Phillip Morgan will begin duties as a full-time faculty member in history starting in January, according to Dr. Greg Ketteman, provost at Welch College.
John Carter, long-time history professor at Welch, announced his planned retirement recently. In December, he will end a 35-year tenure as a faculty member at Welch. He has agreed to continue teaching in an adjunct capacity after retirement.
Morgan currently serves as Associate Pastor for Youth and Music at Heads Free Will Baptist Church in Cedar Hill, Tennessee, where he has served for 5 years. He intends to continue serving in local church ministry on a part-time basis. A 2008 Welch graduate with a B.S. in music, Morgan owned a restaurant for four years before his ordination to the ministry. He is finishing his M.A. in history from Middle Tennessee State University, which will be completed in December. He will then begin work on his Ph.D. at MTSU in the field of public history.
“We are looking forward to welcoming Phillip on board the faculty at Welch,” Ketteman said. “He is an impressive young man with a varied background who will bring to the campus a combination of academic rigor, a love for teaching and leading young people, and a heart for ministry.”
Mr. Carter states, “I am so excited that Phillip Morgan will be taking my place in the history program at Welch College. He is an excellent historian with a solid Christian worldview, and he cares deeply about bringing together a conservative, Christian worldview with historical understanding. This is so important to our curriculum at Welch, and I think Phillip is just the man we need to do this.”
Morgan has been active in denominational affairs, serving on the Tennessee Christian Education Board, Cumberland Association Christian Education Board, chairing the Northern Quarterly Christian Education Board, leading summer youth camps at Cumberland Camp, and giving seminars at Free Will Baptist national conventions on his innovative approach to teaching church history and theology to teens. His writing has been published in Integrity: A Journal of Christian Thought and in a recent collection of essays on the theology of Welch professor emeritus Leroy Forlines. He also serves as a contributor and editor for the Helwys Society Forum (thehsf.com).
Morgan has also served for the past few years as the Assistant Curator of the Free Will Baptist Historical Collection under the supervision of Dr. Robert Picirilli, as well as the Archivist for Welch College. He and his wife Megan, and their children, Isaiah (3) and Julia (4m), live on a small farm in Robertson County, Tennessee.