatha congregation.
“I dearly love the church and its people, and think I can be a help to the new pastor,” said Ariail. “If it appears that I am giving him trouble, I will back off.”
Ariail, 66, plans to retire Oct.1, 2005 or earlier in the year if a new pastor is called. The open plan, he said, does not tie the church leaders’ hands, but “is meant to get them into gear on the process.”
In 1996, Ariail co-authored a book from Zondervan Press titled, The
Carpenter’s Apprentice: The Spiritual Biography of Jimmy Carter. A native
Georgian, Ariail is a graduate of Mercer University and Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary.
(John Pierce is executive editor of Baptists Today, an autonomous,
national news journal based in Macon, Ga.)