McFadden called to pulpit of FBC

Bryant Million: PNT Staff Writer

The First Baptist Church of Portales has been without a pastor for the last 20 months but that will all change this Sunday with the church’s first service by their new pastor, David McFadden.

McFadden recently moved to Portales from Kerrville, Texas, where he pastored at the First Baptist Church of Kerrville for 10 years.

“I’m looking forward to making a home in the community (Portales), the wonderful things the church is already doing here and the bright future I will share with them,” McFadden said.

Jim Davis of Portales, who was a part of the search committee for the church’s new pastor, said their previous pastor, Phillip Fike, left the church about a year and a half ago because of personal reasons. Since then they have had Dick Ross, an interim pastor, providing services.

“He (McFadden) feels like this is where the Lord has led him, and the church feels the same way,” Davis said.

McFadden said he was born in Grove City, Pa., in 1955. Six years later his family moved to Jal where he graduated from high school in 1973.

He went to college at New Mexico State University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1977. He received a master’s degree of divinity in 1984 and a doctorate in ministry in 1988 from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

“I have been pastoring for 30 years now,” he said. “I felt that it was the direction that God chose for me, so I went in that direction.”

He said he has pastored in the states of Arizona and Oklahoma as well.

His wife, Donna, is a school teacher and he said she will be employed in the Muleshoe school district. They have two sons, one daughter and five grandchildren.