Scott County, Virginia, is where I hail from. Reared on a small farm beside a tributary of the North Fork of the Holston River, and in view of a portion of the Clinch Mountain range, I grew up with strong values that linked family, faith, and freedom. My home church was just across the state line in Tennessee, Morrison Chapel. In this cherished place, five generations of my family expressed their love of God and neighbor. My church life came as naturally as breathing, and was a big part of my early life, with services Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, and Wednesday nights. We had an active Sunday School and youth group, robust singing, and lots of good preachers. I was baptized and joined the church one Sunday morning in 1979.
When I left home in 1982 to attend college at Emory & Henry, my faith life expanded, my own call to ministry flourished there as knowledge deepened and I began to learn a broader scope of what it means to be Church. I was active serving in a small membership Presbyterian church in Glade Spring, where a friend and I worked with the church choir. I met some members of a tiny United Methodist Church nearby who invited me to preach my first sermon on April 8, 1984, entitled "What Do You Expect?" based on John 11: 1-45. Participation in the E&H Concert Choir gave me an even broader experience of faith expressed in music, which I grew to value very highly.
I was exposed to an even deeper base of knowledge and greater challenges at seminary at Duke Divinity School for three years. Surrounded by some of the best Christian scholarship of the time, I was forced to grow in ways I had never fathomed before, and met some wonderful people whose lives are forever etched in my soul. I worked as an intern in churches in Mills River, Kimesville, and Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and served music positions at McMannen and Carr UMCs in Durham. I even had a semester as the assistant to the seminary chaplain, planning our worship services for the Divinity School.
After seminary I returned to the hills of Holston Conference, serving churches in Russell and Tazewell Counties, in Virginia. After a decade there, where I met and married my lovely wife, Tammie, I was sent to Jonesville in Lee County, then to Jonesborough in Tennessee. My experience in rural churches and my love of Appalachian culture led me to complete a Doctor of Ministry degree from Memphis Theological Seminary to focus on spiritual formation for leadership development.
Tammie and I accepted a young man named Corion into our home in 2006. We were sent to Pearisburg in 2008, where we continue to grow in our faith and deepen our experience of God's love. We give gratitude to God for all the blessings we have received as we have served God's people in the churches we have been appointed to.
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