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National Director, Bethany Christian Services
www.bethany.org
For 14 years, Pastor Johnny Carr was a full-time minister who served several different churches ranging in size from 100 to 1,700 weekly attendees. Before coming to Bethany Christian Services, Johnny was the Pastor of Ministry and Leadership Development at Hillcrest Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. While at Hillcrest, he led the church in establishing its first orphan/adoption ministry, which sponsored mission trips to orphanages and resulted in the adoption of several children.
Pastor Johnny married Beth, a deaf educator, in March 1993. The couple now has four children: Heather, Jared, James, and Xiaoli. James and Xiaoli were both adopted from China and are deaf. It was during the adoption of James that God began speaking to the Carrs about committing their lives to orphan care. After a long process and many confirmations from the Lord, Johnny left the full-time church ministry to become Bethany’s first National Director of Church Partnerships.
Johnny is a conference speaker and orphan care advocate to denominations and national religious associations. He and his wife have visited orphanages and have also helped bring attention to a deaf school in central China that was in dire need of aid. Today the school is better than it has ever been and all of the teachers and their families are now believers in Jesus Christ.
Johnny understands the complexities of ministry and the demands of being a pastor, as well as a pastor’s role in empowering and motivating the laity to do the good works of the Gospel. He believes that the Church must take the lead in the world’s orphan crisis. His goal is to inspire the Church to truly understand and obey James 1:27, which calls believers to care for orphans.
