The Ordinary Pastor is passing to a new host, Walt Alexander, lead pastor of Trinity Grace in Athens, Tennessee. Walt shares his path from Cornerstone Church in Knoxville, through the Pastors College, to planting Trinity Grace, and tells how the gospel reached very ordinary people there. He then lays out his new role as Director of Leadership Development for Sovereign Grace: investing in aspiring leaders, encouraging current lead pastors, and developing extra-local leaders.
Hosts: Jon Payne (Redemption Hill Church, Austin, TX) and Jared Mellinger (Covenant Fellowship Church, outside Philadelphia, PA)
Guest: Walt Alexander (Trinity Grace Church, Athens, TN)
Welcome and Introductions
Jon: Welcome to The Ordinary Pastor Podcast. My name is Jon Payne. I’m the lead pastor of Redemption Hill Church on the north side of Austin, Texas. I’m here with my longtime co-host and friend Jared Mellinger, who’s the lead pastor of Covenant Fellowship Church outside of Philadelphia. And we have a very special guest, our friend Walt Alexander, who is the lead pastor of Trinity Grace in Athens, Tennessee. We’re all friends, we’re pastors, we’re fellow pastors in the Sovereign Grace family of churches. And we have a very special reason for welcoming Walt on today, which we’ll explain in just a moment. But first of all, guys, it’s always great to be on here with you. Thanks for joining me.
Jared: Yeah, it’s great to see you guys.
Walt: Yeah, great to be on, Jon. Thanks.
Handing the Podcast to Walt
Jon: Walt is not only a special guest, but he’s making probably the fastest transition ever from guest to host. So we’re introducing Walt not only as a guest on the podcast today, but we’re also going to be handing this podcast off to him. Jared and I received this podcast from C.J. Mahaney, Mickey Connolly, and Jeff, who hosted it and carried it on for a while, and now we’re going to hand it to Walt. We’ll explain in a little bit how he’s going to use it to serve our family of churches.
But we wanted to use this episode, because of that transition, to introduce Walt to anyone who’s listening. For anybody who’s been in Sovereign Grace any length of time, you probably don’t need an introduction to Walt. But just in case you haven’t met him or haven’t benefited from his ministry, Jared and I want to take a couple of minutes to get to know you, Walt, and let listeners get to know you a little bit.
So, Walt Alexander, tell us first of all about your path into ministry, and then maybe add in: when did you attend the Sovereign Grace Pastors College? We know you’re a graduate of that college, as Jared and I are. So tell us a little about your history into ministry.
Walt’s Path into Ministry
Walt: Yeah, I’d love to do that. I love to be on and share what’s going on and how the Lord has apprehended me and grabbed hold of me. This past Sunday, August 9th, I celebrated twenty-five years of being a believer. So it was one very ordinary summer for me, and yet extraordinary in the grace of God. God grabbed hold of my life, and I returned to the University of Tennessee for my third year. On the third day of class, I ran into some friends (or, not yet friends, soon-to-be friends) from Cornerstone Church, and I gradually made my way to Cornerstone Church, a Sovereign Grace church in Knoxville, Tennessee. It’s safe to say my life was ruined in a really good way. I was deeply affected by life in the local church, and I began to rethink everything and rebuild my life on the Word of God.
Shortly thereafter I felt called to ministry, and about a year later I began talking with senior pastor Bill Kittrell, getting to know him and sharing some desires I had. That began a bit of a circuitous route into ministry. I stayed at UT, finished my degree, and served in campus ministry: evangelism, discipleship, things like that. Then I went away to a Presbyterian seminary in South Carolina for a year. It was a good setup. I came under the care of a Presbyterian church, so seminary was paid for, and I was able to take classes and study the Bible like I’d longed to do. But I found myself longing for the local church. In so many ways this was what I’d dreamed about, to be in seminary, and yet it didn’t feel right, because it was disconnected from Cornerstone Church and from the family of churches I had fallen in love with.
Toward the end of that year I called Bill, sought his counsel, and asked if I could come back. He encouraged me to stay and finish seminary. But it was really the Lord’s kindness, because he said, “Well, if you want to come back, we can explore this together. Seminary in this context isn’t the only way into ministry for you.” So I came back and served on the campus of UT with Volunteers for Christ for a couple of years, and then, in God’s kindness, I went to the Pastors College in 2008–09.
In many ways, yes, it was a circuitous route, but I think what the Lord was doing was giving me a heart and a vision for the local church that transcended my role. Like so many guys coming to Christ in the early 2000s, I was hugely influenced by John Piper, and I wanted to go and die on the mission field somewhere. But I felt like the Lord said, “Give your life to the church.” I’m not bringing much to the table, but that’s what I’ve sought to do for twenty-one years: give my life to the church. The Lord has been so kind. The pie in the sky for me was to be an elder or pastor at Cornerstone Church, and I had the privilege of going to the Pastors College, coming back, and serving there for nearly ten years, in a church I loved, in a city I loved. God’s been very kind to me.
The Gift of the Pastors College
Jon: Excellent. Just a quick note, and then I have another question for you, Walt. I know Jared would feel the same way, and all three of us would want to highlight the gift the Pastors College is to our family of churches. The three of us, who’ve known each other for years now, would all say the influence of that year is profound. There’s certainly not a week, not a message, that goes by that that year’s teaching, influence, inspiration, and principles of pastoring don’t affect everything I do, and I know you guys would say the same.
Since we hope this podcast is going out increasingly to younger pastors and aspiring pastors, we want to continue to urge you to make the Pastors College a dream. If your call is to full-time ministry, we hope that path would lead to the Pastors College. And if you’re a pastor, we can’t commend investing enough in the Pastors College for future men. Walt is just another example of that.
So, Walt, you were on staff there in Knoxville for a number of years, and now you’re not. Tell us what happened there and what led to planting the church.
The Call to Plant in Athens
Walt: Yep. I started serving on staff in 2009, and I was there happy and content. Well, most days, and they’d probably agree, but trying to be content, serving the Lord. Kim and I both felt God calling us to be involved in church planting in some way. In God’s providence, around 2017 we noticed God drawing a pretty distinct group of people from Athens, Tennessee. Athens is about forty-five minutes south of Knoxville, equidistant between Knoxville and Chattanooga, a pretty rural small town. These people were commuting forty-five minutes to an hour to attend church, to become members, to serve, and yet they had no desire to move to Knoxville. They had no desire to do anything beyond Sunday morning and basic church life in Knoxville. We started a community group down there, and it became increasingly clear to us that God was doing something in Athens.
So in 2017 Bill announced his desire to plant there, and then he asked me to prayerfully consider going and leading that plant, which was quite an ask, since I had served with him for almost ten years. We took time to prayerfully consider why we would want to move to this place, and that’s what God led us to do: move here in 2018 and help launch Trinity Grace Church in October of 2018.
Church Planting in Sovereign Grace
Jared: Had you thought at all about church planting before Bill suggested it?
Walt: Yeah, I had. I’d told the team we would be willing and desirous to plant at some point, maybe in 2015 or 2016, but I had put it on the shelf in a lot of ways. So yes, Bill led that.
Jared: Wonderful. I know that Cornerstone really embodies that value of church planting that we care about so much in Sovereign Grace churches. They had the instinct to say, “Okay, let’s not hold on to a gifted leader, but send him out and make the sacrifices to plant a church.” I just think that’s one of those core values: the advance of the gospel through the planting of new churches.
Jon: I was just thinking what a story of planting and grace and sacrifice it is. Cornerstone planted you out all those years ago, and then you planted the church that’s in Nashville, and then the Nashville church has now planted a church further south in Nashville, and now there’s the new church plant in Knoxville. It’s a beautiful picture of what we hold dear, what Jared just said: sacrificing for the sake of churches being planted and established and going forward. It’ll be exciting to see that legacy continue to flourish right there in that area.
So, all right, tell us one or two highlights since you’ve been the lead pastor of Trinity Grace. What do you look back on with particular gratefulness as you review your history?
A Highlight: The Gospel Reaching Ordinary People
Walt: Man, that’s a big question. You didn’t prepare me for that. Athens is not a place people move to. The traffic goes the other direction. So I think what’s been extraordinary is watching the extraordinary gospel hit very ordinary people.
One story that’s really a highlight to me, and kind of a ripple of stories, is our first baptism as a church. I guess we did a baptism before the church launched, but the first one after the church had gathered was an older man, mid-seventies, who had been through a couple of women, three marriages and divorces, just kind of a disaster. And yet somebody on our church plant team moved into the apartment next to him, and he came to Christ. We got to baptize him, and the day we baptized him, I was introduced to his sister and his sister’s husband and began talking to them. A couple of years down the road, his sister comes to our church and brings their neighbors, a couple who grew up up north in a Catholic church. They both were converted and came to Christ, and we got the privilege of baptizing them.
The first guy is still alive, but last year we actually buried his sister. As I stood at her funeral, just marveling at all God had done, among people of retirement age, and yet the gospel goes forward, unstoppable and so powerful, I was struck that nothing is ordinary, and God doesn’t get any address wrong. What began in this little apartment complex led to four or five people being born again, just through the ordinary ministry of a local church. I’m forever grateful and humbled to be a part of things like that.
A New Role: Director of Leadership Development
Jon: Fantastic. I love it. It’s one of the reasons I know Jared and I are both excited about the new role you’ve accepted over the last six months or so, and I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about that. We’re calling it Director of Leadership Development, which sounds like a real important title until you find out there’s never been a department of leadership development in Sovereign Grace. As we talked, the leadership team basically said, “Look, we want you to direct in such a way that there is a department in this category in the future.”
Obviously we’ve always cared about developing leaders. We’ve had different programs and groups, and we’ve had the Pastors College. But we have a real passion, and it’s only been a greater concentrated focus in recent years, to call for, encourage, equip, and strengthen young men who feel a call toward ministry. The primary disciplers of those men are obviously their own local pastors, but we want to do everything we can as a denomination to cheer them on, equip them, encourage them, maybe even introduce them to each other. In some ways our Relay conference for young adults was significantly motivated by a desire to gather those called into ministry, not just general young adults.
So as we’re conceiving this role, the question is how we position Walt, because of the breadth of his experience. He came into ministry at a young age. He served at a larger church. He planted a church. He’s sent men to the Pastors College. He has a breadth of experience in this category. He also has an evangelistic passion, which we’d love to see in the young men entering ministry. We’d love to find a way to encourage those who are coming into ministry, and even those who are in ministry but newer to the role, and to strengthen and encourage them more broadly.
So this is the new role you have, and Jared and I are both excited about it. I thought we might take a minute on how you’re conceiving of this role and how you’re thinking about it. You’re very kind to add it to your local responsibilities, but what are some of your passions and visions as you think about creating this new department we’re trying to build?
Three Priorities for Leadership Development
Walt: Yes, thank you. I’m glad to talk about it. A department that’s never existed means you can’t mess up too much, which is exciting and helpful. Coming into ministry, I was so aware of how many people invested in me, whether it was a book here, a resource there, a conversation, or just giving of their time. What I would love to see, particularly with guys aspiring to ministry, is how we can invest in them. Ministry is hard, and discerning the call to ministry is hard too. It works out over years, if not decades, at times. So I’m trying to figure out a leadership development approach that allows us to meet guys at different steps of this process. In many ways our leadership never stops developing, we hope and trust, because we want to serve the Lord and the church as best we can.
Essentially I’m thinking of three general areas. First, investing in new and aspiring leaders. I really want to sow into guys in formal cohort settings and in pre-conference contexts before some of our conferences, which we’ve done in the past and will continue to do in different ways. So: aspiring pastor pre-conferences, training, cohorts, that type of thing, trying to get some interaction with guys aspiring to ministry across our family of churches. The most important work in cultivating a guy aspiring to ministry happens locally. And yet I know that for me, getting a vision for partnership and being introduced early in ministry to guys throughout Sovereign Grace was huge. It reminded me that I’m trying to build something, and be a part of something, that’s bigger than what’s going on locally. So my hope is to leverage local resources but also come alongside new and aspiring leaders.
Second, encouraging current lead pastors. I hope to come alongside and, in the days ahead, provide some mentoring. Ministry, as you guys know, has seasons where you feel like you’ve got the wind at your back and everything’s going great, and other seasons where the wind is in your face. It could be personal challenges, marital challenges. It could be ministerial, where you feel the resources you have are not what you need to get through the next season. There are so many types of fellowship and coaching contacts in Sovereign Grace, and we’re hoping to come alongside that with some encouragement, as well as some sharpening-the-saw things, like preaching labs in conjunction with the Pastors College, and various things along those lines.
Third, developing extra-local leaders. Alongside the leadership team, and really under their direction, I want to think about extra-local leaders for our family of churches. We are not a family of churches trying to climb the ladder or anything like that. But we are aware that a denomination doesn’t function well without leadership. We want to cultivate leaders who can take up responsibility and run hard in different areas of our family of churches, so that we can steward our partnership and steward this denomination well. That’s some of what has been entrusted to us. Each of the three of us is a second-generation guy in Sovereign Grace, and we feel we’ve been entrusted with something. Leadership development is all the more important because we want to steward what we’ve been entrusted with.
Those are the three big categories on my mind. Obviously I could double-click on any of those, but that would take us outside the bounds of this podcast. I hope that’s helpful.
A Word to Local Pastors
Jared: Excellent. It occurs to me that in being given this job description, you’re not stepping into something you’ve been entirely uninvolved in, through the ways you’ve served at Relay, for example, meeting with and teaching young men there who are interested in pastoral ministry. I just think this role is so crucial to the future of our denomination, and being intentional about investing in the future in this way matters. I want to thank you as a local church pastor, because we’ve directly benefited from the investment you’ve made. There are names and faces that come to mind that you’ve worked with and will continue to invest in, and that’s going to strengthen us as a local church as we move into the future. So thank you.
Jon: When I think especially about those first two groups, I want to appeal to you: if you’re a local pastor and you find yourself listening to this for some reason, and you have a young guy you think could be a man called to ministry in a few years, please contact Walt so that man can be included in some of the settings he’s trying to create. Walt has no intention of replacing your primary role, but he does want to encourage and strengthen and even build relationships between young men who might not otherwise have a chance to know each other. If they become friends, who knows? They might serve together for decades in this family of churches. So if you’re a lead pastor and you have a person, make him known, and maybe connect him with what Walt will do in the pre-conference for Relay or in some of these other cohort settings. I know he’s done conference-style Zoom calls with some of these guys, and he’s hoping to strengthen them.
And if you’re a pastor, maybe a solo pastor or a new lead pastor, and you’d love some additional strengthening or discipleship or maybe some evaluation, one of the things Walt just said that I think is so valuable is that we have a breadth of experienced pastors in Sovereign Grace who may have areas of expertise in preaching, counseling, care, and leadership. Maybe they were a solo pastor at some point. We just want to connect those who would love to be developed or grow with those who might have time to invest in an individual, or even in a couple, and say, “Have you met this person who has thirty years of experience and would love to strengthen you for a brief period of time?” So much of that comes through our regions and our regional leaders, but sometimes a concentrated relationship like that can be really valuable. Walt is going to do a great job of networking and connecting those resources to the right need. I’m very excited about that.
Walt, can you share just a minute of your thoughts on this podcast, which we are formally handing to you? And on purpose, because we think it has a valuable history of reflecting our desire to care for pastors, and we thought this would be a great platform for us to continue to use in this way and to connect to this particular role. How do you envision this podcast fitting into, or being useful in, what you’re trying to do?
Vision for the Podcast
Walt: Yes. That’s an easy question for me to answer, as I’ve thought about it. I think it keys on something you just said, Jon: I feel like we’re in such an amazing season right now in Sovereign Grace. Obviously this is the only denomination I’ve been meaningfully a part of, and yet to be in a season where we have three generations active is wonderful. We have the first generation, many still serving in full-time roles, but at least serving in their local churches. We have second-generation guys serving in various roles. We have the third generation in the pews or coming up, even attending the Pastors College. We have one attending the Pastors College this year, the son of a current Sovereign Grace pastor, a second-generation pastor. So my hope is that the podcast begins to leverage some of the experience we have throughout Sovereign Grace, and my hope is to interview ordinary pastors who are getting it done.
The preaching of the gospel is central and so important, but the gospel takes on a different shape in every context, and every church has a different shape. In Sovereign Grace we have our shared values and our shared virtues, and yet so much of ministry is worked out in different ways. There are guys with different strengths and different weaknesses, guys who have faced different personal challenges and grown through them. So I’m excited to give a microphone to these guys who don’t have one. They do in their local church, but I just feel like those behind-closed-doors moments, maybe VH1 Behind the Music if you’re a nineties kid, are huge for learning. What are the disciplines? What are the delights? What sets this guy apart? How can I emulate it, in all the good and right ways, following them as they follow Christ, and become stronger? It’s so inspiring to me. We have living biographies in Sovereign Grace walking around with stories to tell, and that’s my hope.
We’ve already recorded one, so we’re excited to launch that soon. My hope is to get these stories out, and hopefully the result is that we’re all in partnership together. Obviously guys can reach out to me, but if you’re listening to the podcast, any of these guys would like to hear from you. The worst thing they can do is say no to you. That type of camaraderie and collegiality is so vital for us walking together.
Honoring the Generation Before Us
Jon: Yes. It speaks to a value that I know the leadership team has, and I certainly have: as we begin a transition from the first generation of Sovereign Grace to the second generation, we maintain a demeanor of gratefulness and humility toward those who came before. Partially because it’s right to honor those to whom honor is due, as Paul instructs us. But it also protects us from self-confidence. Even those in the second generation, who are well into our forties now and beyond, are at a time when we can have a level of self-confidence and trust in our experience. We’ve been ministering for twenty years, and you can forget that, apart from the grace and strength of God and the wisdom of others, there’s great danger. In the wisdom of others, and in dependence on what the Lord has done in and through them, that humility will bring about the favor of the Lord.
So I think you’re going to embody that for us by bringing us the benefit of the men we’ve grown up respecting, whether or not they’re broadly known, whether or not they’re lead pastors, and whether or not they have books that have been broadly published. These guys are treasures to us. They have various areas of expertise we really want to benefit from and pass on to the guys who functionally are our spiritual children. So thank you for doing that. I can’t wait for some of the names to be popping up on this stream, and hearing this hero on this topic and so forth is just going to be a gift to us. So anyway, it’s going to be marvelous.
All right, before we close off here, we have two things we’re really excited to promote: two conferences that are coming up. Jared, I’m going to let you do the first one, and then I’ll do the second. Coming up this fall in Sovereign Grace is our Pastors and Leaders Conference. Jared, maybe explain, for anybody who is new to this, why that’s very, very exciting, and an opportunity if they haven’t registered.
The Pastors and Leaders Conference
Jared: Yeah, the origin of this was that we remembered the value small group leaders’ conferences had in the churches of Sovereign Grace, building a sense of partnership among leaders through a shared experience. We no longer do that. As we considered ways we can make an investment into churches in a similar way, we thought, let’s open up our pastors conference and make it a Pastors and Leaders Conference, so that it can build a direct partnership connection into local churches.
I’m so excited about this. We have a large number of people from Covenant Fellowship who will be there. I think of the opportunity this presents to instill a sense of partnership. So much of what Sovereign Grace is about, it’s a challenge for me, even as someone on the leadership team, to stand up in front of the church and say, “Here’s what Sovereign Grace is.” But at a conference like that, they’re able to experience it. They experience the relationships, the worship, and the teaching, and they meet new people. I really do think so, and I want to encourage churches, and pastors, to do all they can to get leaders to this conference, because of the partnership investment that will be made, if you want a congregation that is enthusiastically on board and gets what we’re doing in Sovereign Grace.
This conference has been intentionally planned with leaders in view, looking to serve those who serve in various areas of the church. It’s November 11–13, 2026. John Piper is going to be there as well. I told the leaders in our church that if they die not having heard John Piper preach, it’s their own dumb fault.
Get them to this conference. There are many reasons to look forward to and anticipate what God is going to do at our Pastors and Leaders Conference.
Relay Returns to Austin
Jon: Excellent, can’t wait. And now, introducing formally for the first time (I think word leaked out): Relay is returning, as we always said it would, but with a fun, exciting twist. I hope Relay will be returning in Austin in January of 2028, the last weekend of December going into the new year. We’re going to celebrate the new year together, from New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day of 2028, and Lord willing we’re going to be hosting at Redemption Hill Church, our building here in Austin. We’re hoping that those who attended in Philly will be able to join us down here in the south. It might be a little warmer. We’re also hoping this location might entice some young adults from Sovereign Grace churches in other parts of the country, in the West, perhaps even in Mexico, to join us as well.
I’m very much looking forward to this. It’s been a delightful time to gather the young adults of our family. Literally, folks from around the world have joined us. The whole point of the conference, and the name, is that we want to relay, as in a race. We want to hand the baton of our gospel doctrines, passions, and values to the third generation of Sovereign Grace. We want to see them pick up that baton and carry it forward for the glory of God. So if you’re in that age group, young adults 18 to 30 especially, although anybody beyond that is also invited, we’d love to have you there. We also invite juniors and seniors in high school, as long as they come with a parent or guardian. We’re very much looking forward to it. I wanted to announce that here, and we will probably have registration launching early next year for the following year’s conference.
So, Walt, it really is a joy both to announce and to hand off this podcast to you. I’m looking forward to your leadership of it, and also to the role you’re carrying in Sovereign Grace. Thank you for all you’re doing, bro. We’re grateful for you.