Leadership
Pastor / Teacher / Elder:
David Yoder [contact]
Elders:
Damon Adelgren [contact]
Phil Ledbetter [contact]
Terry Neu [contact]
Tom Orme [contact]
(see the Elders' personal biography articles below)
David Yoder — Pastor/Teacher/Elder
As an avid history buff, Faith Community Church's pastor David Yoder has landed in a good place. After graduating from Central Baptist Theological Seminary with a Masters of Divinity and serving three years as an elder at Emmaus Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Yoder and his wife Natanya enthusiastically accepted the invitation to join the work of the Christian & Missionary Alliance in the historic civil war town of Franklin, Tennessee.
"I first felt a very real 'setting apart' for the gospel ministry when I was 17," David explains. "That's when God first gave me a desire to do this work. One of my greatest joys in the pastoral ministry now is to see God's liberating grace at work in the lives of people."
David's desire to extend God's grace beyond the walls of the church is clearly evident in the emphasis he places on learning to live as a follower of Christ in the world, rather than retreating from it. A reader who enjoys discussing classic works from writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, David believes the church in general needs to learn to graciously interact with and respond to the culture God has planted us in.
"I would like to see us at Faith Community become fluent in the languages of the world," he says. "When I speak of languages of the world I don't mean foreign languages as much as the language of culture. This fluency will help us in speaking truth into the lives of people as we work toward discipleship. A great example is 'art.' We have several artists in our church community. The use of art to respond to God's greatness is not only natural but necessary. I would like to see us develop our artists to reflect God's glory. There's also a lot we can do to prepare the next generation of children to minister to their own generation. We shouldn't wait until they're in high school before we start paying attention to them."
Foundational to Yoder's view of his new pastoral role are "a healthy, reverential respect for God's Word," and a focus on the "Sufficiency of Christ."
"Beyond a shadow of a doubt the biggest hindrance to the gospel in America is our wealth and fascination with material things," he observes. "The primary way to break this imagination is to preach and teach the sufficiency of Christ. Then we can begin to live out the reality of the gospel by our generosity and by doing with less. We can live in such a way that our lives proclaim 'Christ is better than the riches of the world.'"
David and Natanya are rapidly adapting to life as Franklinites, and look forward to investing many years of their lives in this community. They have three sons and a daughter - Levi (6), Uri (5), Christian (4), Clare (2), and William (0).
Damon Adelgren — Elder
Coming Soon! . . . as far as you know.
Phil Ledbetter — Elder
Coming Soon! . . . for real.
Tom Orme — Elder
As founder and president of Vision For Chile and former director of the C&MA “Partnership Office,” Tom Orme brings to the elder board of Faith Community Church a rich history of practical knowledge and ministry experience.
Tom’s personal call to ministry began during a 1995 trip to Santiago, Chile. There, Tom found his heart broken over the plight of abused and neglected girls in a dilapidated orphanage. Shortly thereafter he formed Vision For Chile and led his first missionary/construction trip back to the orphanage in 1998. Since then he’s led over 36 teams, bringing along more than 600 people from churches across North America who have participated in renovation and new construction projects, completely transforming the orphanage. Somewhere along the way, Orme sensed it was time to retire from the Hartford Insurance Company where he had worked in various positions for 36 years, to enter ministry work full-time.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re going to Santiago, Chile, or to Mongolia, or to people who are hurting in your own neighborhood,” Tom says. “What matters is that you’re living with a mission to take the love of Christ to people who need it. As an elder at Faith Community Church, I want to see our people reaching out and having an impact in Franklin, across the country, and around the world.”
A Cincinnati native, Tom has been married to his wife Claudia for 40 years. Together they have 4 adult children and 2 grandsons. Tom’s ongoing service as a treasurer, deacon, and elder in various C&MA churches now spans more than 32 years.
Terry Neu — Elder
When Terry Neu’s fifteen-year stint as Vice President & Director of Technology for two small computer companies came to a close in 2000, he and his wife June saw it as the answer to a prayer they had been praying for two years.
Terry had been involved in various church ministries since the early 1970’s when he first served as a youth leader, but now, more than twenty years later, both he and June had felt a stirring to invest their lives more completely in the work of the gospel. After making a decision to commit most of June’s income to their church, Terry says “We felt good about it until we heard God’s call: ‘Now that you’re not hung up on money, let me tell you what I really want. I want you.’” At that point, the Neu’s began to pray about when they should make a transition to full time missionary work. When Terry’s computer company was bought by a new investor and his position was eliminated, they saw it as the hand of God and haven’t looked back since.
Now ten-year veterans with the US Center for World Missions, Terry and June are both passionate about their full-time role in the “mobilization business,” mobilizing the American church to get involved in the Great Commission, both locally and internationally. Terry has also fostered strong ties to the greater Nashville Muslim community and is currently pursuing a goal of recruiting and training 30,000 Christians to extend friendship and Christ’s love to their Muslim neighbors.
“As an elder at Faith Community Church,” Terry explains, “I would like to see us prepare people to obey the Lord. It’s easy to make the mistake of judging someone’s faith by how much scripture and theology they know. But if you look at the parable of the wise man and the foolish man, the wise man didn’t really know any more than the foolish man who built on the sand. But the wise man was obedient--and that was the whole point of that parable. At FCC, I want to see our church take people to the place where we’re not just hearing the scriptures, but actively obeying.”
Terry and June are both Ohio natives and have two adult daughters.
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