Richard DuBose to be commissioned on June 7 as fifteenth president of the Montreat Conference Center

There’s always a reason to celebrate in Montreat, but Sunday, June 7 is a red letter day as Richard DuBose is commissioned as the new president of the Montreat Conference Center. This service will take place in Anderson Auditorium at 10:30 am as part of Montreat’s Summer Worship Series.

The Rev. Dr. Brian Blount, president of Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, will be the guest preacher taking part in the commissioning service.

Mr. DuBose is a graduate of Davidson College and has served on the Mountain Retreat Association Board of Directors since 2012. He took office as president on November 17, 2014.

“It is a great privilege and opportunity to have been asked to be the MRA’s president,” says DuBose, “but this commissioning feels to me less about my role, and more a reminder of the importance of our ministry, and that God works best through people in community who hold each other up. I have really felt that support and partnership in my first few months.”

Mr. DuBose came to Montreat after serving as the chief development officer of Points of Light, the largest organization in the world dedicated to volunteer service. Prior to that, he served as the vice president for institutional advancement at Columbia Theological Seminary, where he led a campaign that doubled the size of the seminary’s annual fund and significantly increased the number of individual and alumni donors.

The son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers, Mr. DuBose has been coming to Montreat all his life. He attended the summer Clubs program as a child, and while in college, his summer jobs included service as a Clubs counselor, assisting at the Presbyterian Historical Foundation, and running the skating rink. His wife, Jeannie Cochran DuBose, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, is the former director of spiritual formation at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta and is, like her husband, an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). They have three children: daughter, Kirby, a junior at Tulane University; son, John, a graduate of the Paideia School in Atlanta; and son, Will, a rising ninth grader.

Henry A. Harkey, chair of Montreat’s Board of Directors, says, “We are indeed fortunate that Richard DuBose accepted the call last October to lead this ministry as the MRA’s fifteenth president. His lifetime commitment to Montreat, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the greater church, when combined with his team building, communication, development and many other leadership skills, make him uniquely qualified to lead the conference center in achieving its long term goals and objectives.”

Mr. DuBose succeeds the Rev. Pete Peery, who retired after six years of service to the conference center.

by Tanner Picket, Montreat Conference Center