Gentry Brummett

contingent staff

Born in Alexandria, Virginia and raised in Danville, Kentucky, my love is for the Bluegrass! Growing up in central Kentucky, my youth was filled with pain and confusion. I grew up in a classic “Bible Belt” Christian home where we went to church weekly. I knew the Sunday school answers, but I saw God as this far off King whose primary countenance towards me was disapproval, tolerance at best, because I knew I was a sinner. I believed He was All-Powerful and I feared Him, which heightened an already strong cycle of performance and control I was living in at an early age; I tried to earn every ounce of love and approval. I did not believe or understand how He could love me all on His own. Much of my interpretation of my relationship with my father correlated to how I perceived God; cold, distant, conditional, and abusive.

Myself and others close to my story have said that I was forced to grow up at a very early age as I tried to support my mom and protect my siblings. As I was exposed to sin and abuse I began to believe that I was bad and unworthy. I began to function like an orphan and “stiff-armed” a God I was supposed to believe loved me and watched over me. This is where I believe my redemption story starts. As my family was going through the hardest, but most freeing season, the Lord put a host of godly men and women in my life to begin the process of redemption and shepherding. I was exposed to the Gospel for the first time as men began to read the Bible and pray with me as I experienced God in a way I never had before. I became a believer at 14 as godly men discipled and shepherded me. The Lord revealed Himself to me and gave me the faith to begin to trust Him and believe what His word said about Himself and my identity.

As I began college, my heart tightly grasped comfort and control. I would spend the next 4 years in discipleship wrestling with the Lord, my idols and my story as I grew in my understanding of my Gospel Identity and how the Gospel infiltrates every inch of my life. 

Entering my senior year of college, I felt the Lord bring home a clear vision and purpose for my life that I had run away from for most of my college years.

As I enter into full-time ministry, my vision is to be a part of the same mission those host of godly men did for me: to love me enough to sit in my mess with me, help me live in my Gospel Identity, and plant seeds of discipleship in young men that will redeem the way of father, husband, laborer and friend. I long to see the generations of fatherlessness end, and for the state of  Kentucky to look a little more like Heaven when I’m laid in a Kentucky grave. May the Lord’s will be done in Kentucky as it is in Heaven. I am learning to live as His son and Beloved. 

I am engaged to the love of my life, to be married this summer, praising the Lord for undeserved bliss!