Our Executive Director

Steve Blakemore, Ph. D. is the executive director of Third Millennium Faith. He is both a philosopher and a clergyman by academic training and professional experience. The two are directly related for him: "Philosophy is a passionate search for truth that, followed to its conclusion, must bring us to God by grace. The ministry of a pastor is to enable God's Church to find and encounter the One who is the Truth."

Steve's educational background is rich and varied: Asbury College (A.B., Religious Studies); Asbury Theological Seminary (M.Div.); Wake Forest University (M.A., Theology and Ethics); and The University of Tennessee (Ph.D. Philosophy). Professionally, he has extensive experience as a United Methodist Church pastor, serving churches in Tennessee and Virginia. He also served for several years as Chaplain at a United Methodist college.

Steve currently teaches, in addition to his work executive director of TMF, as an adjunct professor at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He teaches courses in the area of philosophical theology, apologetics, Christian ethics, and practical theology. As a professor, his courses are much sought out by students. Beyond his teaching, he has preached to and taught a variety of audiences in Pastors' Schools, Youth Conferences, College Conventions.

Steve has committed a large amount of his creative energy to beginning and developing ministries that are focused on reaching young people and serving the economically disadvantaged. These endeavors reveal two of the great passions of his life: bringing youth and young adults to life-changing faith in Christ; and serving the poor in the name of Christ. He is co-founder of "Resurrection", an annual winter youth convention held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Each year over 12,000 young people and their counselors from the southeastern United States attend this convention, which is focused on evangelism and the call to radical discipleship. Also, he is the founder of "W.O.W. Week" a ministry of Worship, Outreach, and Witness with youth from the Eastern United States to the poor of Monroe County, Tennessee.

Steve is author of many published articles and scholarly papers, he has written both for the Church and its laity and pastoral leadership, as well as the Academy and its professors. He writes a regular monthly column under the by-line "Third Millennium Faith" for the journal "Metro Christian Living. Currently he is working a two book-length projects.

Steve is deeply interested in "ideas," because he knows that "ideas have consequences" (as Dostoyevsky teaches us in his novels.) He knows that his calling as a Christian philosopher is to think long and deeply about both the "Faith delivered once to all the saints," as well as the ideologies that shape contemporary culture. The purpose of it all: to help the Church more fully understand, embrace, live, and proclaim the Gospel of our Lord.