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"Legacy of Leadership" with Bill McAlilly · The Weight

• 0:00
  Chris McAlilly: [INTRO] Leadership today demands more than technical expertise. It requires deep wisdom to navigate the complexity of a turbulent world, courage to reimagine broken systems, and unwarranted hope to inspire durable change.
• 0:22
  Eddie Rester: As Christ-centered leaders in churches, non profits, the academy, and the marketplace, we all carry the weight of cultivating communities that reflect God's kingdom in a fragmented world.
• 0:33
  Chris McAlilly: But this weight wasn't meant to be carried alone. The Christian tradition offers us centuries of wisdom if we have the humility to listen and learn from diverse voices.
• 0:43
  Eddie Rester: That's why The Weight exists, to create space for the conversations that challenge our assumptions, deepen our thinking, and renew our spiritual imagination.
• 0:52
  Chris McAlilly: Faithful leadership in our time requires both conviction and curiosity, rootedness in tradition and responsiveness to a changing world.
• 1:01
  Eddie Rester: So whether you're leading a congregation, raising a family, teaching students, running a non profit, or bringing faith into your business, join us as we explore the depth and richness of Christ-centered leadership today. Welcome to The Weight.
• 1:12
  Eddie Rester: [END INTRO]
• 1:17
  Chris McAlilly: I'm Chris McAlilly.
• 1:18
  Bill McAlilly: And I'm Bill McAlilly.
• 1:19
  Chris McAlilly: Welcome to The Weight. Today we have kicked Eddie Rester out of the room.
• 1:22
  Chris McAlilly: Dad, how do you feel about that?
• 1:24
  Bill McAlilly: Really happy about that today.
• 1:26
  Chris McAlilly: [LAUGHTER] I think everyone else will be happy about that, too. I'm here today with my father, the Reverend, the Bishop Bill McAlilly, who has served for many years in the United Methodist Church, basically at every level of the church. And we're here today. I'm excited to have an opportunity in this format, to have a conversation about ministry and about leadership. We've never really done this before.
• 1:55
  Bill McAlilly: We have not.
• 1:56
  Chris McAlilly: But I want to go back and talk about life as well, and faith, and maybe here, at the end of your formal ministry, as you've, in the last few months, entered into retirement, maybe take this opportunity to explore your story. And I'm really excited about the opportunity to do that. So I want to maybe start by going back to the beginning, and maybe for folks who don't know your story, where were you born?
• 2:33
  Bill McAlilly: I was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. Elvis Presley and I were born in the same hospital, but not at the same time.
• 2:41
  Chris McAlilly: What year was that?
• 2:42
  Bill McAlilly: That was 1956.
• 2:42
  Bill McAlilly: June 8, 1956.
• 2:47
  Chris McAlilly: 1956. And you're, you were born into a preacher's family, a pastor's family.
• 2:54
  Bill McAlilly: My dad was serving the Sherman charge, which had about four churches on it, and I came home to the parsonage at Sherman United Methodist Church.
• 3:08
  Chris McAlilly: Tell folks a little bit about your parents, where they're from, and that part of your life.
• 3:14
  Bill McAlilly: Sure, sure. Yeah.
• 3:14
  Bill McAlilly: My father was born in Winston County, Mississippi. Grew up on a farm out from Louisville, and my mother grew up in Union County in the Pinedale area, and my dad came as a student pastor to a charge that my mother was a part of when she was a young woman. And they met, and pretty soon after they met, they were married, and he finished his undergraduate work at Ole Miss and then they journeyed over to Emory University at Candler School of Theology, and were there for three years, and then came on back to Mississippi.
• 3:57
  Chris McAlilly: What was it like growing up as a preacher's kid?
• 3:59
  Bill McAlilly: I thought it was a great life, the way we lived in places like Bruce and West Point and Fulton, Mississippi.
• 4:09
  Bill McAlilly: And then when I was in junior high, we moved to New Albany, and so we we lived in about a 50 mile radius around Tupelo, Mississippi. And it was a great life.
• 4:22
  Chris McAlilly: Give me a memory from your childhood that you remember, just something from the journey along the way.
• 4:29
  Bill McAlilly: We lived in West Point. My dad was church planter. Planted Christ Methodist Church, and so I remember the construction of that building, and I remember, then we moved to Fulton, and there we again, were in another construction project and built the sanctuary at Fulton. And so we had great fun. My brother and I, my brother Steve and I enjoyed playing in the construction site. And then our neighborhood, we had a great neighborhood, great friends.
• 5:03
  Bill McAlilly: And I remember one of the distinct memories I have in Fulton was every Sunday night.
• 5:08
  Bill McAlilly: We still had Sunday night church back in those days, and my dad would call on some of the young people to offer the evening prayer, and we were all grabbing the "Upper Room" before church to make sure if he called on us, we'd have a prayer to pray.
• 5:26
  Chris McAlilly: That's great. I wonder what, what did you in observing his leadership as you reflect back as a kid, just kind of watching your father in that in that role. What are some of the lessons that you learned, good, bad or otherwise?
• 5:46
  Bill McAlilly: My father is what I would have would call a practical theologian. He didn't have much use for theology if he couldn't put it to some good use in the local church. And he was very committed to the local church, and he was, he was always visiting, always reaching people who had not made a connection to the church or to Christ. And he prided himself in growing the Sunday School attendance and membership attendance in every place he served. And he treated every person as a person of worth, regardless of whether they were the the most prominent person in the community or the person that was in the greatest need. And I learned a lot about how to be with people of all walks of life from him.
• 6:39
  Chris McAlilly: He was funny.
• 6:39
  Chris McAlilly: That's one of the things that I remember about him, and that was a part of his ministry. And so, one of the jokes that somebody along the way told me is that he asked, you know, Mississippi, we have a lot of kudzu and one time he went around said, how do you get rid of Mississippi kudzu?
• 7:07
  Chris McAlilly: And the punch line was...
• 7:10
  Bill McAlilly: Sprinkled Jack Daniels on it, and the Baptists will eat it down to the root.
• 7:14
  Chris McAlilly: Which is funny, and it says a lot about him.
• 7:16
  Chris McAlilly: One, he wanted to be known, I think, as a human being first.
• 7:20
  Chris McAlilly: And I see that in you as well.
• 7:20
  Chris McAlilly: That's been something that I think you've valued in ministry, is not the pastor is set apart from the community, but a member of the community and was a part of kind of the way that you approach things.
• 7:38
  Chris McAlilly: I also think it says something about where Granddaddy grew up, you know. I think he grew up in kind of a Mississippi dirt farm, in a community where there weren't a lot of religious options.
• 7:50
  Bill McAlilly: Right.
• 7:51
  Chris McAlilly: But one of the... He had a distinct... He wanted to distinguish himself from a kind of fundamentalist, uneducated, I mean, in his mind, brand of of Christianity that I think he would describe as perhaps narrow minded.
• 8:12
  Bill McAlilly: Yeah, that's right.
• 8:15
  Chris McAlilly: He, you know, he discovered in Methodism, a tradition that was, perhaps, that valued and educated clergy, that valued... I mean, he took with great pride going to Emory University and getting a master's degree and that was, that's a part of the family story as well, and your trajectory, too. I wonder just, I'd like to maybe, how did your faith develop through time? Is there some distinct memories as you were becoming a person of faith in the church, either in elementary school, or even as you moved to New Albany and got into high school? What are some of the memories that are of your faith formation?
• 8:59
  Bill McAlilly: Yeah, well, I remember my third grade Sunday School teacher, Miss Ann Gibbs, probably most prominently. She, I'm sorry, Miss Ann Stubblefield. She was a Gibbs.
• 9:10
  Bill McAlilly: She was, she married Malcolm and was Ann Stubblefield. And many people across North Mississippi will remember the Stubblefields.
• 9:18
  Bill McAlilly: And she was always a prominent member, a friend of our family, and she was very faithful in her walk with Christ. And then later, as I grew a little bit older, my boy scout master was Billy Bonds McElroy, who was also a member of the church, and I began to see these adults in my life who were also faithful church members and Christians in their daily walk.
• 9:50
  Bill McAlilly: When I was 13, eight going into the eighth grade, we moved from Fulton to New Albany, and there, that was a very profound moment in my life, in that I was in a new place and trying to find my way as a teenager, and the church became the centerpiece of my life. And I remember very well Joanne Jernigan was one of our MYF leaders, and Joanne sort of took me under her wing when I was an eighth grader. And then there was a family in the church who were older, but were very, very faithful people, Clyde and Mary Hall, and they were friends with my father, and we would, on Sunday nights, go up to their home after church and visit. And they were very instrumental.
• 10:46
  Bill McAlilly: Mrs. Mary, at the ripe old age of 85, took over the the MYF one year because no one else was willing to do so.
• 10:56
  Chris McAlilly: So there was an 85-year-old woman who was leading the youth group. That's amazing.
• 11:01
  Bill McAlilly: Yeah, and so, you know what I like to say is, there's no excuse. There's no retirement in the Christian faith.
• 11:09
  Bill McAlilly: That's fantastic.
• 11:10
  Bill McAlilly: But you know, you begin to see their footprint across North
• 11:14
  Mississippi: Camp Lake Stephens, Wood College back in the day.
• 11:18
  Mississippi: For those that don't know what's Camp Lake Stephens?
• 11:20
  Mississippi: Camp Lake Stephens is our conference camp in Oxford, where that you know, I can't talk about my faith journey without talking about having started going to camp when I was eight years old, until I graduated from high school, and then later spent two years summers working there as a college student. And it was probably there that my call to ministry, my understanding of Christianity, my walk with Christ, found its its footing and its purpose.
• 11:51
  Chris McAlilly: I think that there are camp people and those that don't understand camp, you know? I mean, just in general, that I've observed that we grew up going to camp. Some people don't. So I wonder, maybe talk about that. How did your faith find its footing in a camp environment?
• 12:07
  Bill McAlilly: Well, in those days, you know, there was some very intentional faith formation going things going on in the out of doors. You were being exposed to nature, and you were reflecting on the way God was seen in nature. And then as a teenager, we had a very active conference youth ministry, and Ed Woodall was our conference youth leader. And we had two retreats every year, one in the fall and one in the spring. And if the doors were open, we were going to be there. And then my the summer of my before my senior in high school, senior high camp, my lifelong friend John Moore was my camp counselor, and John... And David Carroll, who was also a lifelong friend who also was United Methodist clergy and I were cabin mates in John's cabin.
• 13:04
  Bill McAlilly: And it was John who one night the last, I think it was the last night of camp, actually, he said to me, "Bill, I wonder if you and David have begun to reflect on the fact that God may be calling you all to full time Christian ministry?" And that sort of set me on a trajectory of reflecting and praying about that. My senior year, we came home from camp that summer, and one of my friends, Jane Massey, and I started a Bible study in her backyard before school started on one week night, and that kind of shaped my early opportunity for leadership in the church.
• 13:49
  Chris McAlilly: You had other roles in high school in terms of, you know, I think about football. I think about sports as something that shaped you significantly and into college.
• 14:05
  Chris McAlilly: I wonder if maybe, what did you gain from the experience of playing football?
• 14:10
  Bill McAlilly: Well, that's a great question. A lot of hard work, a lot of blood, sweat and tears, a lot of disappointment at times, frustration, but also a drive to succeed. I was a bit competitive. Perhaps you gained your competitve edge out of your own family of origin. I was not early, very successful in sports. I had to work very hard to have an opportunity to be one of the key players on the team.
• 14:50
  Bill McAlilly: And I did eventually become one of those, and then had the opportunity to go on to college, played Division Three ball at Millsaps. And again, that was learning persistence, hard work, and hard work pays off and but also the value of the team. I've got friends that I played ball with at Millsaps who also are very faithful Christians, and we are still in touch today.
• 15:26
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, that's great. I think that sports, it both gives you an opportunity to learn about kind of full body formation, you know, and in a community, and, you know, you have individual and group dynamics, and, yeah, there's opportunity for success and failure, and you learn how to fail and and that not be the end of the world. You learn how to work hard and have opportunities for success. I think all of that is, you know, a part of your experience. One thing I wanted to pick a thread that I think is there, that I think has continued through your life, is this kind of entrepreneurial dimension of starting a lawnmower business. So I wanted to pick that up before we get on to college and all.
• 16:17
  Bill McAlilly: Yeah, so my brother and I started a lawnmower business when we were in Fulton. And we had an ad in
• 16:31
  the newspaper, "Wanted: Yards to mow. None too large, none too small, and call this number." And so Steve and I bought a Yazoo lawnmower. We borrowed$300 from the bank when we were 10 and 11 years old. My dad co-signed, and we paid that off, and we made a little money, and worked very hard, and we were glad when we were able to lay that down and go do some other things.
• 17:02
  Chris McAlilly: That was more something that you were encouraged to do than something you desired to do?
• 17:06
  Bill McAlilly: Well, you know, my dad thought hard work was good for boys and kept us out of trouble.
• 17:12
  Chris McAlilly: Do you think you... Are you grateful for that experience?
• 17:15
  Bill McAlilly: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, we had a trailer we pulled our equipment on, and Mom and Dad would drive the trailer to wherever we were mowing, drop the trailer. We'd go do the yard, and then come back and get the trailer and take us to the next spot.
• 17:27
  Chris McAlilly: What do you think you learned from that experience, just that stayed with you?
• 17:33
  Bill McAlilly: Well, you know the funny, one of the funny things about that is my brother Steve always made me go ask for the money after we had finished the work. And so I learned how to talk to people and say, you know, "this is what we've done, and we're ready to be paid," and that kind of thing. So I learned to be a businessman early on.
• 17:53
  Chris McAlilly: Right.
• 17:53
  Bill McAlilly: And so it was...
• 17:53
  Bill McAlilly: Man, it was, you know, you could kind of work your own hours, work in the morning, then go to the pool in the afternoon. So it was all good.
• 18:04
  Chris McAlilly: What about, so you you go on to college. And what years were you in college?
• 18:09
  Bill McAlilly: I was there at Millsaps from the fall of '74 till the spring of '78 graduated in 1978.
• 18:18
  Chris McAlilly: So you're a preacher's kid, just pristine, you know, never gotten into trouble all the way through? You were just perfect?
• 18:24
  Bill McAlilly: Yes. I was a perfect person. Yes, never, never made any mistakes. Always in church.
• 18:31
  Chris McAlilly: I remember you saying in a sermon one time that you drank enough beer to sink a small fishing trip. Is that right?
• 18:38
  Bill McAlilly: Fishing boat.
• 18:38
  Bill McAlilly: That's probably a little bit of an exaggeration. I didn't really drink any beer till I became a Kappa Sig at Millsaps.
• 18:51
  Chris McAlilly: [LAUGHTER] What about, you know, I think... I wasn't in a fraternity. I played soccer for a couple years and didn't join the Greek system, but a lot of people do. And I, you know, I think for folks who don't, they kind of, you know, see from the outside that it's a very, very tight knit community.
• 19:09
  Chris McAlilly: And for the folks that go and pledge and are part of it, it becomes a really important part of their identity and formation.
• 19:16
  Chris McAlilly: What do you think is the value of that kind of community for a kid in college?
• 19:24
  Bill McAlilly: Well, it gives you a group identity, and it gives you a place to belong righ out of the gate. And you're thrown into a mix of people that, you know, most of whom you don't know at the outset, and you have to learn how to get along with folks, and some you might not like very much. And yet you have rituals, and you have traditions, and you have things that bind you together.
• 19:47
  Bill McAlilly: You do hard work together, you do projects for the good of community together. And you know, it's a lot of fun, a lot of laughter. Yeah, and there's a bond that gets created between young men at an early, early age that generally sticks with you.
• 20:09
  Bill McAlilly: I would say that, you know, there are a couple of guys that that I'm still very close to who were in my fraternity.
• 20:23
  Chris McAlilly: Did you have leadership roles in the fraternity?
• 20:26
  Bill McAlilly: I was one of the officers and was involved in, probably early on, first couple of years, leading some of the pledges and their training and that sort of thing. But I was, later I was what was in Kappa Sig family was called the Grand Master of Ceremonies, which was the person that cared for the ritual and the initiation ceremonies and so forth. So it's a little bit like being a pastor.
• 20:57
  Chris McAlilly: I wonder, I want to move forward into, you know, some of the things that come.
• 21:00
  Chris McAlilly: But I wonder, before we move beyond your childhood and adolescence and your kind of early formation, I wonder if there's a story of adversity or challenge. You know, I think we're shaped by the good experiences in our life, but we also get shaped by some of the hard things. Is there some adversity or some challenge that you had to overcome as a young person, that you think was instrumental in shaping who you are and and what you went on to do?
• 21:31
  Bill McAlilly: Yeah, that year, when we moved to Fulton in the eighth grade, was very difficult.
• 21:39
  Chris McAlilly: When you went to New Albany.
• 21:41
  Bill McAlilly: I'm sorry, New Albany. Yes, when we went to New Albany it was very difficult, and I was bullied as an eighth grader by a guy named Harold who had maybe failed a year or two, and he was more mature, older, larger boy, and made fun of me in the locker room and picked on me and that sort of thing, and that really did begin to make me think about how I wanted to treat other people. So I sort of made a commitment to myself that I would never be like Harold and that I was always kind of looking out for the underdog and the guy that was picked on or left out. Or, you know, I went in the lunch room and looked for the table where somebody was sitting by themselves, and go sit with them, that kind of thing. So it really did probably more... That one experience more than probably any other shaped my call to ministry.
• 22:40
  Chris McAlilly: There was a guy, I think the other thing that I think about when I think about you telling stories about your childhood is friendship. You know, I think that a consistent theme for you has always been friends, friendship. Friends are really important to you. And you mentioned, I think his name was Ricky. Tell me about Ricky. And then I also think that's part of one of the more difficult things you had to deal with as you came into adulthood, was when you lost him as a friend. Maybe tell your journey of friendship, because I think that, I just think that for adult men in leadership of any kind, particularly Christian leadership, I think friendship is a really important thing to cultivate, and you've done that well. Maybe tell the story of Ricky.
• 23:29
  Bill McAlilly: Yeah, Ricky and I moved to New Albany the same year, the same summer, and so we were the new kids on the block in eighth grade and on the football team and that sort of thing. And so we naturally gravitated toward each other, and so we became best friends.
• 23:43
  Bill McAlilly: He played on the offensive line, as I did. He played one guard, I played the other, and we worked hard together in the weight room and on the field and all of those things. We socialized together, double dated together, all of those kind of things. And we just hung out together. He was faithful in his church, in the Baptist Church, and I tried to be faithful in the Methodist Church. And we, we just had a great, great friendship.
• 24:18
  Bill McAlilly: He went to the Air Force Academy for a couple of years, and then later decided he did not want to continue in that direction. And so he came home, went to Mississippi State, and I reconnected with him, because Lynn was at Mississippi State, and we would go and see each other then, and then I go off to seminary. He goes, comes back home. He was working business.
• 24:48
  Bill McAlilly: He was in the Mississippi Delta when I was serving in the Mississippi Delta. And so we would see each other fairly often during those early years.
• 24:53
  Bill McAlilly: And then, tragically, he was, at 28 died in a tragic automobile accident, and so there remains a lot of grief for us around the loss of Ricky at an early age.
• 25:08
  Bill McAlilly: And it was kind of the first real wake up call to me that, you know, life doesn't last forever.
• 25:15
  Chris McAlilly: Right.
• 25:16
  Bill McAlilly: Yeah, so.
• 25:20
  Chris McAlilly: Mom's big part of the story through all of this, you know? So you meet Lynn. You know, you don't have to tell the full story of your relationship, but you know, when you were at Camp Lake Stephens, you meet mom. That's the story.
• 25:34
  Chris McAlilly: I'll tell the story because I've heard it before. So you meet mom at Camp Lake Stephens. You guys become pen pals, or you wrote letters?
• 25:42
  Bill McAlilly: Not really. She came to Fulton over Christmas holidays after I'd met her at camp that summer.
• 25:48
  Chris McAlilly: Okay.
• 25:48
  Bill McAlilly: That first, that Christmas of 1969 or so, or '68 I guess it was.
• 25:54
  Chris McAlilly: To see a friend.
• 25:56
  Bill McAlilly: See her friend, Natalie from camp, and then, lo and behold, the following June, we moved the New Albany, ended up going to church with her.
• 26:05
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, there you go, so. And then you guys dated through high school. You end up asking her to marry you at the end of college. And then you guys moved to Georgia, and you go to seminary, and you know the person that you talk about a lot through the years is your mentor at Gainesville. I wonder if you maybe tell the story of not just going to seminary, but particularly your experience being formed and shaped at Gainesville. Yeah.
• 26:35
  Bill McAlilly: So I believe in the providence of God probably stronger than any other doctrine that I have in my faith journeys. And I say the providence of God has been kind to me as our faith journey developed over time. We landed in New Albany, where I met my wife. I go to Millsaps. I end up working in a church as a student, as a youth pastor at Broadmeadow, and that was a providential moment. And then I'm home after I graduate, working, trying to save a little money before I got married. And the summer after my senior year in college, I get a call from Jimmy Thompson, who was senior pastor at Gainesville First United Methodist Church, and wants me to come interview for a role on his staff. And like, Okay, why not?
• 27:37
  Bill McAlilly: And so I go over there, and I'm over there for a weekend in late May, early June, and he offers me the job. And Jim was like the most creative, dynamic leader I'd ever met. He's an excellent preacher. He's an excellent administrator, program leader, and he took me under his wing.
• 28:03
  Bill McAlilly: And I would say that I learned as much at Gainesville First in three years as I learned in the three years I was in seminary. I learned how to do church, how to lead a congregation. You can look back on just about every church I served, and there's something that I learned in those three years that showed up in my ministry along the way.
• 28:31
  Bill McAlilly: Jim was deeply compassionate. He was very forgiving when I would make dumb rookie mistakes. And he's just a prince of a human being, and we called him Big Jim. He was a big man, but he was as kind and compassionate as any human being I've ever known.
• 28:53
  Chris McAlilly: What are, beyond his kindness and compassion, his patience with you as a young leader, what would you say are one or two things that stand out about his leadership, or just kind of observing and kind of being apprenticed to him as a Christian leader?
• 29:15
  Bill McAlilly: He had vision. He took a church that was a downtown church in Gainesville, Georgia, and relocated the congregation from the center of town to the edge of town, and he had a vision to buy property that was on Lake Lanier. So here you have this fabulous congregation that has a dock on Lake Lanier that the kids can use every summer. They had a lakeside service.
• 29:44
  Bill McAlilly: And he was a storyteller. He would write. He was very gifted as a writer, and he would always write us a story at Christmas that was unique and tell that at the Christmas Eve story service.
• 30:05
  Bill McAlilly: But he also, he had a number, there were a number of us on staff, young associate types.
• 30:09
  Bill McAlilly: And he was very careful to make sure we had opportunity to learn and lead in our settings, although he did not let us preach very often. He liked to preach. He did all the preaching.
• 30:27
  Chris McAlilly: I want to shift in the second half of the conversation not to just your formation, but your ministry. We talked about your life, a little bit about your faith, your formation. Perhaps, you know, before we talk about... You could get... I don't want to get... We could talk for 30 minutes to an hour about each specific place that you served.
• 30:51
  Chris McAlilly: Maybe the first thing I would ask you to do is just talk about your appointment. So just kind of quickly run through the places that you served from the end of seminary until your retirement, and the number of years you served.
• 31:06
  Bill McAlilly: Okay.
• 31:07
  Chris McAlilly: Just kind of run through that real quick.
• 31:08
  Bill McAlilly: Well, I came out of seminary, went back home.
• 31:10
  Chris McAlilly: At what year?
• 31:12
  Bill McAlilly: 1981. And I was associate pastor at First United Methodist Church New Albany. So I was there three years. You were born there. And then.
• 31:23
  Chris McAlilly: I do not remember, but I have heard, yeah.
• 31:25
  Bill McAlilly: You were. I remember. February 3. And so we had good time there. James Price was senior minister, and we worked well together.
• 31:36
  Chris McAlilly: You moved from there to Lambert.
• 31:37
  Bill McAlilly: Lambert, Mississippi. We were there for two years, and I was asked at that time by BF Lee, who was the district superintendent of the Senatobia District at the time, to plant a church in DeSoto County. And the first time he asked me, I said, "No, I don't think so. I'm not sure I'm up to that." And then he came back a few months later, and our spirit had been moved by the possibility. And we revisited, and he invited me to be a church planter in 1984 and so we moved to DeSoto County, Lynn, you and I.
• 32:21
  Bill McAlilly: We were given the names of, oh, a dozen or so people who had expressed an earlier interest through a survey that they might be interested in being a part of this church. I went back and visited with all those people.
• 32:32
  Bill McAlilly: None of them panned out to be interested in the new church, and so I invited some of my friends to come up on a Saturday, and we did a canvassing of a couple of neighborhoods, and we began to find folks that were willing to say, Yeah, I'll give it a shot.
• 32:51
  Bill McAlilly: And so in August, September, well, the Sunday after Labor Day, actually, in 1984, we had our first service, and from that, the church grew.
• 33:04
  Bill McAlilly: We built a building, and I was there four years. Church grew to about 400 members in four years.
• 33:08
  Bill McAlilly: And then my bishop, Bob Morgan, said, "I need you to move," and he said, "I want you to go to Philadelphia, Mississippi," which was county seat church, and it was not what I wanted to do. Was not interested. Thought it was a bad idea, and yet we went and turned out to be a very positive experience. Great place for our family, great neighborhood for the kids, for you and Laura, and we were there four years.
• 33:42
  Bill McAlilly: Again, my bishop calls me and says, "I want you to go to St.
• 33:45
  Bill McAlilly: Matthews in Madison," which I wasn't terribly excited about that either, but we went, and the church had about 600 members, and in six years we went from 600 to 1200, built a sanctuary. And and then, and I guess that would have been in 2000, we were asked to go to Tupelo First Church, and it was going to be your senior year.
• 34:16
  Bill McAlilly: Laura was going to eighth grade.
• 34:19
  Bill McAlilly: Seemed like a terrible time for my children, but that was what was being asked of us, and we all agreed to do it. We went and had six good years in Tupelo, and then Katrina hit.
• 34:36
  Bill McAlilly: And at this point in time, our church in Tupelo had been invested in rebuilding the parsonage of Bay St Louis after Katrina, and the bishop asked me to go and be the district superintendent of the Seashore District after Katrina. So we did that, and spent six, six busy and hard years helping the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast and our churches. And then in 2012 the Mississippi Conference had nominated me to be an Episcopal candidate for the Southeastern Jurisdiction. And so we go to Lake Junaluska in July of that year, and I was elected to the Episcopacy and assigned to the Tennessee, Memphis area, National Episcopal Area, which was at that time, two conferences. And during that time, we merged the two conferences over those 12 years.
• 35:32
  Bill McAlilly: And then I retired on September 1, 2024.
• 35:42
  Chris McAlilly: How many years did you serve from the time you came back to Mississippi until you retired? How many years was
• 35:49
  Bill McAlilly: Let me see 2024, 1981, that's 43 years. 43 years.
• 35:49
  Bill McAlilly: that?
• 36:02
  Chris McAlilly: I have tons of questions, but I think one of them is, let's just talk decade by decade. In your first decade of ministry, what do you remember about that time? What were you afraid of? What did you hope for? You know, what lessons did you learn? Another way to say it would be, if somebody's listening to this and they're in their first 10 years of ministry and they're struggling to kind of navigate that time, what encouragement would you give?
• 36:35
  Chris McAlilly: You can answer it either way.
• 36:39
  Bill McAlilly: Well, that was a different time, of course. And I would say, don't be afraid of being an associate. You learn a lot. And then don't be afraid of launching out and following where the bishop sends, because they they're looking out for you in your best interest and what's best for the church. And I was, I was blessed. In 1984 when I was asked to plant a church I needed to risk and trust God to hold me in a space of unknowing.
• 37:27
  Bill McAlilly: And so part of that, part of that willingness to do that was somewhat of a way for me to grow in my own faith journey. And it was a marvel. It was a marvelous experience. And we made, we did hard, hard, hard, but also met some fabulous people who were willing to be partners with us in ministry and join us in the journey.
• 37:57
  Bill McAlilly: So, I think, and then I was young, very young, when I was asked to go to Philadelphia, and there was a lot of question about was I really up to the task of this big church that they were sending this young whippersnapper to. And that was a challenge, because it was so very different from what we'd been doing in the new church, and it was a more established congregation. And there were a lot of challenges staff wise. We had some real challenges there.
• 38:28
  Bill McAlilly: I had to learn quickly how to be a senior pastor with staff, and I had to be willing to ask people who were seasoned ministers for help when I didn't know the answer. And so I would say, don't be afraid to ask for help. Yeah,
• 38:52
  Chris McAlilly: I love that. So, one, don't be afraid to take risks. There is an opportunity there to grow in faith as you,"I needed to trust in God," you said. I think that's an incredibly important lesson. And then when you get to a moment where you're stretched and you're facing challenges, don't be afraid to ask for help. I think that's also really, really wise.
• 39:17
  Chris McAlilly: Move to the second decade, you know, so at this point you would have been in ministry, moving into St. Matthews probably. And that would have been kind of mid career.
• 39:32
  Bill McAlilly: Yeah, I would have been 34 so, you know, St.
• 39:39
  Bill McAlilly: Matthews was a relocated church that had moved from the city of Jackson into the suburbs of Jackson to the Madison community, and it built a building, and it was not a particularly attractive building. It was not very exciting place to look at from the outside. And I followed a gentleman who was near retirement and beloved pastor, and so I was essentially the second pastor in a new congregation, and they had hopes of building a sanctuary, and it wasn't time to do that. And so I had to sort of temper their anxiety or their expectation that I was going to come in and do that quickly.
• 40:30
  Bill McAlilly: But we eventually did that, and I began to learn what it was to begin to move into midlife. And I continued to find out how to deal with conflict in congregations and with staff and but yet, there were people that I was able to have on my team that were... I brought, who is now one of my dearest friends, Laura Owen, who was 10 years my senior, to be my associate. And so I was not afraid of having people that were older, wiser, or smarter than me on my team.
• 41:11
  Bill McAlilly: And so that was a gift that I learned in that season.
• 41:17
  Chris McAlilly: One of the things that I know just from knowing you, is that during that time you had some... And I think this is just... I see this happen for folks in different vocational paths, especially when you choose that path, when you're young, where there was kind of a, I don't know, like a fork in the road, where you had different passions. You had different desires that you were exploring one of those being the kind of pastoral counseling side of things. There were desires that you had in that direction.
• 41:47
  Chris McAlilly: And even, you know... I mean, talk about that, about kind of exploring, here's one path. It's more of executive leadership and at scale, and then there's also kind of this kind of pastoral care dimension. Just talk about how you navigated that, explored it, and kind of where that led it.
• 42:12
  Bill McAlilly: One of the one of the aspects of my ministry over time was that it seemed like people are always showing up at my office door for counseling, and I somewhat had a natural affinity for that. Didn't have much training in seminary, a little bit. Could have gotten more, didn't. And yet, over the course of time, that seemed to keep happening. And so I was seriously considering pursuing a Master's in counseling. Took a few courses and and yet couldn't quite figure out whether I should put my hat on one side of the house or the other. And what I learned was that, over the course of several years, that was just going to be part of who I am and my ministry, and if I move too far in one direction or the other, the other vocation, whether it was preaching or leading a church or counseling, one would pull me back to the center. So what I learned, one of the great gifts of that season for me, was that the skill set that I acquired in the counseling training served me extremely well as a leader and an executive in the church.
• 43:41
  Chris McAlilly: If there's someone maybe in the second decade of of a career, and they're kind of at that point where they're feeling stuck and they're struggling to determine,"maybe I screwed up at the beginning and I charted out on a trajectory that is the wrong one," and they begin exploring other other opportunities, or other passions and desires. I think that's incredibly normal.
• 44:05
  Chris McAlilly: I think it's a very regular part of of a person's vocational journey. What encouragement would you give to folks who are navigating some of those questions? Have fears, have desires, have passions and are trying to get unstuck?
• 44:22
  Bill McAlilly: Good question. Be willing to explore and ask questions. Find somebody that you trust to talk to. Don't be afraid to ask hard questions.
• 44:34
  Bill McAlilly: Get back in touch with what brought you to the vocation that you chose to start with. There obviously was a reason you chose that path and get back in touch with, as we like to say, your first love. If you ultimately decide that you want to throw your heart over the fence for something else, don't be afraid.
• 45:06
  Chris McAlilly: I mean, that's a good word. So I guess now you're 25, 25 years into the into the gig, and you're now in a senior pastor, role of a larger church, and moving into kind of more of a ultimately larger scale, more management responsibilities.
• 45:33
  Chris McAlilly: Talk about that part of your journey, kind of the journey to Tupelo and away from Tupelo into kind of a management ,executive style role over many churches.
• 45:50
  Bill McAlilly: Um, yeah...
• 45:54
  Chris McAlilly: What did you learn from that part of the the journey?
• 45:58
  Bill McAlilly: Well, you know, Tupelo was was a fabulous place to be to learn, great music, great worship, great team to work with. We didn't always get it right. We had a few hiccups along the way, but ultimately, we were able to build a team that helped us move into some important places. I was sent there at a time when they were in the end of a 10-year-long range planning season, and they were at a decision making point about whether to execute the long range plan that had been established and build a 30,000 square foot addition or or not.
• 46:49
  Bill McAlilly: And I was, having just built a building, a large building, in my prior appointment, I was not eager to bite that off again, and so I was slow to engage in that. And finally, a person came to my office said, "When are you going to do this?" And I thought, oh, I guess I better do it.
• 47:09
  Bill McAlilly: And so we started. And you know, I learned a lot about management there, of dealing with staff, large staff, and people coming, people leaving, recruiting new people, training new people. But I was always thinking about Jim Thompson in the background, and what would Jim do, and how would Jim lead this group of people, and what were the practices I learned back in Gainesville, Georgia that would apply to Tupelo, because they were very similar churches. And so that was a rewarding experience. It was challenging. We were, I think, faithful and fruitful.
• 47:57
  Bill McAlilly: And in those years we had, there were some huge challenges that, looking back, I wondered how we got through them, but we did.
• 48:15
  Bill McAlilly: Early in ministry, I never thought that I wanted to be a district superintendent. That was not something that I was thinking on my horizon, that I really wanted to engage in, having seen my dad do it, I just wasn't sure that was something I wanted in my wheelhouse. But after Hurricane Katrina came and we had gone down there several times to help in the rebuild, I began to feel a call, mostly to the rebuilding of the church on the Gulf Coast, and the only way to... And I basically told the bishop. I said, if you need me in any capacity on the coast, I'm willing to come. And she, Bishop Ward, Hope Morgan Ward asked me to be the district superintendent.
• 49:07
  Bill McAlilly: We moved into a house that had five feet of flood waters, about 65% complete. So that within of itself was a challenge and a commitment on my wife Lynn's part to be willing to join me in that partnership. And there were people coming in from all over the country to be on work teams.
• 49:27
  Bill McAlilly: They were staying at our churches. It was hard work. It was not easy, but our pastors were resilient, and some of them we helped relocate out of the Katrina zone, into other places in the state, and that was a part of it. And then there were people that were willing to come and join me in that rebuild.
• 49:52
  Bill McAlilly: And I began to think I discovered I had a knack for that work. In particular, I had a knack for appointment making and seeing the whole and where we could deploy leadership in our best places. And that was kind of a fun part for me, and rewarding, and I was able to bless some people who were pastors and gave them more experience, more opportunity to serve in a lot of different places.
• 50:24
  Chris McAlilly: I am recognizing we're kind of coming to the end of our time. And so I think what I'm going to have to do is I want to have another one of these conversations that's just focused on your Episcopal leadership, okay? And so we'll just have to put a pin in the hat and come back. I want to explore that in a little bit greater detail, just because it's the most recent experience.
• 50:45
  Chris McAlilly: But as we're kind of wrapping up this, this section of conversation really about your your life, your faith, your formation and your pastoral leadership in the local church, primarily, and then in some management roles towards the end of your career, what are, if you had to distill, we talked about several of them, but if you had to distill, what are two or three things that that you think are through lines that served you well in your Christ-centered leadership and in your pastoral ministry? What would you lift up?
• 51:31
  Bill McAlilly: Local church is important, and if disciples are going to be made, they're going to be made the local church not going to Annual Conference session or the General Conference session. People matter, and people's lives are sometimes fragile. Always respect the stories of people that they bring to the table and listen carefully for what they're telling you. You'll learn something. And God is still at work. If the church wasn't, God wouldhave killed it a long time ago. And grace abounds.
• 52:22
  Chris McAlilly: I think those are good words. The one, the phrase that we talked about at the very beginning, before we hit record, was a mission statement that came out of your church planting experience,"offer Christ to a hurting world." Sometimes you'll say,"offer the hope of Jesus Christ to a hurting world." And I've heard that phrase my entire life, and I think you know, as I reflect on what I gained from getting to observe up close your leadership at every level, it's that you've done that for people across the state of Mississippi and across the region. And I've gotten to benefit from this long conversation that we've had about about life and faith and ministry.
• 53:19
  Chris McAlilly: In this context, I'm grateful for an opportunity to express my gratitude to you for all the ways in which I've been shaped by you as a person and as a leader and as a pastor.
• 53:34
  Chris McAlilly: Incredibly grateful for that.
• 53:34
  Chris McAlilly: And as you said earlier in the conversation, you don't retire from the kingdom of God, and so you're still scheming up and thinking of ways to do that.
• 53:52
  Chris McAlilly: What are you currently doing right now? If somebody wanted to connect with you, what's your current work look like?
• 53:59
  Bill McAlilly: I'm doing some coaching, executive coaching of leaders. I'm also doing some consulting with congregations, helping them think about their mission, vision, and values and what their future might look like. I have a little opportunity that I'm marinating on, as we say, creating a center for pastoral formation that may come to fruition down the road, but primarily right now, I'm coaching and consulting.
• 54:29
  Chris McAlilly: If somebody was interested in connecting with you and maybe deepening their conversation, or maybe kind of getting out of that unstuck place and conversation with you, where would they find?
• 54:39
  Bill McAlilly: You know, LinkedIn and Facebook, and you can find me, email me at billmcalilly.com.
• 54:53
  Chris McAlilly: That sounds good. I'm grateful for the time today, Dad, and we'll have to come back another time. I do, I want to explore what you learned as an Episcopal leader and in your work in Tennessee and across the southeast and around the world, but for today, we'll set it down. Thank you so much for being with me today. Thanks for the conversation, and as always, we're grateful when Eddie's not on the podcast. So Eddie, thanks for not being here.
• 55:25
  Bill McAlilly: Yeah, thank you.
• 55:25
  Bill McAlilly: Eddie. Bless you.
• 55:27
  Chris McAlilly: Thanks for being with us on The Weight.
• 55:31
  Eddie Rester: [OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
• 55:37
  Chris McAlilly: If you would like to support this work financially, or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweight podcast.com.
• 55:42
  Chris McAlilly: [END OUTRO]