About our Pastor

Rev. Tessie Mandeville, M.Div., has been ordained with Metropolitan Community Churches since May 2002. She served in ministry in a variety of capacities and churches long before she was ordained, including teacher, lay minister and retreat leader.

Tessie comes to MCC with a particular passion for working with and ministering to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community. In her work, she uses queer, liberation and feminist theologies to help guide herself and the people she serves toward a deeper and fuller liberation. She believes that some of our greatest work in the LGBTQ community involves reuniting our spiritualities and sexualities. She believes that queer people have to go back to the place where they were most wounded in order to do their deepest healing. That place is the Church, and in particular, the Christian Church. When queer people can go back into the Christian Church, authentically and openly, and celebrate the interplay of flesh and spirit, then they will know the meaning of salvation.

Tessie is originally from Charleston, South Carolina, where she was raised as a fundamentalist Southern Baptist and Biblical literalist. Tessie credits her homosexuality as saving her life and saving her from a life that she was never called to lead. Tessie graduated with a B.S. in Psychology and worked as a mental health counselor. Later she migrated to San Francisco, CA, and completed a Masters of Divinity at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA. She has served in a variety of parishes, including churches in Oklahoma City, Guerneville, CA, and San Francisco, CA.

Tessie and her partner, Lisa Heezen, moved to Decatur in December 2006. Tessie began as our senior pastor in January 2007. They are both excited to be here with this wonderful community and look forward to making Georgia their home for years to come.

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