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 Mike
Bennett : I was born in 1949 in Nashville, Tennessee.
I am the son of the late Horace E. and Violet R. Bennett of Joelton, Tennessee. I attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville
where I received my B.A. degree in 1971 and my J.D. degree in
1974. For 23 years I was a practicing attorney with the firm of
Schulman, LeRoy & Bennett, P.C. in Nashville, specializing in the
area of health law.
Jan Bennett: I was born in 1950 in Orange, New Jersey. I am the daughter of Clyde H. and Elinor H. MacFarlane of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. I too graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree in 1972 and subsequently worked as an intensive care unit nurse at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Veterans Administration Hospital in Nashville. |
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OUR MISSIONARY PILGRIMAGE I, Mike, accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior at the age of 12 in the First Baptist Church of Joelton and began to learn about missions through its Royal Ambassador program. When we married in 1972, Jan became a member of this church, and we continued our spiritual pilgrimage together. In 1978, while attending a Marriage Encounter Retreat, Jan recognized for the first time that, although she was a member of the church, she had not been born again, and she invited Christ to forgive her of her sins and to enter her life as personal Lord and Savior. In 1980, while members of Woodmont Baptist Church in Nashville, we began the first of many volunteer mission trips to Grenada, Panama, Jamaica, and Venezuela where we aided the local missionaries and helped to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the people. Meanwhile, we got practical, hands-on experience in church planting as charter members of the Hope Baptist Church of Nashville, a fellowship emphasizing home cell groups which began in 1985. I subsequently enrolled in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, from which I graduated with a Master of Divinity degree in 1996. At a commitment service in Glorieta, New Mexico in 1996, we made the decision to pursue career missions. We were appointed by the International Mission Board in November, 1997. Today, the First Baptist Church of Joelton, TN, Woodmont Baptist and Hope Baptist Churches of Nashville, TN, and Terrill Road Baptist Church of Scotch Plains, NJ actively support us through words of encouragement, prayers, support of family members, and financial contributions to the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, the two principal ways that Southern Baptists support over 4,400 missionaries in 110 countries around the world. The Bennetts have two children: Jason, age 32, lives in Pasadena, California, with his wife, Susie. They were married in August, 2002. He graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and works as a computer software programmer. Susie is getting her doctor’s degree in psychology at Fuller Seminary. Lindsay, age 29, graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, majoring in hotel and restaurant management, and now serves as Group Sales Manager of the Sunriver Resort, Sunriver, Oregon. |
