News
Category: General
By: Mt. Gilead Baptist Church
Ryan Fontenot Called as Senior Pastor
Rev. Ryan Scott Fontenot has been chosen as the senior pastor of Mount Gilead Baptist Church. He will be the 50th pastor in Mt. Gilead's 160 year history.
Ryan served as the director of new church planting at the Trinity Bible Church of Willow Park, Texas, and is also founder and lead communicator of the Reaching A Generation Endangered (R.A.G.E.) Ministries, which is based in Keller.
Fontenot, a veteran of 19 years as a student and full-time minister, has been married to his high school sweetheart, Heather, for 14 years. They reside in Keller, with their six-month-old daughter, Elyn. Both Ryan and Heather are natives of Waskom, Texas. Ryan was a member of the First Baptist Church of Waskom and accepted Christ as Savior and became a Christian there. Ryan & Heather both graduated from Waskom High School, where he was captain of the football team.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree from East Texas Baptist University in Marshall, Texas. His Bachelor of Applied Science degree is in church ministry and psychology. Rev. Fontenot’s post-graduate education includes a Master of Divinity degree from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary near Memphis, Tennessee, awarded in 2000. He currently is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary at Wake Forest, North Carolina. Graduation there is anticipated in 2012.
Rev. Fontenot became a Christian at the age of 18 and served as youth minister and associate pastor at Rose Park Baptist Church in Shreveport, La., as Student Pastor in Memphis, TN and Southaven, MS. He felt a call to enter the ministry the same year he first became a Christian. Ryan felt called to enter the Itinerate Ministry in 2002, when he formed R.A.G.E. Ministries. Since then, Rev. Fontenot has preached to more than 100,000 persons as far away as Canada, and Belize, in Central America.
When he came to Trinity Bible Church, he was initially called as church planter, planning the foundation of new churches in the area. Recently, however, in line with his doctoral studies, he more specifically has been led to the calling of revitalizing and replanting an existing church.
Ryan will assume his new office on Sept. 6, 2010.