Federal authorities have charged a 34-year-old youth pastor from Catawba with attempted coercion and enticement of a minor by posing as a teenager on social media and asking her to send him sexually explicit images.

FBI agents arrested Jacob Ryan Barnett on Aug. 6 in North Carolina, and he made his initial court appearance last week in federal court in Roanoke, according to a statement issued Thursday morning by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Virginia.

Barnett had been listed as associate pastor of students and mobilization on the website of Catawba Valley Baptist Church until Aug. 7, when the Independent, a British online news site, reported his connection to the church. The listing has since has been removed. A message The Roanoke Times left with the church offi

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