Senior Pastor Transition

In the fall of 2001, Tanya and I moved to Middle Tennessee to serve Brentwood Baptist Church as part of the student ministry staff. We were deeply convicted that God was at work in and through our church and we wanted to be a part of what He was doing. Twenty-one years later, its amazing to look back at all He has done and its as exciting to look forward to all that He can do through a church fully committed to engaging the whole person with the whole gospel of Jesus Christ, anywhere, anytime, with anybody. I’m both humbled and honored to be the candidate for Senior Pastor at Brentwood Baptist Church.

The calling on my life is to preach and teach the Bible in order to equip leaders, families, and churches to live out the mission of the gospel for the glory of God. As a family, we have always lived in surrender to whatever assignment God would give us next. I’ve had five assignments within the Brentwood Baptist Church family over the past two decades that give me unique insight into what God is doing and where He is leading us next. In just the past twenty years, our church has multiplied into an entire movement of churches and congregations who share the same biblical convictions, leadership, and resources. We have over forty global worker units who serve as missionaries throughout the world and dozens of gospel partnerships getting the light into some of the spiritually darkest areas of our world and culture. We are currently on the front lines of deaf ministry, special needs ministry, and foster/adoption ministry, and more. I was blessed to come on staff at a time when I was able to serve alongside our first senior pastor, Bill Wilson, and I’ve been able to serve closely under our current senior pastor, Mike Glenn. We’ve been given by those before us a strong foundation on which to build into the future.

I believe the future belongs to churches that stand on the Word of God, depend on Him in prayer, boldly share the gospel, make disciples who multiply disciples, and who equip and empower the church to “live sent” (John 20:21). The future of the church belongs to those who minister to the whole person. This means we have much work ahead of us – engaging the “nones” (religiously unaffiliated); re-engaging the “dones” (the de-churched, many who checked out after Covid-19); highlighting intentional biblical unity; and utilizing the deep resources of the gospel to engage areas for which our culture has few answers – the crisis in mental health, education, foster care, political division, economic disparity, and more. Engaging these arenas will not be easy but it’s worth it because Jesus calls us to do hard things in hard places, beyond our human limits so that we’ll dependent on prayer (Mark 9:29) and the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8a). Only Jesus has what a broken world truly needs. From Middle Tennessee we’ll start, and we will not stop until we reach the ends of the earth (Matt. 24:14).

We eagerly anticipate what God has for us in the days ahead. I am profoundly humbled and grateful to have an opportunity to shepherd and steward the amazing body of believers known as Brentwood Baptist Church.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Jay Strother

Jay Strother oversees four campuses as the Lead Campus Pastor for the South Region of Brentwood Baptist (TN) Church. He also serves as the Campus and Teaching Pastor of one of those campuses, The Church at Station Hill, in Spring Hill, TN. He previously served as the Next Generation Minister developing a family-equipping model for the spiritual formation of preschoolers, children, and students.

He’s the author of Loving Well: Healthy Relationships (equippedchurch.es, 2016), a contributing author to Perspectives on Family Ministry (B&H, 2009), Trained in the Fear of God (Kregel, 2011), and an author of several small group and video resources. He is a regular speaker at conferences and a guest lecturer at seminaries. His favorite stories come from the adventures of life with his wife (Tanya), their four girls (Eliza, Lexi, Ella, and Skylar), and their son (Liam). In addition, Jay enjoys good books, long hikes, strong coffee, and St. Louis Cardinals baseball.