Marcom named pastor of the year
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“Clarksville is booming. The city is growing around us,” the McMinnville native said.
What’s more, he continued, “there are roughly 90,000 people in the city who do not attend church on any given Sunday.”
No one can argue he has had a major role in the growth at Excell since 1996. At that time, the church had about 60 people in regular attendance.
The church is now averaging about 160 weekly in worship and about 120 in Sunday School. Not bad for his first and only pastorate.
R. Michael Weaver, a deacon at Excell who nominated Marcom for the prestigious Tennessee Baptist Convention award, noted the church “had become a stagnant church with an uncertain future.
“We prayed about our future. God answered our prayers,” Weaver wrote on the nomination form.
Nine years later Excell is “an alive and well church. I give God the glory and praise Him for sending Terrell Marcom to lead our church.”
Marcom, however, gives all the credit for the church’s turnaround to God and for a congregation open to following God’s will.
He recalled that when he arrived at the church they had a debt of $102,000. One year later, they had paid only $1,000 in principal, Marcom said.
The pastor talked with the deacons. After time spent in prayer the deacons voted to place an additional $400 per month on their note, with all of it going to the principal. Before long the church was paying an additional $1,000 a month to reduce the principal.
In two years the debt was reduced to $36,000 and the church was given a $50,000 estate gift. A year later, the church received another gift in excess of $171,000.
“God didn’t give us $200,000 to draw interest,” Marcom said. “He expected us to do something with it.”
And the church did. Church leaders announced plans for a new sanctuary and church members pledged $314,000.
The church has since built a new $1 million worship center and only owes $485,000. In addition, the church purchased a house adjacent to the property to use for office space and classrooms and completed a new parking lot in October.
“If I’ve done anything right, it was to go slow in making all big decisions and trying to bring as many folks along as we could,” said Marcom. “Basically, God has been good to us. That’s the bottom line.”
Along with the growth in numbers and financial resources, Marcom has witnessed spiritual growth as well.
The church has several outreach programs and has gotten heavily involved in Tennessee Baptist Disaster Relief.
Marcom has seen members grow in their faith. He can point to five individuals among the many who have been baptized during this pastorate whose lives were dramatically changed. Among those five are now two deacons and a Sunday School teacher.
“Hopefully there have been more lives changed, but if it is just those five, then we have been successful.”
Success is not measured in numbers, but by changed lives, he stressed.
Marcom and his wife, Dana, who he credits as a big help to his ministry, have four children ? Cassidy, Heath, Jordan, and Jack. All four were born in Clarksville and the Marcoms now consider the city and Excell as home.
“I always said in college that I wanted to go to one place, spend my life there and make a difference. I just thought it would be Africa, not Clarksville,” he said with a grin.
Lonnie Wilkey is editor of Baptist and Reflector, the news journal of the Tennessee Baptist Convention.