Baptist pastor uses athletic talent to glorify God with strength team

Truth Force Strength Team member Chris Winningham has known team leader and Gadsden pastor Zac Clay for about five years, but they actually met years before, when they were high school students competing against each other in sports.
   
They developed a friendship when Clay became the youth minister at Rainbow City’s Riverbend Baptist Church. It was where Clay answered God’s call to preach and where God would bring Winningham into his life again.
   
God placed Winningham and the four other men who would become members of the strength team in Clay’s life at the same time He rekindled a dream for Clay to use his God-given athletic talent to glorify Him.
   
“[The strength team] is just the perfect way that He’s provided that for me,” Clay said. Winningham said it’s obvious that God is at work in the life of his friend. “He definitely serves as a role model for all the team members,” Winningham said.
   
Clay was saved at age 9, but by the time he reached high school, he said he began to place other gods like sports, football in particular, in front of the Lord. He eventually signed a scholarship to play on the offensive line for the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). “[M]y first year in college, I found out I had a serious problem in both legs that required surgery, and all the sudden, those gods like football were taken away from me,” Clay said.
   
Halloween night 1991, he attended Judgement House at his home church, Gadsden’s Twelfth Street Baptist Church. Clay rededicated his life, putting Jesus back at number one. Then God allowed him to continue his football career at UAB, playing from 1993 until 1994.
   
After graduating with a degree in secondary education, Clay began his teaching and coaching career. He also got involved in youth ministry at Riverbend and wrestled with God’s call to preach for several years. “I was like Jonah,” he said. “I tried to run from it and I knew he was calling me, and he didn’t let me rest until I answered that call.”
   
Clay was licensed to the ministry by Riverbend and later ordained by Twelfth Street.
   
Five years ago, Clay took on the role of bivocational pastor in serving Hopkins Chapel, a mission of Twelfth Street. Established more than 30 years ago, Hopkins Chapel ministers to a large number of people from the nearby Myrtlewood Housing Project.
   
His responsibilities include preaching Sunday services, held at 10 a.m., and general pastoral care. Hopkins Chapel also hosts some Intentional Evangelism events, where Clay brings in the strength team.
   
“He has a real desire to spread the gospel, and he likes the power team approach … and he’s really good at that,” said Twelfth Street Pastor Richard Trader. He said Clay relates well to teenagers and young people, the primary outreach for Hopkins Chapel. 
   
In addition to performing with the strength team and serving as a pastor, he also teaches ninth-grade world history and is an assistant coach for the varsity football team at Gadsden High School.
   
Balancing two jobs with the strength team ministry is not easy, but support from his family — wife, Rachel, and two children, Austin and Rebecca — allows him to do it all.
   
“I have a wonderful, supportive wife … and her and the Lord just help me to balance everything out,” he said.