PLEASANTON (KS)
KCTV CBS 5 [Kansas City, MO]
September 1, 2026
By Julia Scammahorn
A longtime pastor with a decades-long ministry spanning Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kansas is behind bars following his arrest Monday evening on multiple felony sex charges.
Wade Booth, 70, was booked into custody at 7 p.m. on Aug. 31, according to jail records.
Booth has served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Pleasanton since 2007, but his ministerial background in the region dates back to the late 1970s.
Pleasanton is an hour’s drive from Kansas City, about 70 miles southwest of downtown.
According to his church biography, Booth graduated from Springfield, Missouri’s Baptist Bible College in 1981. He later served as pastor of Calvary Bible Baptist Church in Harper, Kansas, for 12 years before working as a missionary church planter in Oklahoma. From 1997 to 2005, Booth started two churches in Oklahoma before eventually moving to his current pulpit in Pleasanton in 2007.
According to booking records, Booth faces several severe felony charges, including unlawful sexual relations with a minor and witness intimidation. Booth is being held at the Linn County Sheriff’s Correctional Facility on $750,000 bond.
KCTV reached out to the First Baptist Church of Pleasanton for comment and is awaiting a response.