When longtime Redeemer pastor Mike Campbell announced his departure in late 2015, McGowan’s name was immediately on the minds of many congregants as a possible successor. “Elbert preached a sermon before he was voted in, and people were just lit up — it was like electricity,” said pastoral assistant Steve Lanier. “Then he did another sermon Christmas Eve, and I think the response was more of comfort that Elbert was here.

When the Rev. Elbert McGowan Jr., was officially voted in as the new pastor at Redeemer Church, PCA, there were no hanging chads or cries for a recall. Of the quorum of members who heard his sermon in early December and voted on his appointment afterward, every single person in the sanctuary said yes.

That display of confidence came as no surprise to Chandra Crane, a member of the Northeast Jackson church since 2010 and the campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Mississippi College School of Law.

“It’s really special that he was involved in planting the church,” Crane said of McGowan, who will preach his first sermon as pastor on Sunday. “(I am part of) a multi-ethnic and multiracial family. To find a church family with all sorts of ethnicities and cultures has been precious. I think Elbert really embodies that in his life.

“He serves wholeheartedly as pastor, but he has worked as an engineer — he understands what it’s like to be the person in the pew as well as the person in the pulpit. I know that he has worked very hard to ask questions of what the person in the pew is hearing and needing.”

McGowan graduated from Jim Hill High School in 1996 and Alabama A&M University in 2001. He spent three years in Ohio as a mechanical engineer, and it was during that time he met his wife, Karen, a pharmacist. Shortly after their walk down the aisle, McGowan realized God was telling him to return to Jackson and go into the ministry.

“We had been married three weeks,” McGowan said. “And her response was, ‘Wherever you go, I will follow, and wherever God leads us, he will provide for us.’”

The couple moved to Jackson in 2004. They were interested in the possibility of a multiracial, multi-ethnic church in the heart of the city.

McGowan’s parents were one of the first African-American families at Jackson’s Trinity Presbyterian Church. And when Trinity moved from Northside Drive to another location, the door was open. With the remaining Trinity members who stayed behind, McGowan and others helped establish Redeemer.

McGowan interned at Redeemer while studying at Jackson’s Reformed Theological Seminary, and he and Karen launched the Reformed University Fellowship student ministry at Jackson State University in 2007.

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