Ben Clements is two minutes older than twin brother Brett. But Brett doesn’t mind.
“That makes me the baby. I get the preferential treatment,” he joked.
As young boys, the Clements twins felt the stirring of God in their hearts.
“Both of us would stack books, stand on them and preach,” Ben said. “We have always admired preachers.”
And while the twins were both called to ministry as teenagers, Brett sensed God’s call first at the age of 13. Ben had “a strong sense of a call to ministry” when he was 15, but he still beat Brett to the pulpit, preaching his first sermon at 18. Brett didn’t actually make his call public until he was 21.
“I guess I resisted God’s tug in my heart for quite a while,” he said.
Today Ben and Brett are known as “the twin preachers of Cherokee Baptist Association.”
Ben is interim pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, Centre, while Brett is pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church, Centre.
Wendell Dutton, director of missions for Cherokee Association, said, “Brett and Ben are warm, friendly pastors. Surprisingly the two churches they serve are less than eight miles apart.”
Brett’s call to New Bethel Baptist came about because Ben was to preach there at a community Thanksgiving service seven years ago. But on the day of the service, one of Ben’s children had to have emergency surgery, so he asked Brett to preach for him.
Shortly afterward, New Bethel’s pastor resigned, and the church asked Brett to serve as pastor. He also works for a cabinetmaker in Rome, Ga. And Ben is a bivocational pastor, too, working at a hydraulics company in Rome.
The twins are also voracious readers. “With both of us being preachers, we have lots of theological discussions, and believe it or not, they aren’t heated,” Ben said.
“Our conversations with each other are either humorous or edifying,” Brett said. “We enjoy listening to the same preachers, and we enjoy reading the same books.”
He added, “We are the most blessed brothers in the world.”
But did growing up as twins present a problem for Brett and Ben?
“I had some early identity crises,” Brett confessed. “Everything was ‘the twins.’”
Ben said, “Every time Brett got into a scuffle, I thought I had to back him up.”
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