The Reverend Ann Calvin “Cally” Rogers-Witte, an Elon University trustee, was elected executive minister of Wider Church Ministries at the United Church of Christ’s 25th General Synod held July 1-5 in Atlanta. As the leader of the UCC’s Wider Church Ministries, Rogers-Witte will be a member of the UCC’s five-person Collegium of Officers and. also co-executive of the UCC/Disciples of Christ Global Ministries. Rogers-Witte, who has been Conference Minister of the UCC’s Southwest Conference since 1995, will begin her new work October 1.
Rogers-Witte is the mother of Mary Ann Rogers-Witte, a 1999 Elon alumna.
Describing overseas and cross-cultural experiences as her “passion” since a young age, Rogers-Witte has attended two international assemblies of the World Council of Churches, in Australia (1991) and Zimbabwe (1998). In 2000, she spent a sabbatical learning Spanish and living with families in Guadalajara and Morelia, Mexico. She has worked to strengthen the Southwest Conference’s ties to the Christian Congregational Churches of Mexico and the Southern Mindinao District of the UCC in the Philippines. Prior to ordination in 1973, she spent two years as the director of Christian education at the American Church in Paris, France. She also has traveled to Puerto Rico, Singapore, Malaysia, Switzerland, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Rogers-Witte currently chairs the UCC Insurance Board. A past president of the New Mexico Council of Churches and the North Carolina Council of Churches, and a former board member of the National Council of Churches, Rogers-Witte was pastor of Community UCC in Raleigh, N.C., for 18 years. In the 1970s, she worked as a regional associate with the former UCC Office for Church Life and Leadership.
Rogers-Witte is a graduate of Mary Baldwin College in Virginia, Yale Divinity School (M.A. in Religion) and the Pacific School of Religion (Master of Divinity).