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Butler Family
Pastor Butler
Pastor Butler
Pastor Butler

OUR SERVANT LEADER

The Reverend Don Darius Butler, a cosmopolitan clergyman with twenty-five years in Christian service, lives his vocation in pastoral ministry, justice activism, and child advocacy. 

Born in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, his religious formation was influenced by Pentecostalism, African Methodism, and Anglicanism. He professed his hope in Christ and received baptism at the Mission Baptist Church of Nassau, where he tested his vocation, and was licensed and later ordained.

Butler holds a baccalaureate summa cum laude from American Baptist College; a divinity degree with honors from Vanderbilt University, where he was a Kelly Miller Smith Scholar and recipient of the Saint James Academy Award for preaching; and a doctorate from Duke University. He obtained Clinical Pastoral Education certification at Norton Healthcare in Louisville, Kentucky.

From 2009 to 2019, Butler led Tabernacle Community Baptist Church of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in vibrant ministries of social impact. The congregation hosted a gun buyback, which took more than 300 weapons off the streets; and opened its doors to the city to lament and address the epidemic of gun violence. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he elevated the community conversation to a national dialogue when he hosted a town hall forum with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton along with mothers whose children were murdered by gun violence. His pastorate at First Missionary Baptist Church of Huntsville, Alabama, from 2019 to 2024, continued a tradition of philanthropy in local and global missions as well as in theological education. He prioritized the flourishing of children and youth in congregational life, leading the congregation to construct theologies of child wellbeing; and worked for racial justice in north Alabama.  

 

His community volunteerism includes chairing the Board of Directors of the Children’s Defense Fund, serving as a board member of So Send I You, an African American global missions initiative, and ministry as a Public Safety Chaplain for the Huntsville Police Department. He has also served as chairman of the Board of Trustees at his alma mater, American Baptist College, and a chaplain for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office. As a passionate advocate for Christian missions, he has led ministry trips to Haiti, Malawi, South Africa, and his homeland. Butler was inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers at Morehouse College in 2016 and the Martin Luther King, Jr. College of Pastoral Leadership in 2018. He is a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and the 100 Black Men of Greater Huntsville. His writings are published in The African American Pulpit; The African American Lectionary; and Walk Together Children: Black and Womanist Theologies, Church, and Theological Education.

 

Reverend Butler is the founding servant-pastor of The Concord Fellowship, a growing intergenerational church plant of Baptist faith and heritage in Madison County, Alabama. He is married to Attorney La Keisha Wright Butler, an alumna of Vanderbilt University Law School and New York University Law School. They are parents of two children, Dahlia and Don junior.

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