What Faith Has Taught Me About Service

Faith has been an important part of how I understand service, responsibility and our obligation to care for others.

I graduated from William Blount High School in Tennessee. While I was in high school, someone invited me to a Fifth Quarter event at Dotson Memorial Baptist Church. It was there that I accepted Christ, and I was later baptized.

That decision became a formative part of my life and helped shape something I have carried with me ever since: faith is not simply something we profess. It should be demonstrated in how we live, how we serve and how we care for others.

When I attended Maryville College, I became involved with the Micah 6:8 Ministry, a county jail outreach serving juvenile offenders. We mentored and tutored young people, but sometimes the most important thing we did was simply show up. We tried to offer encouragement, guidance and the reminder that someone believed in their potential.

The ministry took its name from Micah 6:8 and its call to pursue justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. Those three ideas, justice, mercy and humility, have stayed with me and continue to influence how I think about servant leadership.

After college, I spent four years serving as a Youth Director at a United Methodist church in Maryville. One of the things I wanted young people to understand was that faith calls us beyond ourselves. It calls us to serve.

That belief took us to Waveland, Mississippi, following Hurricane Katrina. It took us to the Louisiana Methodist Children’s Home in Ruston, Louisiana. And it took us into Appalachian communities through Project Crossroads, a home repair ministry based in Marion, Virginia.

Later, I served as Associate Director of Fund Development and Church Relations at Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Greeneville, Tennessee. Once again, I found myself doing work centered on bringing people and resources together to serve children and families.

When my family and I moved to Anderson in 2015, we found a church home at First Presbyterian Church of Anderson. Today, I am involved in our Youth and Scouting Ministries and serve as an Assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 234 at St. Joseph Catholic Church.

Looking back, my faith journey has taken me into Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Catholic communities. It has taken me into churches, a county jail, children's homes, communities recovering from a hurricane and homes in Appalachia that needed repair.

The places have changed, but the lesson has remained remarkably consistent.

Faith calls us to serve.

One verse that continues to remind me of that responsibility comes from Matthew 7:20:

“Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

For me, that is a reminder that our faith, our leadership and our commitment to one another ultimately have to be demonstrated by how we live and how we serve.