Dr. Jeff Fugate
Dr. Jeffery J. Fugate became the Pastor of the Clays Mill Road Baptist Church in May of 1991. There were 18 people his first service as pastor. The church has grown an average of 100 members per year for twenty years. God is dynamically using Dr. Fugate in leading the church to record attendance, to start new out-reach ministries, and in helping his church members experience personal revival and Christian growth. During these years the church has started Commonwealth Baptist College, Clays Mill Road Baptist Academy and many other ministries.
When Dr. Fugate was a young boy, God led his father, Sam Fugate, to start the Bible Baptist Church in Hazard, Kentucky. There was tremendous opposition to the work, but God blessed that ministry in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky in a marvelous ways. The church was setting records for attendance and salvations for any church in that region. Many were called to full-time service and are still in the ministry today. Then in 1983 cancer invaded Sam Fugate’s body when he was only 38 years of age. He went to heaven in 1985 at the age of 40. The church called Jeff Fugate to become pastor at the age of 21. He pastored there for five years, and God continued His wonderful blessing on the work. Then in 1991, God led Dr. Fugate to leave that thriving work to become pastor of Clays Mill Road Baptist Church in Lexington.
Also, after the home-going of Dr. Wally Beebe, Dr. Fugate became the editor of the Church Bus News, now titled as Christian Growth Magazine, and regularly conducts regional Church Growth conferences as well as the National Church Growth Conference. Dr. Fugate is also preaches a television program on WLJC. Dr. Fugate and Clays Mill Road Baptist Church have recently been instrumental in starting over fifty new churches in Kentucky and other states. Dr. Fugate has authored several books and preaches regularly in national conferences.