David Haggerty is completing his first full week as the new pastor at Mt. Comfort Baptist Church in Bruce.
The Carroll County native comes from Providence Baptist Church in Carrollton where he served as pastor for 10 years.
“I’ve lived most of my life in Carroll County,” Haggerty said.
Growing up he dreamed of entering the U.S. Navy, continuing a tradition of military service in his family, but he was diagnosed with a heart condition that disqualified him from enlisting.
His grandfather urged him to go to college, so Haggerty graduated from Ole Miss and went to work for a steel fabricator for 10 years.
“At the time, I was in church all the time, but I wasn’t living a Christian disciplined life,” he said.
An international crisis in the steel industry led to some downsizing at his company and Haggerty lost his job.
“I think that was God really humbling me,” Haggerty said. “It was the first time in my life that I felt like I wasn’t in control.”
He turned to his Bible and began reading.
“The Holy Spirit just hit me, ‘without Me all you are is a pile of dirt,’” he said.
Haggerty began feeling a call into the ministry. His next door neighbor was his church pastor, and when he expressed these feelings to him he was asked to substitute for him in the pulpit once Sunday.
“Things just snowballed from there,” he said. “I began lay speaking almost every Sunday.”
“I can’t say I had a desire to be a pastor, but I had a desire to do God’s will,” he said.
Things moved quickly from there and he became pastor of Providence. After a decade there, Haggerty said he began to feel a change was needed.
“I thought I had taken that church as far as I could,” he said. “I felt like they needed a new voice.”
He submitted his resume to the Baptist Association in Jackson and received a lot of correspondence from several churches.
“They all gradually just fell to the side until Mt. Comfort was the one there,” he said.
Haggerty and his wife Donita made the move to Bruce last week. He joked Bruce is a booming city compared to Carroll County.
“There’s one redlight here and we don’t have a redlight at all in all of
Carroll County,” he said.
The couple have two grown sons, Chip, 22, and Hunter, 19, who still live in Carroll County.
“We’re excited about this opportunity here and look forward to meeting all of the people here,” Haggerty said.