The Reverend Dr. Heather Entrekin began her ministry as our Senior Pastor on September 11, 1999. She previously served at Prairie as Minister of Small Groups and Older Adults.

Heather grew up in Medina, New York, where her father was an American Baptist pastor. She graduated from Bucknell University in 1972 with a B.A. in Japanese studies. In 1981 Heather felt God's call to become a minister at a church service when a woman served as the guest preacher. "Suddenly it occurred to me that God was calling my name, and that maybe I should take a seminary course or two to figure out what it meant."

Heather moved to the Kansas City area from Chicago where she had been the administrative head of the Christian Legal Society and an active member of an innovative inner city congregation, LaSalle Street Church. She took a job with Central Baptist Theological Seminary as Director of Public Relations and began work on her M.Div. degree in Theology, which she completed in 1986.

She served as pastor of Centerville Community Church, as interim pastor of Grandview Baptist Church, and as adjunct faculty at Central before coming to Prairie Baptist in 1996. She received her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Kansas in 1999. Her dissertation is entitled "Community Through Divergence: Metaphors of a Multicultural Church."

In 1988, Heather married Peter Stover, and, in a most uncommon honeymoon, they went to China for two years, where they served as English language teachers through American Baptist International Ministries and the Amity Foundation. Peter is an environmental engineer and an active member at Prairie.

With regard to her ministry at Prairie, Heather says, "This world desperately needs Christians who practice and preach a love for God which sends us out to love our neighbors in ways which are difficult, uncomfortable and risky. Our world needs churches which demonstrate in the diversity of their makeup and worship the reality of a loving, reconciling relationship with God and one another. If we do not, who will?"

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