Andrea Corso Johnson New Pastor to Families

Along with our Personnel Committee, I am very pleased to welcome Andrea Corso Johnson to our staff and Pastoral Team as our new Pastor to Families. As most of you know, we have combined our Pastor to Children and Pastor to Youth positions into this one vitally important Pastoral role. We are tremendously excited with the new potential Andrea brings to our expanding First Baptist Decatur community. Both our Personnel Committee and our Deacons have voted unanimously to call her and I am thrilled with their decision. 

A former Elementary School Music teacher, Andrea loves children and is an expert in working with them. As a staff member of two different churches in the Atlanta area (Northside and Central), she has valuable experience working with a ministry team, relating to children and youth in a church setting, training and supporting volunteers, along with programming and funding essential children and youth activities. 

As a mother of two, one school age and one pre-teen, she is also keenly aware of parental needs and the stress that comes with balancing competing family demands. And she is devoted to the calling and ministry of parents raising healthy, well-adapted and compassionate children. 

Andrea also has been working part time for our Cooperative Baptist Fellowship partners across the street. She gets rave reviews from her colleagues there and for the good work she is doing on Advocacy training and Advocacy resources in preparation for our CBF Annual Gathering in June.

And finally, she is completing her Masters of Divinity degree at McAfee School of Theology and is scheduled to graduate in December of this year. She knows and is up to date on all the latest and best scholarship for biblical interpretation relating to life and faith in our world. But given her academic requirements over the fall semester, and as she is completing her current classes and her work with CBF, we need to be flexible. We have agreed that she will begin her work her slowly, first gradually at an hourly rate over the coming spring and early summer months, then at twenty hours per week starting August 1. She will start full time following her graduation in December, beginning January 1. 

I am thrilled with this new journey with Andrea. I have every reason to believe her leadership with our children, youth and parents will usher in a brand new and very exciting day for our First Baptist community and beyond. I hope you will join me in welcoming her heartily in the coming weeks. 

With much love and great expectations, 

David