Meet our Senior Minister
Following a year of service as interim senior minister, Dr. John H. Hewett was called as permanent senior minister in April 2008.
A native of Florida, he was graduated from Stetson University and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which awarded him the Master of Divinity and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. At the completion of his doctoral work he was appointed Adjunct Professor of Christian Ethics at Southern Seminary. His ministry experience spans congregations in Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina and Texas in a variety of positions, including senior pastorates at Kirkwood Baptist Church, St. Louis and First Baptist Church, Asheville.
Since its publication in 1980, his ground-breaking book After Suicide has sold over 100,000 copies in the United States and Europe (translated into German as Niemand ist ohne Hoffnung). He was instrumental in establishing the national Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network and served as an early member of SNAP’s board. During his years in Missouri Dr. Hewett served as trustee of Missouri Baptist Hospital and Missouri Baptist College and adjunct professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. William Jewell College honored him with its coveted Walter Pope Binns Fellowship and the Missouri Baptist Convention with its Missions Leadership Award. He is currently an adjunct professor at Gardner-Webb University.
While in Asheville he served two terms as president of Asheville-Buncombe Community Christian Ministry and led a successful bond referendum to raise $43 million for public schools. He is a past president of the North Carolina Council on Christian Higher Education, former executive committee member of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, charter board member of the Baptist Center for Ethics, former member of Americans United’s national advisory council, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s first moderator, serving from 1991-92. He is also an accomplished musician, having served several churches as organist and minister of music in his earlier years. He is a member of the Monroe Rotary Club and chairs the Monroe/Union County CROP Hunger Walk for 2010.
He entered nonprofit development work in 1994 as a consultant with and ultimately president of Cargill Associates, Inc., the national fundraising consulting firm. Subsequent assignments included executive positions with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the historic Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. He is president and CEO of Hewett Consulting (www.hewettconsulting.com), a firm providing strategic counsel to nonprofit organizations nationwide.
He is married to Andrea (Andi) Stevenson, president and executive director of Charlotte's Community School of the Arts (www.csarts.org), and is the father of two sons: Martin, an attorney currently clerking for a federal appeals court judge in Philadelphia, and Joel, a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
