Williamsburg—Long-time missionary Steven Jett is leaving the mission field in Western Europe to take on a new and challenging work beginning next month in eastern Kentucky.

Jett, a retired International Mission Board missionary, has been called to serve as the new director of missions for South Union-Mount Zion Baptist Association. Jett and his wife, Susan, spent the last 25 years sharing the gospel and planting churches in Germany.

“We’re actually still missionaries, at least that’s the way we view it,” said Jett. “We weren’t just looking for a place to retire. That’s not the way we do things.”

Jett, 63, will begin serving as director of missions Sept. 1.

In Germany, Jett said his mission was frontline church planting, he established four new churches during his time in Europe. In eastern Kentucky, Jett said he plans to continue his church planting efforts, but will first attend to the needs of the association’s 54 existing churches.

“It’s about the churches, helping them become more equipped to reach their communities for Christ,” Jett said. “It’s about making resources available, establishing partnerships inside and outside the region and hopefully encouraging churches to help other churches become stronger financially.”

As a graduate of Cumberland College, now University of the Cumberlands, Jett said he was “extremely delighted” to be back in Kentucky and looks forward to living in a city where his wife’s grandfather once served as mayor.

Susan Jett, who still has relatives in Williamsburg, was asked to serve as the association’s secretary.

South Union-Mount Zion Baptist Association serves Southern Baptist churches in the Appalachian counties of Whitley and Laurel in southeastern Kentucky, as well as two churches just across the Tennessee state line. (KBC)