By John Pierce

William T. (Bill) Neal III will become president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta-based Georgia Developmental Disabilities Ministries, Inc. (DDM) on July 1. He will succeed Richard Davis, the group’s first and only president, upon his retirement.

Neal has been part-time development director for DDM. The former editor of The Christian Index, newspaper of the Georgia Baptist Convention (GBC), was forced into early retirement by the convention’s fundamentalist leadership in 2003.

DDM grew out of the Georgia Baptist Children’s Home and Family Ministries and legally separated from the GBC after the convention refused to approve supportive trustees from churches with ties to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Neal also serves as part-time associate pastor of the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga., where he hopes to remain an active member and voluntarily coordinate activities for senior adults.

(John Pierce is executive editor of Baptists Today, an autonomous, national news journal based in Macon, Ga.)