Todd Greenlee from Cullman currently pastors at Old Zion Church in Nauvoo, Alabama. He started preaching when he was 21 years old. He had initially attended the University of North Alabama to pursue accounting until he found his calling.
“I was 20 years old. I was going to college to get a degree in accounting,” Greenlee elaborated. “I thought that was good, easy. I did well in high school, but got to college and figured out quickly that I did not like that. I didn’t know what to do with my life.”
Greenlee said he imagined this for himself and said, “This looks like it makes money and it looks like I’m going to go this way. I hadn’t considered what God had in store. I had never asked those questions.”
Greenlee went on to pursue education instead of accounting. He found this was a better fit. He took a year off for school and worked as a summer school teacher. Eventually, after that year off of school, he also began pursuing computer information technologies. The university, shortly after Greenlee started the courses and took a liking to them, got rid of the program entirely.
“In the midst of all this I was more involved in church and was pursuing coaching,” Greenlee went on.
Not long after, he was asked to teach a class at Highland Park Baptist. He was unsure of what this would start for him, but took the opportunity.
“A few weeks following this I broke down,” he said. He didn’t know where his life was heading and called his mother and Sunday school teachers to give him direction. He met with them a few days later and they came to the conclusion that he was being called to ministry. Twenty-one year old Todd Greenlee went to church that following Sunday and was approached by the pastor and told he would be preaching that Wednesday.
“We ran about 600 people on Wednesday nights,” Greenlee said. “So I skipped class the next two days trying to work up a sermon. Early Wednesday morning I looked over what I had and thought, ‘This is absolute garbage. There isn’t a coherent thought here.’”
Greenlee said he sat down with his Bible and prayed for God to help him.
“That was the most clear voice of God I have ever heard. Thoughts started to flood in so fast that I had to ask God to slow down,” he laughed.
From there he accepted a youth pastor position at Highland Park Baptist in Muscle Shoals, which is now Redemption Shoals, and has since pursued ministry. Greenlee currently pastors at Old Zion Church in Nauvoo, Alabama. He has been there for roughly two years and focuses on exegetical exposition preaching style.
“Exegetical comes from exegesis and it means ‘to draw from.’ It’s opposed to eisegesis, which is ‘to put into,’” Greenlee explained. “I explain this like going to a well. If I go to a well and lower a bucket, whatever is in that well is going to be in that bucket. I am going to draw from the scripture and what it says. Eisegesis is more popular nowadays. Preachers will write a sermon to address what’s going on around them and find scripture to back it up. That can be problematic, but that’s the extreme form of eisegesis.”
He continued, “If you go up to that well and say, ‘I know this well has Dr. Pepper in it’ then I poor a bunch of Dr. Pepper in it and pull it out I am getting out what I am putting into it. That’s eisegesis.”
To hear Greenlee preach in person, visit Old Zion Church at 1463 Old Zion Road in Nauvoo. Sunday school starts at 10 a.m. and worship at 11. All are welcome.
