Bryan Watson has been in ministry for 42 years. He began ministering while still in school and went on to graduate from Carson-Newman College in 1991 with a degree in history and religion.

He started out serving churches here in East Tennessee before God moved him to the Midwest. Over nineteen years in Iowa and Nebraska, Bryan gave himself to student ministry, with a particular heart for two communities often overlooked — local military families navigating deployment and relocation, and Hispanic families building a life in a new place. He learned there that ministry usually looks like showing up for people in the seasons when everything else in their life is unsettled.

He was later called to missionary work in Alaska, where he served the Athabaskan people as pastor of Northway Community Church for more than five years. Northway is a small village near the Canadian border, hundreds of miles from a city, and the work there was exactly what mission work has always been: living among a people, learning them, and preaching Christ.

In August 2026, Bryan was called to serve as the 43rd pastor of Concord Baptist Church. After forty-two years and four thousand miles, the road brought him back to East Tennessee.
We’re glad he’s here.