Baptist Peace Fellowship director resigns

Baptist Peace Fellowship director resigns

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ken Sehested, executive director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America since its founding in 1984, is resigning Jan. 1, citing “personal vocational needs.”

The president and vice president of the organization’s board of directors jointly announced Sehested’s resignation in a letter dated Aug. 28. LeDayne Polaski is also resigning after four years as managing director of the Charlotte, N.C.-based BPFNA, in order to spend more time with her infant daughter, the letter said.

“These resignations come as the result of a variety of factors, most notably Ken’s and LeDayne’s own vocational leanings and the current stage of development of the BPFNA as an organization and movement,” board president Lindsay Penn-Matheson of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and vice president Paul Hayes of Suffield, Conn., said in their letter.

The leaders said Sehested has expressed a need for more time to work on writing projects, including a book manuscript.

He attended a founding meeting between American Baptist and Southern Baptist peacemaking groups and became the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America’s first and only executive director in 1984.