BUCKHANNON, West Virginia – The Reverend Angela Gay Kinkead ’79 will give the Baccalaureate address at 6:30 p.m. Friday, May 5 in Wesley Chapel.

Kinkead is an ordained Elder in The United Methodist Church and a member of the West Virginia Annual Conference. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Christian Education from West Virginia Wesleyan College (1979), a master’s degree in Christian Education from Scarritt Graduate School (1986) in Nashville, Tennessee, and a Master of Divinity degree (1997) from Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville.

Since July 2020, Kinkead has served as Pastor of Elizabeth Memorial United Methodist Church in Charleston, West Virginia. Prior to serving in Charleston, she served Pea Ridge United Methodist Church in Huntington, West Virginia for five years. Kinkead has served local churches as a Christian educator in Madison and Huntington, West Virginia and Greenbrier, Tennesee, and as part-time Minister of Congregational Care of a congregation in downtown Nashville.

For more than 15 years, she led the youth-directed agency of the United Methodist Church, the National Youth Ministry Organization, lodged within the General Board of Discipleship in Nashville. In October 2001, she returned to her alma mater, West Virginia Wesleyan College, to serve as Dean of the Chapel for the next 14 years.

During her time at WVWC, Kinkead was awarded West Virginia Wesleyan’s Community Engagement “Unsung Hero” Award, she led 11 Alternative Breaks for students, including Elektrostal, Russia; Nashville, Tennessee; New York City, Washington, D.C.; and eight work teams to post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana involving approximately 200 students, staff and faculty.

Retiring from full-time ministry at the end of June, she will relocate to Wichita, Kansas to be her brother’s next-door neighbor, and adapt to “every day being Saturday, except Sundays!”