Who is Jesse McCain and What Does He Do?

By Jesse McCain, Interim Pastor for Missions

Hey FBCA family,

I’m sure some of you are familiar with me. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m still a new face to many of you. I started serving FBCA as the Missions Associate just before everything became “locked down” back in 2020. I wasn’t anticipating a pandemic as the context of my first church out of grad school. Serving with Wayne in Missions was a stretching and growing season in many ways. Now, I’m 1 month in as I transition to serving as FBCA’s Interim Missions Pastor. 2022 continues to be a time of transition and change. I’m grateful to serve with you all here at FBCA! I’ll share a bit more about myself and a few thoughts on missions at FBCA on the blog today.

I was born in Columbus, Georgia. My family had moved there because of my dad’s work at Callaway Gardens where he was the Manager of the Greenhouses. We moved to Amory, MS when I was 6 to be closer to family. Both my mom and dad’s family are from Monroe County. There in Mississippi I grew up in the church, became a believer, was homeschooled, and worked with my dad’s landscaping business through middle school and high school. In many ways I grew up in the country with my 6 siblings. I grew up appreciating the woods and books. The church was an important source of community for me.

If North Mississippi is where my roots are, then a fair amount of my growth happened while in college down in New Orleans. I went to New Orleans with small town experiences and a country accent. When I graduated from Leavell College in 2015, my country accent had been rounded off by the city and I had benefited from friends and mentors who lived life alongside me. New Orleans with its people and community are an important time of my life where I was discipled and able to serve with fellow believers both from college and the church.

After a brief period of time back home in Mississippi, I began my master’s program at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC. In North Carolina my goal was to pour myself into not only being equipped for serving the church but investing in relationships with fellow believers and those who could mentor me. I finished my last summer serving as a camp pastor with Centrikid Camps while I was working on my degree. Centrikid had been a place for me to serve for several summers. I would serve my last 3 summers as a Camp Pastor focusing on church group leaders and preaching. The leaders who gave their affirmation of the work I was doing would solidify my call to serve the church as a pastor. I applied for an internship with FBCA the summer of 2019 and served with the youth group. I met Wayne that summer and he would contact me about potentially supporting him and missions work in the Alexandria area less than a year later. Thankfully, I graduated in May of 2020 and was able to shift my focus to serving at FBCA full time.

My time in Alexandria has greatly been focused on relationships with local community leaders and our international partnerships. Where people have often sought us out for help with bills or groceries, there is often another unspoken need. Everyone has a need for human interaction and community. I’ve seen the appreciation and gratitude in people’s faces when they encounter someone who is willing to listen, hear their story, and treat them like a fellow human being.

I’m genuinely convinced that one of the best things I can do as I serve our church and community is to seek out ways to acknowledge the value and worth of people who cross my path. Some of the most basic ways I can do this is by listening well, believing their story, and helping meet a need or connect them to someone who can. Serving others becomes an opportunity to appreciate another person simply because they are human and a reflection of their creator. They have just as much worth, value, and meaning as myself. As I consider the description of Jesus from the Gospels, I am faced with someone who engaged all people with humility and dignity. As we go about our lives, remember: people are worth listening to and understanding. People are worthy of the time it takes to ask questions. People are worth slowing down for and sharing in life with.