[1]CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Clint Pressley moves easily between different worlds. In a typical week, the pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte may preach multiple sermons at two campuses, work through a stack of books, counsel a younger pastor facing a difficult ministry decision and spend time working out in the backyard gym he built himself. Those rhythms offer insight into the man who has served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for the past two years.
Even while serving on the national stage, those close to Pressley say he has remained rooted in local church ministry, preferring the pulpit to a broader platform. On Sunday mornings, Pressley preaches in a three-piece suit, standing upright with a measured cadence and a presence that reflects the characteristics of Southern Baptist preachers of a bygone era.
Pressley has said he first began wearing a suit as a younger pastor in part because he wanted to be taken seriously. These days, he jokes, the difference is simply that he can afford more than one.
At first, Pressley’s composed and formal demeanor may come across as guarded or maybe even a bit distant. But what you see from afar is different than what you experience up close.
Before and after services, he mingles with people in the lobby, lingering to listen, offering a word of encouragement or sharing a joke. Those who know him say he’s approachable and even generous with his time, qualities that have endeared him to his congregation and others beyond the church.
Now as his time as SBC president concludes at this year’s annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, Pressley is looking forward to returning exclusively to the rhythms of local church life that have long defined his ministry and are where he feels most at home.
[2]That love for the local church is rooted in Pressley’s own story.
Since coming to faith at age 11, Pressley has sensed a call to preach. “It’s really all I’ve ever wanted to do,” he says. He grew up attending a Presbyterian church in Charlotte and first visited a Baptist church around age 15 while traveling with his family to visit friends in Roanoke, Va. He recounted the story during his presidential address at the 2025 SBC Annual Meeting.
“There was a man that got up behind a desk, opened a big black Bible, and he shouted at us for 30 minutes,” Pressley said. “And I thought, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do with my life. I don’t know what those Baptists believe, but I want to be one of them.’”
After returning to Charlotte, Pressley and his family joined Hickory Grove, where he now serves as senior pastor. Following high school, Pressley played football at Wofford College in nearby Spartanburg, S.C., and served as a pastoral intern at Hickory Grove during summer breaks. After college, he enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, where he met his future wife, Connie, the daughter of a Baptist pastor.
Eager to preach, Pressley quit seminary and moved to Mississippi where he started pastoring a rural church of about 30 people at 23 years old, just six weeks after getting married. Although he loved Jesus, the Bible and the church, Pressley said he quickly realized how much he had to learn about preaching and pastoring. He soon resumed his studies at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, often making the 280-mile, round-trip drive between church and campus.
He pastored two churches in Mississippi before returning to Hickory Grove in 1999 as senior associate pastor of preaching. In 2004, he was called as senior pastor of Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala., before again returning to Hickory Grove in 2010 as co-pastor and then becoming senior pastor in 2011.
[3]While pastoring in Mississippi, Pressley often worked additional jobs to support his family, which included substitute teaching, coaching football and even driving a dump truck. Ministry in those days also often required doing whatever was needed. Pressley recalled one occasion when he dug a grave, preached the funeral and then filled it back in himself.
“That’s full-service ministry,” he said.
Although he now leads a church with an average weekly worship attendance of nearly 3,000 across two campuses, Pressley says his approach to ministry and leadership was shaped in those early pastorates.
“The local church is the best training ground for almost any position of leadership,” Pressley said. “All of the lessons you need for ministry are learned in a church of 100 people or less. You’re dealing with people up close, doing the hard work that nobody else sees and doing the necessary things like turning the lights on and off, filling the baptistry and cutting the grass. It helps you not to be presumptuous.”
That local church focus has shaped how Pressley has approached leadership on a broader stage.
After being elected SBC president in 2024, Pressley said he hoped to help lower the temperature surrounding some of the ongoing debates within the Convention. He has sought to do so, in part, by not speaking publicly on every social, cultural or political issue, something SBC presidents are often called on to do, and by declining many interview requests from the news media.
“If it’s going to advance our causes, if it’s going to be something that shines a good light on the SBC, I’m glad to do it,” Pressley said. “Otherwise, it’s not necessary.”
Pressley’s first term as president coincided with the 100th anniversaries of both the Baptist Faith and Message and the Cooperative Program. Calling that timing “providential,” Pressley emphasized Southern Baptists’ confession of faith and cooperative mission. The two are interrelated, Pressley says, and are important to the future of the Convention.
“I think we need to work real hard on clear Gospel confessional unity because that will then lead to real Gospel missional unity,” Pressley said. “I think one gives birth to the other.”
As his presidency comes to a close this summer, Pressley said he wants to moderate the annual meeting in a “fair, good and joyful way,” accomplishing the necessary business while keeping the focus on the “great things” that Southern Baptists do. His presidential address will center on the meeting theme of “Walking Worthy,” emphasizing walking worthy of the Gospel and worthy of the Lord.
R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where Pressley previously served as a trustee, said Pressley has accomplished what he set out to do as SBC president.
“I think in the best sense of the word, Clint wanted to establish a normal SBC presidency, and I think there is great comfort in that,” Mohler said. “He didn’t have a transformative agenda for the SBC. He just wanted to lead and serve the Southern Baptist Convention, encourage pastors, encourage missions and encourage cooperation, and I think that was a very welcome breath of fresh air for the SBC.”
That same steadiness is evident in the way Pressley structures his daily life.
In life and ministry, Pressley’s routines are steady and predictable. He describes his life in simple terms, even calling it “boring” at times, pointing to the same patterns repeated day after day.
Weekdays begin at 5 a.m., with Bible reading, prayer and Scripture memory, followed by an hourlong workout. His workday includes meetings, calls, study and sermon preparation. In an age of digital tools, Pressley still studies and prepares sermons by hand, writing out his notes and manuscript with a fountain pen. He humorously signs his email “Sent from my Stone Tablet.”
In the evenings, he and Connie have dinner together before he spends an hour or so reading in his home office or on his back porch. Pressley begins his day reading Scripture, reflecting on God’s sovereignty, and ends it with history books and biographies that he says remind him of God’s providence. Then his routine begins anew the next day.
“If you’re in the ministry, so much of it is chaos,” Pressley said. “It’s unpredictable, and you can’t really control any of that. But if you can dig some pretty good ruts in your life — good ruts — and you get stuck in those ruts, then the chaos is manageable because the discipline is already there.”
Those disciplines are not practiced in isolation. A small group of church members and fellow pastors join him several mornings each week to lift weights in his backyard gym, known as “The Shed.” He participates in group texts for accountability in Bible reading, and he meets regularly with about 30 pastors from the Charlotte area to discuss ministry and its challenges.
“When I first met Clint, I didn’t think he would be approachable, but I’ve found him to be very approachable and available,” said Josh Fraley, pastor of Euto Baptist Church in Marshville, N.C., who is a regular participant in the pastor meetings. “He’s authentic and has a genuine heart for all churches. He really cares about guys who have their hands to the plow in ministry.”
Mohler echoed that sentiment.
“Clint is one of the most authentic people I’ve ever known,” Mohler said. “He is the same everywhere, under all conditions to everybody. He’s one of the most gracious, energetic Christians I’ve ever been around.
“As Southern Baptists go, he’s one of us.”
Back at Hickory Grove on a Sunday morning, Pressley steps into the pulpit to continue a verse-by-verse exposition through the book of Exodus. Dressed in his customary suit, he opens his Bible and begins to preach, his cadence steady and deliberate.
For those in the room, it’s a familiar scene, one that’s repeated week after week.
“His ministry is Hickory Grove Baptist Church,” said Harry Nelson, a former Hickory Grove member and deacon who now serves as president and CEO of Provision Financial Resources of N.C. Baptists. “That’s why I think pastors love him. That’s why I think his church loves him. His ministry is the local church.”
And as his time on the national stage comes to an end, that’s where Pressley is returning. Not to something new, but to what has been central all along.
This article appeared in the Biblical Recorder [4].
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