By Althea Jerome, Mississippi Presbytery –
At a meeting of the Presbytery of Mississippi in February 2025, the docket included a report from the Commission on Ministry recommending a candidate for Minister of Word and Sacrament. While nothing about this docket item seems out of the ordinary, the candidate’s background includes two decades of membership in the Baptist Church, employment and ordination within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and a relatively recent association with the PCUSA.
The Reverend Brittany Caldwell began her career as a registered nurse, specializing in hospice care. She received the Master of Divinity degree at the George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University in 2016. In addition, she is enrolled in the Doctor of Ministry degree in Pastoral Ministry from Campbell University Divinity School in North Carolina.
Brittany and her husband, Chase, who is also a Minister of Word and Sacrament, spent several years as ministers outside of their home state of Mississippi. While both are committed to serving God in ministry, after the pandemic, they felt called to move closer to home. Like many couples, they wanted their daughter to know her grandparents, all of whom live in Natchez, MS. In the fall of 2022, they sensed that God was calling them to move to Mississippi without knowing what He was calling them to do.
In 2023 Chase began serving part time as a ministry assistant at the First Presbyterian Church of Natchez. Like Brittany, he had previously served within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. With guidance from the Pastor whom he assisted, he inquired about membership in the Presbytery, so that he might become a full-time Associate Pastor of the congregation. The Commission on Ministry of the Presbytery reviewed his credentials and approved his ordination, which was confirmed by a vote during a Presbytery meeting in March of 2024.
In the fall of 2024, after much prayer and discernment, Brittany felt led by the Spirit to become a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbytery of Mississippi. She began a process similar to her husband’s, guided by the Commission on Ministry (COM). This ultimately led to a motion of the COM to vote to confirm her ordination at a Presbytery meeting in February of 2025. The motion carried. Following this step, the Stated Clerk of Presbytery asked Brittany if she wished to work with the Presbytery by serving as a Supply Pastor at Fondren Presbyterian Church, which was seeking new pastoral leadership. She began serving in that role in Jan 2025.
The previous information is a condensed summary of how the Holy Spirit works in our lives. The PCUSA has rigorous standards of education for potential candidates in ministry. It also requires a well-crafted statement of faith. Yet, it is the Holy Spirit working through many different individuals to discern that a candidate is adequately prepared to serve in churches.
In a phone conversation, I asked Britany what it means to become a part of the PCUSA. She replied, “This is where I need to be.” In Natchez, she has helped organize a local literary festival and has served as an adjunct faculty member of a junior college nursing program. Through these experiences she expressed her belief that “God continues to be faithful to me.” She hopes to one day serve a church as a full-time minister in the Presbytery.
Brittany’s path to membership in the Presbytery of Mississippi was influenced by many factors, not least of which include her background in ministry; her role as a daughter, wife and mother; her nursing experience and her desire to serve Christians through ministry in a church. She acknowledges that her life experiences, shaped by her faith, and guided by the Holy Spirit, have led her to a place where she can grow and serve Christ within churches of the PCUSA.
In her Statement of Faith, she wrote the following excerpt about the Church:
I believe in the Church, which is the fellowship of all God’s people, united in Jesus, who share in His saving life, death, and resurrection, and who by grace through faith have been born again to eternal life. Through the Holy Spirit, the Church is given a share in God’s mission of reconciling people and creation as a privileged gift and sacred task.
The work of the Holy Spirit is not always easy to discern when we are making big decisions or experiencing significant challenges in our lives. Sometimes it takes time for us to recognize the work of the Spirit. However, with prayer and an abiding faith, the work of the Holy Spirit is revealed to us, shaping our lives according to God’s plan, reminding us that our sovereign LORD is present with us throughout our lives.
Brittany Caldwell’ Holy Spirit Story
When I was 24 years old, my husband and I spent a summer in India. We were Baptists at the time, and we were intent on serving on the mission field following our upcoming graduation from seminary. This trip was our summer mentoring experience; meant to prepare us for what we believed would be our future ministry. However, what we found in India took us completely by surprise. We entered a Christian Ashram, and heard a story from the swami, who used his ashram as a platform to preach to the gospel.
There was once a young boy waiting on the platform of a train station during the time of the British Raj. The sun was high overhead, the air was hot, and the platform was overcrowded with people seeking to get to their destination. As the boy waited, he witnessed a soldier collapse on the platform from heat exhaustion. A group of British officers also saw the man faint and ran to his assistance. They sat the man up, and in an attempt to revive him, poured water into the metal cup that covered the canteen belonging to one of the soldiers. However, as the soldiers put the cup to the man’s lips, the man, disoriented, would push it away. Over and over again, the soldiers tried to give the man a drink of water, and over and over again, the man refused to drink it. The young boy instantly knew what the problem was and grabbed a clay cup from the nearby chaiwalah (tea seller). He brought the cup to the officers, poured water from the canteen into the clay cup, and the man drank from it and was instantly revived. As the boy turned to leave, the soldiers looked at him in wonder: “What did you do? How did you get him to drink?” The little boy shrugged, “We don’t use metal cups,” he said as he ran to catch his train.
The man could not receive the water that he needed to live from a foreign vessel. He could only receive it from a clay cup, an Indian cup, a cup that he recognized as his own. In the same way, the people of India will not receive the living water of Jesus from a foreign vessel – a white missionary. The vessel is foreign, unknown to them, not to be trusted. They will instead receive the living water of Jesus more fully if it comes from a vessel that they know and recognize – one that is Indian. Indian Christians must be the ones to do the work of evangelism, though white missionaries can support their efforts.
Upon hearing this, my husband and I were crestfallen. We had been preparing for years for the foreign mission field; everything from my nursing degree to the numerous mission trips we had taken was supposed to be leading to this goal. But we couldn’t shake the truth that the swami was telling us: While we can support native workers in the work of the gospel, we cannot be the primary ones doing that work. God did not make us Indian vessels. There was a second undeniable truth in this parable as well: God had created us as American vessels, and that was not without purpose. We were American vessels, because God was calling us to bear witness to the gospel to the people closest to home.
At the time though, I denied just how close to home God meant. You see, I was born and raised in Natchez, Mississippi, and growing up, there was always one single thing that was prominent on my mind: getting out. I wanted to leave this small town with its small-minded people behind, because I had bigger and better things to do for God. I wasn’t ready at the age of 24 to move back to Mississippi, and I convinced myself that I was an American cup. I didn’t have to specifically be a Mississippi cup. Thus, upon graduation from seminary, my husband and I moved from Texas to North Carolina, where we co-pastored a small rural church for the next five years.
It was five of the best years of our lives. We felt like we were living the ministerial dream: pastoring, mentoring, serving people, bringing about change in our church and our community. But around year 4, we started to feel the movement of the Holy Spirit. We started to feel that God was calling us to something different, and we didn’t know what. What we did know was that we were happy in North Carolina, and we didn’t want to leave. However, as the church search process began, and we truly entered into a process of discernment, the swami’s parable kept reappearing in our thoughts and in our conversations. And then there were also other factors that we started to consider as well. My grandmother had end stage dementia, and my family (who were still in Natchez) were struggling with her care. My in-laws (also living in Natchez) were having several struggles as well. We were able to be present to the struggles of the people in our congregation all the way in North Carolina, but we couldn’t do the same for the people we loved the most at home. There was also the fact that we were struggling financially in the midst of post-COVID inflation, and Mississippi was a cheaper place to live than North Carolina. But the biggest factor was our three year old daughter, who did not even know her grandparents. My husband’s grandparents and mine were a big part of our lives growing up, and we were sad that our daughter only got to see her grandparents once or twice a year. Suddenly, we found ourselves for the first time considering if it was possible that God had not just made us into American cups, but had actually made us Mississippi cups. Is it possible that there was a greater purpose to the fact that we were born and raised in Mississippi?
When this thought first occurred, I honestly railed against it. As a progressive female pastor, there was nothing within me that wanted to move back to Mississippi. It’s not exactly a bastion of progressive ideals that’s known for equality and affirmation of female leadership. I had other arguments as well, ranging from the questionable quality of the educational system to the difficulties in receiving healthcare. However, every time I started in on these arguments, my husband would reply, “Well, isn’t that why people like us are needed? If you want something to change, then the best way to change it is to show up, be present, and call for change. We can make a difference in Mississippi, because the people there more than anywhere else in the country need to hear about a gospel of love, and not of law and judgment.” How dare he say that the Holy Spirit was calling us back to the place where we grew up in order to preach the radical love and inclusivity of Jesus? The audacity of him for being right!
It wasn’t long before I was on board, because I knew in my heart, through the work of the Holy Spirit, that the next chapter would bring me back to a place of rolling cotton fields, beautiful rivers, big trees, and fertile soil. The soil in which I was first planted, that raised me and made me into the person I am today, was calling me to return and tend it, to come bearing a message of love and mercy, that God is for all people. We returned in September of 2022, and though it was not easy, it felt right.
Fast forward another year or two, and my husband and I made the decision to leave our background as moderate Baptists behind us to embrace a new tradition, one in which we now know that God prepared a place for us. My husband has made the statement since seminary, “If I only had an excuse, I’d be Presbyterian.” Well, it turns out that that excuse was the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and in our lives, calling us to the PCUSA, a body of faith that we now call home. We first had to discover that we were American cups, then that we were Mississippi cups, and now we have finally found a shelf for that cup to rest upon, to call home, in the PCUSA, and specifically in the Synod of Living Waters, and the Presbytery of Mississippi. It just feels right. You could even say that our Mississippi cups now overflow with the living water.