The Rev. William Keith
Schools: Appalachian State University; The University of the South at Sewanee School of Theology
Family: Married five years to Amanda; Six-month-old daughter, Lilly
Current Ministry: Assistant Rector at The Church of the Good Shepherd on Lookout Mountain
Fr. Wil Keith describes himself as a “cradle Episcopalian.” “Church was always a place where I felt comfortable – I was surrounded by people who loved me, who cared for me,” he recalls. “Even when I was in early adolescence, not feeling all that comfortable in my skin, it was easier to feel that and respond to that in the church more than it was in middle school, and that stuck with me. It allowed me to be very comfortable with my identity as a Christian, no matter what I did. My life was always comfortably centered around a central hub – and that was Christ.” He credits this assurance with helping him get through some very stressful times. It enabled him to explore who he really was in the world and he says he wants that same experience for the members of his current church.
Although Keith’s primary focus is youth and family ministries, he feels called to help everyone in the community. “No matter what age, I feel called to help folks find their center of life in Christ and to find the grace that has been in their lives, identify that with them, and name that what it is – grace,” he says.
Fr. Keith says he loves watching his flock grow – and growing with them. “Seeing folks transformed, seeing hearts changed, to see folks grow – whether or not I had a hand in that – to be present during that and to live through those moments with them,” is his greatest satisfaction, he says.
The growth of every church member – young, old, lay or clergy – never stops and he celebrates the community aspect of that same process he loved as a child. “We’re not having to do it (growth) alone, insulated or isolated from the rest of our community – we can do that together.”
Margaret Ferguson
Schools: The University of the South at Sewanee; Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
Family: Husband Scott; Son Michael (26), Daughter Meg (23)
Current Ministry: Director of Pastoral Care at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church
“I no more would have thought I would pursue this direction than I would have flown to the moon,” says Margaret Ferguson of her upcoming ordination in May. “I’ve done a variety of different things, but this was a door that was opened for me.”
Looking back, Ferguson says there is a precedent for this in her family. Her grandfather and great-grandfather were both Episcopal clergymen, with the latter serving at St. Paul’s in Chattanooga. One uncle was an Episcopal bishop and all the rest were Presbyterian ministers. However, she says the strongest influence has been her senior pastor, Dr. Bill Dudley. “In 1990, he offered me an interim spot as a youth minister and I’ve been on staff ever since,” Margaret laughs. “I started teaching a Bible study and a hunger began. He kept fanning that flame.”
Before her present position, Ferguson served as Director of Christian Education and Director of Older Adult Ministry. One day Dr. Dudley told her, “You really should be ordained. If you’re going to do this, this would be the way that God could really use you.” She listened. The unthinkable became possible thanks to a supportive family and a new program offered by Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary for students currently working in ministry. Since 2003, Ferguson has used a distance-learning component, as well as monthly weekend and occasional week-long trips to Charlotte, N.C., to follow her call. Her niche will be in Christian counseling and pastoral care.
“The most fulfilling thing is to recognize the blessing that comes from being able to minister to somebody who is suffering or in need,” Ferguson says. “I feel like we go in to try to help someone and yet we come out so much more blessed than we could ever possibly have blessed them.”
Pastor Jason Hart
Schools: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
Family: Married three years to Autumn; One-year-old daughter, Ava
Current Ministry: Pastor of Southside Bible Fellowship (meets at the UTC Baptist Student Center), a ministry to college students, Gen X-ers, young professionals and the communities of UTC and Southside
Jason Hart grew up in the town of Zion, Ill., located between Chicago and Milwaukee. His parents didn’t attend church until his freshman year in high school. “I was raised in a home where we were not brought up in the ways of God, so all of this was brand new to me, “ Hart says. “I had a real spiritual battle between whether I wanted to walk with God or live like the rest of my friends.”
Then he came to Chattanooga to attend UTC and live with his grandfather. “When I got to college, I started taking God seriously,” he says, crediting the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at UTC with helping him turn his life around. Through prayer, Bible reading and discovering the gifts God had given him, he began to feel a burden to reach out to others struggling like he did.
Hart accepted a staff position as youth minister at White Oak Baptist Church. The Red Bank church affirmed his gifts and later became his sending church when he decided to attend New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
When asked about his greatest sense of satisfaction in the ministry, Hart’s answer is immediate: “Teaching God’s Word and building relationships with people, whether it is children or high school students or anybody – I would do it for free.” Hart is a bi-vocational pastor. His other job is teaching dating and relationship classes to high school students for First Things First.
Ashley McCleery
Schools: Red Bank High School; Samford University; Fuller Theological Seminary
Home Church: Signal Mountain Presbyterian
For two summers during college, Ashley McCleery went to Africa to teach abstinence education and to help children orphaned by AIDS. “The Lord really changed me,” she recalls. “A lot of times we don’t give Him a chance because we’re so busy with the Internet, talking on the phone, and making our schedules as busy as possible. But sometimes, when you’re out of your comfort zone, He has time to change you.”
Returning to college for her senior year, McCleery sensed the Lord was not saying no to journalism, but that He had something else. She finished her degree, but never forgot all the poverty and suffering she’d seen. “I found out very quickly that I desperately missed ministry,” she says.
A professor suggested Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., because they offer a Master of Arts in Cross Cultural Studies with an emphasis on children at risk. McCleery applied and was accepted, but still wasn’t sure she wanted to go that far away. She stayed in Birmingham, Ala., for a year and worked as a journalist. McCleery quickly determined that the ministry was her calling. “I found out very quickly that I just could not miss doing ministry,” she says. “So a year ago, I moved 3,000 miles away, without any family or friends, and it was hard. The culture is very different, but I’m excited to be going back to Fuller. I have learned so much and Fuller is preparing me for what I want to do – work with women and children who have been sexually exploited.”
Michael Douglas
Schools: Christian Brothers University; University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Current Ministry: Founder and Leader of GAP Ministry on the UTC campus
Home Church: Olivet Baptist Church
After the death of his stepfather in 1995, Michael Douglas transferred from Christian Brothers University in Memphis to UTC to be a support for his mom. The struggles he experienced with his faith then inspired him to want to help college students today. How could he help 18 to 25-year-olds avoid the mistakes he made? How could he encourage them to stay connected to God in the midst of their new freedoms? Members of Olivet Baptist Church provided him the support and training he needed to reach out to this age group. In 2003, he launched God’s Action Plan (GAP) Ministry on the UTC campus.
“God wants me to let the students know that even in this critical stage in life, he still has a plan for them, but that plan requires them to take some action,” Douglas says.
As part of his ministry, Douglas walks students through a four-step plan that includes an honest analysis of where they are, praise and thanksgiving for what they’ve gone through and what God is doing in their lives, a class on how to study the Bible, and encouragement to place themselves in an atmosphere where they are being “pushed and provoked into intimacy with God.”
Douglas most enjoys teaching the word of God. “They are in all of these classes all day and all week and they’re being challenged intellectually,” he says. “To challenge them in the area of their spiritual growth and to see them get it is the most fulfilling thing that I can even begin to imagine.”
Douglas loves to help students discover God’s Action Plan for their lives because he says “that’s the place where they’re going to be the happiest, the place where they are going to have joy, and the place where they are going to be the most productive.” He is living proof.
The Rev. Ann G. Weeks
Schools: Chattanooga City High School; University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Family: Husband Brad; Daughters Brooke (28) and Sarah (27)
Current Ministry: Vocational deacon at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chattanooga
“I never thought I’d be in the ministry – ever,” says Weeks, who is still amazed when she catches a glimpse of herself in her clerical collar. It is the culmination of a lifelong journey of service first instilled by her mother, Brooke Gammon, who taught her that possessions are loaned to us for use while we’re on this earth. “It gave me a whole different perspective,” she says.
After college she worked in interior design and eventually opened her own business, Signal Design Group. She continued volunteer service through her church, the Church of the Good Shepherd on Lookout Mountain, helping them build a school in Haiti. It made an impact. “Those folks have nothing,” she says, “and are so happy compared to people who have everything, materially speaking, and they are not happy.” Then September 11 happened. Weeks was one of 12 parishioners from Good Shepherd who offered respite care for Ground Zero workers at St. Paul’s Chapel, an Episcopal Church, in New York City. “All of us,” she says, “were changed forever.”
Returning to Chattanooga, Weeks continued to work and began the discernment process to become an Episcopal vocational deacon. Her husband, Brad, an attorney with Wagner, Nelson and Weeks, began the journey at the same time. For seven years they traveled to Knoxville one weekend a month. They were ordained vocational deacons in 2007. Brad still works as an attorney, but he also serves as the vocational deacon at Grace Episcopal Church on Brainerd Road. Weeks sold her business and is now the vocational deacon at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in downtown Chattanooga.
Weeks says she loves connecting resources and people with needs. She thrives on helping others discover their gifts and use them to show God’s love in the world.
Jonathan Mauney
Schools: Red Bank High School; Tennessee Tech University
Home Church: Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church
“My favorite story in the Bible is when Peter, James and John go fishing all night and catch nothing,” says Jonathan Mauney, a senior majoring in Human Resources at Tennessee Tech University. “That passage shows how James and John immediately become believers and they have all this material success – fish. They could have walked away being successful that night, but they chose to leave all that fish on the shore and go follow Jesus.”
One of Mauney’s goals in life is to show people that there is a difference between just being a believer and actually following Christ, a principle he says he learned from his fiancé, Lindsay Watts. When the couple first started dating in high school, she challenged him to not just be a believer, but to be a follower of Christ all the time. “When I adopted that mindset, I began to discern a pattern,” Mauney says. “I started to notice God calling me into full-time ministry.”
During college, doors of confirmation opened. For the last three years, Mauney has been the student president of the Presbyterian Student Association at Tennessee Tech, where he leads worship on Tuesday nights.
Mauney says he is most fulfilled seeing students dig deeper into the Word of God and getting real fulfillment out of it. “It really moves me when you see the Holy Spirit working through people,” he says. “It gives me energy, as well, to continue what I’m doing.” Those plans include application to seminary in early spring and marriage to Lindsay in June.
In the fourth chapter of John in the New Testament, Jesus’ disciples have gone away to buy food. He remains in Samaria ministering to the woman at the well. When the disciples return, they urge him to eat, but He says to them: “I have food to eat that you do not know about … my food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to complete his work.” Each of these servants in ministry has also tasted this same food and found that nothing else really satisfies.