Jerry Keeney is a retired pastor/teacher and lifelong student of the spiritual and historical forces that shape families, persons, and communities. He was born and grew up in Bourbon, MO, which lay in the Eastern Ozark Border region where both paternal and maternal ancestors settled in the mid-nineteenth century. His early education in Bourbon’s public schools continued through liberal arts and theological studies, primarily in Baptist institutions, and extending through Methodist-related and Catholic settings, cultivating an ecumenically orientated ministry grounded in contemplative practice.
Keeney served for more than five decades in pastoral leadership of congregations in the Midwest, Midsouth, and Southeast, beginning as a youth minister, then becoming a seasoned pastor focusing on the inner life of faith community. In the final phase of his pre-retirement career, Keeney specialized in shepherding congregational transition, serving eleven churches across three denominations—American Baptist Churches USA, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and the United Church of Christ. His ministry has been marked by interfaith collaboration and involvement in community justice through congregation‑based neighborhood organizing, with a contemplative focus in these ministries.
Jerry’s spiritual imagination has been shaped by diverse influences, including several years of periodic training in the distinctive practices of the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., and in an experimental church initiative he helped launch in St. Louis in the late 1970s. Through all these experiences, he has remained anchored by a deep appreciation for wilderness and mountain landscapes. He and his family actively steward their rural family land in Washington County and adjacent Crawford County in Missouri’s Eastern Ozark Border region.
Now Pastor Emeritus of Second Baptist Church in St. Louis—where he served as pastor during the 1980s and 1990s—Jerry continues to lead Bible study and pursue the reflective reading and writing that has long engaged his interest and informed his ministry. His current book, “Let Wisdom Speak,” grows out of decades of research, contemplative practice, and a profound personal journey into the life of his Ozark pioneer great‑great‑grandfather, Job Harman. Job’s recently discovered thirty‑nine original poems illuminate a life that participated in the mid-nineteenth century westward migration, endured America’s Civil War, engaged with the early agricultural populist movement, and witnessed World War I as his life and this war were approaching their respective ends in 1918.
Jerry’s work brings together biography, history, and poetic spiritual memoir, inviting readers into a layered exploration of ancestry, identity, and the enduring spiritual ties between past and present.
