Jeff Vanlandingham is not the mayor of Lawrenceburg, but I’m pretty sure he could be if he wanted.
I recently sat at a table close to the door of Co-Work Coffee Shop with Jeff and he knew every person who entered. There was a greeting, a handshake, a question about family, or school, or a job, or something else, and then we’d resume our conversation until the door opened again. People came and went, and the process repeated itself for 90 minutes.
Jeff has been pastor at First Baptist Church of Lawrenceburg for 16 years, so in a way it seems obvious that he should know a lot of people in a small town over that period. But Lawrenceburg isn’t that small, and it’s growing.
After interviewing one of his church members for a story, we went to lunch elsewhere in town. Again, a handshake, a greeting, a question, a comment, a joke, a word of encouragement with people walking past our table. Some might call him Mayor Vanlandingham, but that doesn’t fit him. He’d rather be known simply as pastor. [Read more…]


