October 1, 2026
ROSSVILLE, Ga. — For more than 50 years, Keith McLeod served in two very different roles, yet both were marked by the same calling. He spent 20 years in the United States Navy, then 33 years in the pastorate — first for three years at Meldrum Baptist Church outside Savannah, then for 30 years at Boynton Baptist Church in Ringgold. In both, he said, the Lord used him for His glory.
McLeod, now 72, grew up across Georgia and Florida and sensed God’s call to ministry at age 17 while attending Soutel Baptist Church in Jacksonville, where his father was pastor.
“I went down one Sunday and I told my dad, who was the pastor, that I felt like God was calling me in the ministry,” McLeod said. “The following Sunday night he had me preach my first sermon. I did that my whole senior year.”
His first full season of ministry came in the Navy, where he served from 1972 to 1992 as an enlisted chaplain assistant. Without attending seminary, he could not become a commissioned chaplain, but he spent two decades supporting chaplains and ministering to service members. Along the way, he served aboard ships including the USS Independence, the USS Suribachi, and the USS Paul. He also worked at the Pentagon as a flag and speech writer for a two-star admiral commanding the U.S. Southern Atlantic Fleet and took part in navigation tours in South America. He retired in 1992 with full military benefits.
At times, his ministry responsibilities stretched far beyond what might normally be expected of an enlisted man. On one deployment to Athens, Greece, he found himself in an unusual position when the Catholic chaplain became intoxicated and the ship’s captain instructed him to lead both Protestant and Catholic services.
“I said sir, aren't you aware that an enlisted person cannot officiate?” McLeod recalled. “And he says, ‘Well we don't have a choice.’ And I said, ‘I'm not a Catholic, I'm a Southern Baptist. The only thing I can do is go up and have an interdenominational service for both and then I can do communion with both groups’ So that's what I did.”
On smaller ships without chaplains, he was also sometimes asked to lead worship or devotional services. In one such setting, he said, he later preached in a revival service where nine people accepted Christ. Those years helped convince him that he had not run from his calling in the military after all. God had placed him there for a purpose.
When McLeod returned home, the Lord soon opened the door to the pastorate. Between 1992 and 1995, he served Meldrum Baptist Church outside Savannah. He remembers it as a hard but formative season.
“It was a closed end community. Most of the people were set in their own ways. It was definitely a spiritual boot camp,” McLeod said.
A church member once told him that if he could pastor Meldrum, he could pastor any church. McLeod said those years taught him to stay focused on the Word and helped shape the way he preached. He moved away from topical sermons and toward verse-by-verse exposition. In his first two years there, he said, the church led the association in baptisms.
In 1996, McLeod was called to Boynton Baptist Church in Ringgold, just a few miles from Chickamauga Battlefield. On his first Sunday, only 39 people were present. He remembers wondering whether God had really brought him there for such a small congregation. But he quickly sensed the Lord at work, and that confidence never left him.
“I said, God, you mean I came here for 39 people. I can't see it,” McLeod said. “But then immediately I saw God working. For those 30 years, there was never a time that I sat down to update a resume to even think about leaving the church. I will say for 30 years I knew God’s spirit was upon me. I knew I was exactly where I needed to be.”
Over time, Boynton also experienced seasons of growth, including years when it led the association in baptisms.
“I don't consider those 30 years that I was ever the CEO of the church,” he said. “I told the church all through the years, on Sunday I'm your preacher, but on Monday through Saturday I'm your pastor.”
That understanding shaped the kind of church Boynton became. McLeod described it as a place of spiritual healing for people carrying pain — whether from family wounds, personal failure, or difficult church experiences. One of the clearest examples came when a former pastor unexpectedly walked into a service on the same morning he had been fired by his church. McLeod said he did not know what had happened, but while preparing to preach, the Lord laid John 21 on his heart — the passage where Jesus tells His disciples to cast their net on the other side and later charges Peter to feed His sheep.
That former pastor came forward that morning. McLeod later learned what had happened and walked with him and his wife for about 18 months as they healed. Eventually, the man returned to ministry and later pastored a church in East Ridge, Tennessee, until his death.
He said he tried to teach the church that when one person hurts, the whole body should hurt. And when someone falls, the church should not crush them further, but come alongside them and help lift them up.
“If somebody's made a major mistake,” McLeod said, “instead of pushing them in the ground, come alongside of them, encourage them and lift them up and bring them back to where they should be in the Lord's work.”
Ricky Thrasher, statewide consultant of associational missions and convention planning for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, said McLeod’s ministry was marked by steady faithfulness.
“Keith has been a faithful preacher of the Word and sharing of the gospel,” Thrasher said. “He has been a wonderful pastor to the people of this church and community. Keith never wavered in his commitment to the Lord.”
Now retired from the pastorate, McLeod says he is not retiring from ministry altogether. He believes the timing of his transition was right, even if the uncertainty of what comes next has not been easy.
“There is no doubt in my mind,” McLeod said. “But I was thinking going into retirement that God was going to put me on his shelf and collect dust and I would never be used again.”
That has not happened. Already, he has received six invitations to preach in area churches. He plans to take a break for several months to be spiritually refreshed, then preach at two homecoming services in October. If a church contacts him about transitional pastoring, he said he would be open to that as well.
In the meantime, he is looking forward to traveling, spending time with his wife Joan, visiting their daughter in Ellijay, and enjoying the freedom to do some of the things he has long set aside. But after a lifetime of ministry in uniform and in the pulpit, McLeod remains at peace knowing he has spent his years where the Lord wanted him.
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