wfn.org | ABCUSA: Dieciedue to Retire from National Ministries

["SCHRAMM, Richard" <Richard.Schramm@abc-usa.org>]

by Susan Gottshall, American Baptist National Ministries

American Baptist News Service (Valley Forge, Pa. 4/4/03)--Carole Dieciedue,
director of American Baptist National Ministries' Volunteers In Mission,
will retire June 30 after 30 years of service. 

Dieciedue developed Volunteers In Mission (VIM) from a part-time volunteer
service program in 1993 to today's multi-faceted effort that sends
volunteers on ministry endeavors throughout the United States and Puerto
Rico. More than 1,000 volunteers a year, individually or as part of mission
groups, have been involved in this home mission program since its inception.

In collaboration with other National Ministries staff Dieciedue added the
Volunteer Skills Network--an electronic database that matches a listing of
volunteers and their mission interests, skills and availability with
ministry needs--to VIM in 2000. Home Mission Action Teams, sponsored by NEW
LIFE 2010, became part of the VIM program in 2001.

Dieciedue has chaired the American Baptist Volunteer Services Interboard
Committee for 10 years. She also has served as vice president of the Council
of Religious Volunteer Agencies, a national ecumenical network of major
mainline denominations, and has represented National Ministries on the board
of A Christian Ministry in National Parks. 

As a volunteer missionary Dieciedue led the first team that responded with
disaster relief assistance in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Georges in
1998.  She also helped rebuild a church destroyed by fire in Littleton,
N.C., and led a year-long National Ministries volunteer effort in 1997 to
help churches destroyed by arson.  Dieciedue has volunteered with a local
hospice, visiting patients and serving as a bereavement counselor. 

Commissioned as an American Baptist home missionary in 2001, Dieciedue
joined National Ministries in 1973 as an administrative assistant in the
office of the executive director; later she was named executive assistant to
the executive director.  Before her 1993 appointment as director of
Volunteers In Mission she served as coordinator of Mission Projects.  In
that role she developed a program resource to support churches ministering
to persons with disabilities. 

Of Dieciedue's three decades with American Baptist Churches USA, the Rev.
Dr. Cheryl Dudley, National Ministries' associate executive director, said,
"Carole's service in National Ministries and in the American Baptist system
reminds me of Jesus' parable of the talents. The steward who had been given
five talents increased the talents by that much when a final accounting was
made. I want to say to Carole, 'Well done, and thank you for your
faithfulness.  May the gifts you cultivate in retirement nourish and refresh
you.'"

K/2003ABNS/03ABN53

American Baptist News Service: Office of Communication, American Baptist
Churches USA, P.O. Box 851, Valley Forge, PA 19482-0851; (800)ABC-3USA x2077
/ (610)768-2077; fax: (610)768-2320; www.abc-usa.org;
richard.schramm@abc-usa.org