Clergy and social justice advocate L. K. Pendleton, affectionately referred to as Pastor K, is the Faith Organizing Director for New Georgia Project. She has preached and ministered throughout the United States, Africa, and Panama for faith communities and civic organizations. As Faith Organizing Director at New Georgia Project, she works with faith leaders and faithful people across Georgia to help organize and build political power in their communities. She believes that when you involve communities of faith in doing justice work, we are responding to Jesus’ great commission to go into world and to do what we are called to do as followers of Jesus Christ.
She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University, The Interdenominational Theological Center (The ITC) and Columbia Theological Seminary. At Columbia Theological Seminary her Doctor of Ministry project was influenced by the writings and theology of H. Richard Niebuhr, especially as it is found in his book Christ and Culture. Pastor K’s project gave rise to a manual she wrote for churches entitled A Manual for Preparing Congregations to Receive Pastoral Leadership for a Cross-Racial, Cross Cultural Appointment in the North Georgia Conference of The United Methodist Church—a manual that has been used and is still being used to prepare congregations for accepting diverse pastoral leadership.’
Pastor K accepted her call to ministry early in life and has served both the church and the academy in several capacities. She was ordained an elder in the North Georgia Conference of The United Methodist Church in 2003. During her twenty-two year career in ministry, she has pastored four churches: Central United Methodist Church in Atlanta as an associate (2000-2001), Redemption Community, A United Methodist Congregation in Atlanta as founding pastor, where she was the first African American woman in the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church to charter a congregation (2001-2011), New Prospect UMC in Buford, GA (2011-2013) as senior pastor where she was the first female pastor and first woman of color and St. Mary’s Road UMC in Columbus, GA (2013-2020), where she was the was the first female senior pastor.