October 25, 2023
By: Bill Conger
Middle Tennessee native Dan Coe is the new Senior Pastor at Alexandria First Baptist Church. While Coe grew up in Lebanon, Tennessee, returning to near his roots was a bit of a culture shock, especially after serving in Israel for the last several years.
“Culturally, it’s more different than I thought it would be, and I’m talking about just coming from Lebanon,” Coe said. “Now granted, you need to remember there is still a major part of me that’s been formed by my time overseas. And so there are going to be some significant cultural differences from overseas to here. But even from Lebanon and other parts of the Mid-State, this is just a different pace of life and ministry than what I have been used to.
“[Alexandria] is such a loving community, and I have received such a warm welcome from the church. People are going the extra mile again and again for my family, to help position us well to flourish here. We don’t take that for granted, so none of the other things are negatives.”
Coe, his wife, Julia, and four children had taken a break from their ministerial work in late 2021. At that time, they were uprooted from the Middle East when Julia, at that time 32 years old with a new baby, received an alarming diagnosis of breast cancer. The Coes returned to Tennessee within a week of the diagnosis, arriving in late-October 2021. In early 2023, well over a year into the breast cancer battle, the family made the decision not to return overseas.
Growing Up In Middle Tennessee
Coe’s youthful years started on a solid path. He grew up in a loving Christian home with two brothers. His dad, who served on staff at a church in Mt. Juliet in the early ’90s, baptized Coe at age 8. But by the time he was 12 years old, he began to rebel.
“I threw myself into the party lifestyle, which ultimately led to addiction,” Coe admits. “At one point all the fun kind of stopped. Then, I was just in bondage to the drugs. But I often tell people it was as much an addiction to a lifestyle as it was to a chemical substance.”
By age 22, he had hit rock bottom. He lost his girlfriend and the good-paying job that supported his addiction.
“I was not even able to enlist in our armed forces, some four million strong. They wouldn’t even allow me to come on board because I had some pending misdemeanor offenses at that time. You talk about being down in the dumps at 22, wondering ‘what in the world has happened in my life, what’s happened to these past 10 years? What have I done?’”
He voluntarily admitted himself into a drug rehabilitation facility in Dickson, TN, and that’s when he began to seek the Lord.
“I had taken with me a Bible that my mom had given me at my 14th birthday that probably just was caked with dust,” Coe recalls. “I remember going to the reading plan at the back of that NIV Student Bible, and it started off with the Gospel of Luke. And I remember reading about Elizabeth being barren, and about the Lord visiting her and granting her a child. And that whole story just gripped me with hope. Now, I didn’t know anything about John the Baptist or his prophetic significance. I didn’t know any of that stuff. But I knew that there was hope. As I kept flipping through that reading plan, I encountered Christ himself, and eventually I arrived at the cross. I began to undergo significant change even in those few weeks of inpatient rehab. Regeneration took place and I was born again. Man, he just gave me such a hunger for His Word, and a desire to minister.”
From Coe’s earliest years in the faith, God supplied opportunities for service and leadership in different ministries. Coe’s work has included ministry in halfway houses and jail ministries; college ministry leadership; church planting among unreached people groups; and work as a Family Ministry Coordinator alongside his wife.
“I just fell in love with doing ministry and fell in love with Jesus. I love to serve Him. I always loved to be involved in the ministry of the Word of God in whatever form it took.”