Graduate Profile: Micah Perry, BDiv

 My name is Micah Perry, and I was born in 1990 in Birmingham, Alabama, the oldest of three children to my devoutly Christian parents, Clyde and Janie Perry. My family faithfully attended a local Southern Baptist church until my father sensed his family needed more spiritual nourishment than what was being supplied there. We left that church in the summer of 1999 and after a brief time of searching were led to Dominion Baptist Church. Dominion is Reformed in their doctrine, holding to the 1689 2nd London Baptist Confession. Mark Liddle had been ordained as the pastor less than a year prior to our joining their fellowship.

The Liddle family had four daughters at that time and our families became best friends. Their third daughter, Rebekah, asked me to marry her in the backyard of the church when I was ten and she was five. I responded, without a bit of sincerity, “I’ll think about it.” But I didn’t think about it, because I was more interested in being the bad boy at church.

I was proud, arrogant, and looked down on others. The Lord began to break me down through the preaching of the Word, showing me more and more of how wretched I am. On August 12, 2007, I repented of my sins and asked God to forgive me and save me. I went through a study of the 1689 Confession with Pastor Liddle, followed by baptism and church membership on December 30, 2007.

Upon graduating from high school the following year I went to work at a local Christian bookstore. I wasn’t much of a reader however, and it took a near-death experience in 2011 with some deadly tornadoes to make me serious about pursuing holiness, and knowledge of the Scriptures. I began to gather books and to read as much as I could. The Lord graciously began to make me a more serious student of His Word.

Pastor Liddle knew of my studies and asked me to preach my first sermon on a Wednesday night in July of 2011. It was a euphoric experience for me! I was excited to share what I had learned from God’s Word. However, the thought of ministry remained in the back of my mind as, at that time, I was intent on pursuing writing and recording music. One day in November 2012, I was trying to artfully phrase my theology through music when I felt a strong urge to put away writing songs and to begin writing sermons.

I studied with Pastor Liddle privately for a year, praying and seeking to discern if I was called to the ministry. With encouragement from Pastor Liddle, I enrolled in Reformed Baptist Seminary in November 2013. I chose RBS because they gave me the opportunity to study from home while also working. Their core values, their adherence to reformed doctrine, their flexibility with my schedule, and their affordability were all attributes that made them a clear choice for my studies. An added benefit for me was the fact that I already knew many of the faculty through my work at the Christian bookstore. The time I have spent under the teaching of RBS has been challenging, illuminating, and instructive. By God’s grace, since July 2011, I have preached over one hundred sermons in churches in Alabama, South Carolina and Belize.

In 2016, I took Rebekah Liddle out to the church backyard and I asked her the same question she had asked me almost seventeen years earlier. Thankfully she gave me a different answer than I had given her. We were married on June 24, 2017, and hope to start a church plant here in Alabama. I am most grateful for the training that RBS has imparted to me and excited to see what God has in store for us.

Micah Perry