After 12 years of serving as associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Maryville, the Rev. Sarah Slack was appointed senior pastor of the large church this summer. Photo by Cliff McCartney
By: Annette Spence
Key points:
The Rev. Sarah Slack was recently appointed senior pastor at First United Methodist in Maryville, Tennessee, currently the only female senior pastor in Holston Conference's 10 largest churches.
Slack's new leadership role coincides with the 70th anniversary of ordained women in The United Methodist Church.
As the altar setting designer for the Holston Annual Conference for 20 years, Slack delighted clergywomen with her latest creation in June.
MARYVILLE, Tenn. -- The altar settings created by the Rev. Sarah Slack have often inspired admirers to whip out their phone cameras or to come in for a closer look. This summer, Slack’s ministry and gifts struck a new height and significance.
At the Holston Annual Conference in June, Slack was appointed senior pastor of First United Methodist Church in Maryville – currently the only female senior pastor among Holston’s top 10 churches in worship attendance.
At Annual Conference, Slack created an altar setting that had Holston women gathering around the Lake Junaluska stage. The artwork, which
included the names of Holston clergywomen in line drawings, was a reminder for Slack of how far female pastors have come and how far they have yet to go.
“So we’ve grown some, and maybe we’ve gone back some,” Slack says on a busy Monday morning in her new office. “And that’s a big weight to carry."
Slack, age 47, is now leading Maryville First United Methodist after 12 years of serving as the church’s associate pastor. Her advancement to senior pastor comes as The United Methodist Church celebrates the 70th anniversary of ordained women.
While creating the altar setting for the Holston Annual Conference this year -- as she has done every June for the last 20 years -- Slack read some reflections from Holston clergywomen written in 2006. One colleague, the Rev. Brenda Carroll, wrote that she hoped Holston Conference would have more women leading large churches in the future, and she hoped for a female bishop.
At the time, there were two women leading large churches in Holston, including Carroll. Since then, Holston has had two female bishops: Bishop Mary Virginia Taylor (2012-2021) and Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett (2021 to present).
"This is a great honor. … And I am so thankful to get to continue to serve this place and do it in new and different ways,” Slack says, referring to First United Methodist. “But I believe we have other capable clergywomen who could lead our large churches. We aren’t where we should be in 2026.”
A native of Giles County, Virginia, the former Sarah Martin attended a Disciples of Christ church as a child and then First United Methodist Church of Pembroke, Virginia. Her parents divorced when she was 3. She remembers feeling lonely as a child living in a rural area.
“I have memories of being little and just having conversations with God. That’s just who I had,” she says. “I have felt my relationship with God has been very strong from my very earliest of days.”
As teenager, her youth group was important to her, but by her senior year in high school, she craved a larger group. She found one and moved her membership to First United Methodist Church in Pearisburg, Virginia, where she was very active. When it came time to pick a college, she chose Emory & Henry University.
“When my momma and I went to visit Emory & Henry, as soon as we stepped on campus, it felt like home,” she says. “And I had that same feeling when I went to Emory University.”
Slack was all set to pursue genetic research as a career, having studied and excelled in biology at Emory & Henry. That’s when two pastors from two different places told her she should consider attending seminary. It wasn’t a stretch for Slack to consider seminary or becoming a pastor. She was already involved in campus ministry, Young Life, and serving in children’s and youth ministry at Emory United Methodist Church.
She answered God’s call and graduated from Emory University's Candler School of Theology at the age of 23.
Her first appointment was as associate pastor at Cokesbury United Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, the largest church in Holston Conference and one of the largest United Methodist churches in the nation.
“I was a little bit lonely there at first because I was 23. … It’s hard to be 23 in a city you don’t know,” she says. Cokesbury was a “fast-paced” church where she learned a lot and grew as a leader over three years. She would later be appointed to Hixson as associate (2002-2005), New Life (2005-2012), Chilhowie/ Seven Mile Ford (2012-2014), and then First Maryville as associate in 2014.
Slack was still at Cokesbury when she began helping the Rev. Ashley Calhoun create stage and altar settings for the Holston Annual Conference in 2004. A seminary class on worship design led her to create visuals for a Cokesbury gathering, which caught Calhoun’s eye. Known for his own large, detailed Annual Conference visuals (which were often borrowed by other faith groups across the nation), Calhoun recruited Slack as his “apprentice” and taught her what he knew.
The first altar setting she created on her own was for the 50th anniversary of full clergy rights for women in The United Methodist Church in 2006. Slack invited her colleagues to share their stoles, which she assembled into an altar cloth.
When Calhoun retired, Slack was on her own as the worship arts designer for Holston Annual Conference as well as Ministers Convocation. Many Holstonians can name a favorite Slack visual or two from the past two decades. Slack (whose mother is an artist) has favorites, too:
“I’ve often liked many of the mission offerings [displays] because they feel a little more fun and creative.” She recalls altar settings with children’s backpacks, children’s books, and paintings by the children at First United Methodist in Maryville. Slack was also pleased the year she painted a backdrop showing the words, “Jesus is Good,” written in the cracked mud of Uganda. The painting was based on a photo taken by Becky Hall during a mission trip in Africa.
The same year, Slack created a wall on the stage that was disassembled by General Conference delegates and rebuilt into a communion table. The act happened during a “Service of Unity” that was meaningful for many as they navigated a divisive time in the denomination.
At the most recent Holston Annual Conference, participants were awed by two line drawings on the altar marking the 70th anniversary of the ordination of women and the 30th anniversary of the order of deacons.
“The lines contain the names of all of Holston Conference’s ordained clergywomen from 1976 (when Holston’s first woman, Brenda Carroll, was ordained) until today,” Slack explained in a June 2 Facebook post that was reshared many times. “I also included Sallie Crenshaw who, in 1936 was the first African-American woman ordained as a local elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the East Tennessee Conference.”
The second drawing included all the female deacons ordained in Holston Conference. In Lake Junaluska, Holston clergywomen flocked to the altar to find their own names among the 250 in Slack’s handwritten creations.
As the senior pastor begins a new year in ministry, her plate is full. She is chair of Holston’s Commission on the Status and Role of Women and on the executive board for Holston’s Board of Ordained Ministry.
With about 450 in average worship attendance, her congregation at First United Methodist Church and its staff are busy. So is their senior pastor, who is also a wife to a musician and mother to two daughters, ages 15 and 12.
“This church does what I think a church is supposed to do, the way they work on connecting together but also out in the world, offering a place for everybody,” Slack says. “Also, if you can’t come here, we come to you. It has been the best example of a church, and I didn’t want to leave that.”
When Slack first told her daughters, Rachel and Ruth Ann, about her new appointment as senior pastor of their church, “I wasn’t sure if they would understand the gravity of it all,” she says tearfully. “And they did, which was shocking to me. They understood, and they were really proud.”
Holston Conference includes United Methodist churches in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and North Georgia, with main offices in Alcoa, Tennessee. Sign up for a free email subscription to the Holston Messenger.
Reprinted with Permission from the Holston Annual Conference
Author: Annette Spence
Annette Spence is a faith writer based in Knoxville, Tennessee. She previously served as a Holston Conference staff member and Editor of "The Call" (2000-2025).