After a long search, Brainerd Baptist Church, a storied local congregation that has cycled through multiple senior pastors in the past decade, has selected a new man for the role -- and he said he plans to stick around for a long time.
The church congregation this month voted to call Curtis Hill to preside over the 95-year-old multisite church.
Hill will be a familiar face to longtime members. He served as an associate pastor for about seven years at Brainerd Baptist Church before going to a congregation in Delaware.
He'll fill the new senior pastor role in Chattanooga early next year.
By phone Wednesday, Hill said Brainerd Baptist played a formative role in his own life. He hopes to provide cohesion and stability there and deploy more young people into ministry.
In the late 1990s, Hill got his master of divinity at Temple Baptist Seminary, whose old location is now part of Redemption to the Nations Church in Highland Park.
During his studies, Hill interned at Brainerd Baptist Church, and upon graduation, he took the associate pastor job working with seniors and children, preaching and eventually taking on certain administrative responsibilities, he said.
He periodically traveled to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he got a doctorate in ministry.
"I feel like the whole goal of preaching is for people to have an encounter with God that makes a difference in their lives," he said.
Through a study of church history, sermon transcripts and contemporary models, he researched how congregants respond to different styles from the pulpit.
He remained at Brainerd Baptist until around 2007, when he felt he was ready to become a lead pastor. Someone at Brainerd Baptist connected him to a congregation with an opening -- Ogletown Baptist Church in Newark, Delaware, which ultimately hired him.
As he headed up the Atlantic coast with his young family, Hill felt eager but nervous at the responsibility of running a church with several hundred members.
He learned to lead a small staff, and in time appreciated the value of proactive communication as he worked, imperfectly, he said, to usher in certain institutional changes. Hill's resume notes his success reducing a significant debt load, revamping the organizational structure of the church and increasing its diversity.
In his absence, Brainerd Baptist added additional locations in the region. But senior pastors of late have not stuck around long. The most recent was Michah Fries, who held the role from around 2016 to 2020.
Jim Shaddix, a professor of preaching at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, has twice in the past decade served as interim pastor at Brainerd Baptist Church -- the first time for about eight months and more recently on the order of two years, he said by phone -- consulting with church leadership, traveling out weekly to deliver sermons and at times advising the search committee.
Unlike in many major denominations, Southern Baptist churches have autonomy in selecting their pastoral leadership -- and typically find new pastors via congregational search committees. After Fries left the church, a bulletin on the Brainerd Baptist website dated February 2021 invited nominations for the search team.
Hill said that in the spring of 2022, a member of the committee reached out by phone about the job. There were several video calls, he said, but it was a complex time in his life and at his church in Delaware, and he decided to suspend his candidacy for the position.
"I didn't have clarity from God that it was the right time to make this sort of move, and I communicated that to the search team," he said.
The committee kept looking through the summer. In a letter dated Sept. 8, the pastor search team acknowledged they had talked to candidates but still not called a pastor, and that the process was taking longer than hoped.
"We admit we have felt discouraged and disappointed at times," the letter said. "But ultimately the team sees that the Lord has not only used these situations to teach us and refine our process."
Then Hill, feeling he had seen his role at his Delaware church through, reached out to the search committee to again express an interest in the position. Members went to see him at Ogletown Baptist Church, and he came down to Chattanooga.
On Dec. 4, at the recommendation of the search committee, 99% of more than 700 Brainerd Baptist Church members voted to approve Hill for the job, according to the church website. After the announcement Hill, his wife and three children walked before the congregation. In a video of the event, Hill seemed to grow emotional as he asked the audience to pray for his church in Delaware as it enters a transition period of its own.
"It's surreal to be back," he told the audience.
Hill has returned to Delaware, where he prepares to move with his family -- and wrap up his ministry.
He said he will give his final sermon Sunday and try to express his gratitude. And he plans to preach from the Book of John, chapter 10, emphasizing that as pastor, he is but an under-shepherd. Jesus, he intends to suggest, "is the one that has kept us all along."
Contact Andrew Schwartz at aschwartz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.