Retired Alabama pastor Corey reviews 46 years of ministry, looks to future

I could be preaching every day if my health allowed me,” said John Corey, who has spent almost 46 years in ministry in Alabama and across the nation.
   
Corey’s health may have slowed him down physically, but his voice still rings true when it comes to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. 
   
He has served as pastor for 19 Southern Baptist churches, the majority in Alabama, and vowed to remain a man of God who preaches from “a global standpoint, not a local standpoint.”
   
Born in Goodway in Monroe County and raised by Christian parents, Corey was 14 when he made a decision for Christ at Enon Baptist Church, Atmore. 
   
As a young man, he worked at the nearby Vanity Fair Mill and helped his father herd cows on an open range at their home. 
   
On Sunday mornings before church began, Corey remembers sitting on his horse out in the middle of a field and meditating. That’s when, he said, he began to feel an awesome sense of something related to God.
   
He, however, fought the call to the ministry several times. Each time, Corey would promise that if God would allow him to live until Sunday, then he would go before the church and surrender to the ministry. 
   
In March 1961, he finally fulfilled his promise, following an event that Corey calls the greatest thing that has ever happened to him apart from his salvation experience. 
   
At midnight for three nights, Corey awakened from his sleep with joy. He said he looked around and saw a multitude of people from every nation all reaching toward him. 
   
From that point on, Corey turned to God for direction and vowed to preach so that people would hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. 
   
People had been praying for him to make this decision. In fact, his mother had been praying about it but didn’t mention it to Corey because she knew that God was in control.
   
Corey’s earliest opportunity in the ministry came while still a student at Clarke Memorial College in Newton, Miss., in the early 1960s. He was called to his first church as pastor, eventually serving five churches in the county. 
   
Corey went on to attend Mississippi College in Clinton, Miss., — commuting back and forth to his church — and graduated from William Carey College in Hattiesburg, Miss.
   
His longest tenure came at Parkway Baptist Church, Mobile, where he served for five years. Hurricane Frederic, which passed through in 1979, destroyed the building but as Corey recalled “the church was still there.” 
   
During the cleanup and rebuilding process, he ministered to 18 contractors from Leeds and Carrollton, Ga. 
   
In his largest church, Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, Creedmoor, N.C., near the Virginia-state line, Corey said people were open to hearing and receiving the gospel like he had never experienced in a church before. 
   
When he would preach revivals, the church’s five buses would bring people from all corners of the town. 
   
The overflow crowd would sometimes have to stand in the hall or outside the church to listen to him preach.
   
Corey said his ministry was also “influenced by some of the best,” noting Hershel Hobbs, W.A. Criswell and R.G. Lee just to name a few.
   
Corey and his wife, Mildred, now make their home in Monroeville and are members of First Baptist Church, Monroeville.
   
Still preaching, he has not lost his focus on God’s plan for worldwide redemption. 
   
He said that in order to be effective in the ministry, Christians have to be sure of their salvation, sure of God’s call, empowered in the Word and filled with the Holy Spirit. 
   
Following his own call, he teaches the book of Revelation via teleconference on Thursday nights, is a Break-Through consultant for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions Sunday School office and conducts lay evangelism witness training.
   
For all the accomplishments in his years of ministry, Corey is certain of one thing — the credit goes to God. 
   
He said he has no grounds for boasting. “I am nothing but what Christ is within me, and that alone is sufficient for me.”