By Tribune Staff
NASHVILLE, TN — Rev. Roderick Dewayne Belin has been named Pastor/CEO of the Year by the Tennessee Tribune.
This dynamic preacher is equally an extraordinary administrator and Chief Executive Officer. Most recently he served as pastor of Lee Chapel A. M. E Church in North Nashville. With a desire to serve the church at a higher level, he offered his services to become a General Officer in the church worldwide. He became a candidate for President/Publisher of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Sunday School Union and was elected overwhelmingly at the General Conference, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in July 2016.
While pastor of Lee Chapel, he led the congregation in the building of a $3.6 million religious edifice. It is 14,000 square feet with amenities and service centers that will accommodate the congregation and tremendous church growth. With a congregation of nearly 400, the church is poised for significant growth in the midst of three historically black colleges & universities and a historic district of long time North Nashville citizens.
Rev. Belin grew up in Nashville; he is the son of Retired Bishop Henry Belin, Jr. who also served as the President of the AMEC Sunday School Union, before becoming Bishop. Rev. Roderick is clearly following in his father’s footsteps, as a preacher, minister and now General Officer.
After serving in other parts of the country, this dynamic minister returned to Nashville in 2004 and founded Kairos Community AME Church in Antioch. He pastored that new and growing congregation until October 2012. He then became a Presiding Elder for the South Nashville District of the Tennessee Annual Conference overseeing 26 churches.
Rev. Belin is from a family of faith-based individuals; his father, brother, Henry III, and sister, Toni Belin Ingram are all ministers. All three siblings were honored by Morehouse College with the induction ceremony into the Morehouse College of Ministries, a highly touted annual event in Atlanta.
Rev. Belin has served as a pastor and senior level executive at churches throughout the nation. He was Assistant Pastor/Executive Minister of the Greater Allen Cathedral of New York, Jamaica, N.Y. and headed such programs as spiritual instruction, care & counseling for a congregation of more than 17,500, under the leadership of Rev. Floyd Flake, who also served as a U. S. Congressman; created online resources to provide spiritual guidance and produced and recorded the first CD of spiritual hymns and sacred songs in a live concert. He has served as an instructor at Allen University, Columbia SC; he also served as pastor of Williams Chapel AME Church in Orangeburg, SC.
Rev. Belin serves on a number of social and civic boards, committees, and commissions, nationwide. He served as a member of the Tennessee Arts Commission Music Grant Review Panelists, the Religious Life Counsel at South Carolina State University, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Site Director and the Neighborhood Care Team, Chair, Board of Directors , an Interim Case Management Service for the mentally ill.
Rev. Belin’s attributes are numerous, he is an accomplished singer, orator, theologian and activist, with strong leadership & organizational development and restructuring, strategic planning skills, strategic alliance/partnership development abilities, motivator, mediator and conflict resolution expert. He holds a degree in English from Morehouse College and a Masters of Divinity with a concentration in New Testament from Union Theological Seminary in New York.
