Authors

Tony Merida
serves as teaching pastor at Temple Baptist Church, Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

He also serves as assistant professor of preaching at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS). His classes include Expository Preaching, Contemporary Bible Exposition, Preaching Practicum, PhD seminars, DMin seminars, and others. Prior to serving at Temple, Merida was dean of the chapel at NOBTS.

Merida's itinerant ministry includes preaching at various youth, college, and church events, such as Centrifuge, Student Life, Lifeway's National Collegiate Week, Defend the Faith Apologetics Conference at NOBTS, chapels at various institutions, and others. He also teaches overseas at various seminaries such as Kiev Theological Seminary, Ukraine.

Tony and his wife, Kimberly, have five children-Angela, Jana, Victoria, James, and Joshua

Rick Morton
is the discipleship pastor at Temple Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He is married to Denise and they are the parents of Nick and Erick, eight and seven years old. The Mortons are in the process of expanding their family through the adoption of two more children from Ukraine.

Together, the Mortons were a part of cofounding Promise 139, an international orphan-hosting ministry based in Hattiesburg. In addition to local church ministry, Morton has spent more than a decade as a college and seminary professor.

Currently, he serves on the faculty of his alma mater, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS ) as an associate professor of Christian education, and before joining the faculty at NOBTS, Rick taught on the faculties of both Bryan College and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Morton is a frequent youth ministry conference leader and an author with numerous youth ministry publications to his credit.