LM-01 Instructor - About Larry L. McSwain

Larry McSwain serves as a ministry coach with International Coach Federation training and consults with congregations through the Center for Congregational Health at Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His consulting focus is on planning, staff configurations, and staff compensation/evaluation.

Larry served as Professor of Leadership at the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he held the Watkins Christian Foundation Endowed Chair in Ministry and served as Associate Dean for Doctor of Ministry Studies. He taught Christian Ethics, Leadership, Change and Conflict in the Church, and Capstone courses from 2003 until 2012 when retired from fulltime teaching. He continues to teach at McAfee as an adjunct professor.

He is a graduate of Oklahoma State University, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and The Southern Baptist Theological where he received the Doctor of Sacred Theology degree. He taught at Southern Seminary twenty-three years as Professor of Church and Community and was Dean of the School of Theology and Provost of the seminary. From 1993-2000, he was President of Shorter College in Rome, Georgia.

Larry is editor of Twentieth-Century Shapers of Baptist Social Ethics, author of Loving Beyond Your Theology: The Life and Ministry of Jimmy Raymond Allen; co-author of four books and author of numerous articles and research reports. His latest publication is The Calling of Congregational Leadership: Being, Knowing, Doing Ministry, released by Chalice Press in Kindle and book form.
Larry loves to fish, play with grandchildren, work in the yard, teach senior adult men in church school at Northside Drive Baptist Church, and serves as president of his neighborhood condominium association where he attempts to practice his skills of collaboration and negotiation!

He is married to Rebecca Sue, and they have two children, five grandchildren and a Westie named Gracie. Sue is a graduate of Oklahoma State University, and she completed accounting classes at the University of Louisville. She is a retired Certified Public Accountant, a deacon at Northside Drive Baptist Church and loves to arrange flowers, keep up with her deacon families, play with grandchildren and take hand-building classes in clay. She served as a volunteer at St. Joseph Hospital in Atlanta for eight years.