By Cara Morgan
First Baptist Church, Anderson
South Carolina Baptist Women in Ministry Coordinator
I am so excited to be working as the coordinator of Baptist Women in Ministry of South Carolina. I look forward to working more closely with the many devoted and talented Baptist women ministers who live in this state.
About me
I am a South Carolinian, born and raised, and have been Baptist since birth. I grew up in Lexington as a member of Lexington Baptist Church; and I experienced a calling to ministry in high school (even though I never would have thought it was to ordained church ministry!). I left Lexington to attend college at Furman University in Greenville. During my latter years at Furman, I started pursuing my calling in earnest, and joined the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship through a student group at Furman.
The summer after my senior year at Furman, I experienced community with a CBF church for the first time at Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship in Lexington. EBF “adopted” me for the summer, giving me a church home and a loving, supportive community that meant so much to me.
I started seminary at Vanderbilt Divinity School and ended it at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia. During seminary, I worked as an intern at Glendale Baptist Church in Nashville, TN, and Kathwood Baptist Church in Columbia. These two congregations formed me as a minister just as much as my seminary classes did, and Kathwood ordained me as a minister in 2014.
After this, I worked for a summer with First Baptist Church in Greenville as a youth intern and did a chaplaincy residency at Greenville Memorial Hospital. Then, I took full-time secular jobs in customer service and higher education while I pursued my vocation as a minister on a part-time basis.
From 2017 to 2020, I worked full-time for Clemson University Financial Aid while on staff as a part-time Minister to Young Adults at First Baptist Church of Pendleton.
I took my current position as Minister to Children and their Families at First Baptist Church of Anderson in January. My role is 3/4ths-time, and my job is to get to know the children and families at FBC Anderson and coordinate discipleship opportunities for them. I continue to work at Clemson a couple of days a week.
Cara Morgan
About my work with CBF and BWIM
I have been involved with CBFSC for a dozen or so years now, and have been somewhat involved with BWIM. I have not been nearly as involved as I’d like, though, as it has been difficult to connect while working full-time elsewhere. I am thrilled that I am finally in a position to be much more involved in BWIM and in CBF.
And this is excitement is why I have agreed to coordinate SC BWIM. As you may see by reading about me, I owe a great debt to the many CBF churches that have mentored me and shown me Christ’s love. I owe an even greater debt to the ministers (women and men, lay and clergy) who have taken me under their wing and walked with me through life’s struggles.
I hope to pay this debt forward—finding ways to support and encourage my fellow women ministers here in South Carolina. I look forward to the opportunities to form or deepen relationships as part of CBF in the future!