"I'm a very pro-Jackson guy," John Hugh Tate says. "I love the history, the diversity and the artistic community. It is such a green city, just aesthetically beautiful."

Founder and lead pastor of Bellwether Church in Fondren, Tate is a native Mississippian, but has studied in France and Australia and worked as a legislative assistant for then-Rep. Roger Wicker and as a press assistant for Sen. Thad Cochran in the late 1990s. He returned to Mississippi in 2004.

Tate, 36, grew up in New Albany. He graduated from Ole Miss in 1997 with degrees in English and French. He worked on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., from 1997 to 1999, and it was there, while participating in a small Bible study group with the Senate chaplain, that he first felt the call for the ministry. First, however, he earned a master's degree in international relations from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2000 and then went to Harvard Divinity School from 2001 to 2004.

He met his wife, Linda, while at Harvard, and they married "in the year the Red Sox broke the curse" of Babe Ruth by beating the Yankees (2004 for those of us less familiar with baseball). He and his wife have two young children: Jack, 4, and Logan, 2.

Tate has continued the international portion of his life with mission trips to India and Malawi in southeast Africa to provide clean water for the local population. Most recently, he went to Honduras to provide medical services, build houses and conduct a Vacation Bible School.

"I have a real heart for the world," Tate says.

Tate encourages partnerships across racial and class lines to promote the overall progress and prosperity of the Jackson area. He interned with Mission Mississippi, a Jackson-based group that facilitates conversation for people of different denominations and races, and is a board member for Transformation Jackson, a ministry that connects churches with one another and with other resources that help them complete Jackson-based mission projects.

But why start a new church? "There are still many unchurched people in the Jackson metro area," he says. "That means we need churches that are better at reaching those (who don't go to church) and more churches that are willing to do things differently such as community outreach.

"Bellwether is a different church. We want our church to focus on a very different Sunday morning worship experience," Tate says, adding that Bellwether uses multimedia and music to engage congregants, and applies the Bible to today. "I believe the call of my life is to creatively communicate the gospel through the church."