Garland F. Pierce

Senior Program Director for Education and Leadership Ministries

The Rev. Garland F. Pierce is Senior Program Director for Education and Leadership Ministries of  the National Council of Churches USA.

Pierce most recently has served as NCC Associate General Secretary for Education and Leadership Ministries. His new office was created as a result of a restructuring of the Council.

Garland F. Pierce has been active in the leadership of the World Council of Churches. In 1995, he joined the staff of the WCC U.S. Office in New York.

His travels during his tenure as a member of the WCC staff, and later as an AME delegate and member of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, included meetings in Brazil, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Tonga, Cuba, Greece and elsewhere.

Before he joined the WCC U.S. Office, Pierce was Youth Minister at Greater Bethel AME Church in Nashville from 1994-1995. He was a curriculum Resource Specialist in the AME Department of Christian Education in Nashville from 1993-1995.

Pierce holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Furman University, Greenville, S.C., and the Master of Divinity degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and he is a Ph.D student at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, Calif. He was interim director of the Claremont McNair Scholars Program in 2002. Pierce served as Youth Minister of First AME Church, Pasadena, Calif.

Pierce joined the National Council of Churches staff in 2003 as associate director of the Education and Leadership Ministries Commission.

His responsibilities then included program ministry administration and planning, program interpretation, advocacy for Christian education, leader development and ecumenical formation, staff support for the NCC Inclusiveness and Justice Standing Committee, and staff support to NCC General Assembly Caucuses, Young Adult, Racial/Ethnic, and Historic Black Churches.