GRACE FELLOWSHIP CHURCH - Key Persons
Mark Lykins is the Senior Pastor at Grace Fellowship Church. He has served on staff for over 20 years, serving as Senior Pastor since 2005. Mark is a 1987 graduate of Arkansas Tech University and has attended Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary and Reformed Theological Seminary for post graduate studies.
Mark has served the community of Russellville for many years. He was a manager of Stoby's Restaurant for thirteen years. He has served the Russellville Area Ministerial Association as its president for the past three years. He was past president of the River Valley Disc Golf Association for over ten years and he currently serves on the Civil Service Commission.
Mark's wife Carol is a public school teacher who is a reading specialist with a focus on dyslexia intervention.
Mark and Carol have been married for over thirty years and have four grown children. God has blessed them by allowing them to have lived in Russellville for over forty years in Carol's case and almost forty in Mark's. Lord willing, they are here to stay!
Mark and Carol finished college while attending Grace Fellowship Church. Through participation in various teaching, leadership and ministry opportunities, it became apparent that God had gifted Mark to teach and pastor people. Having been fired from his job in the summer of 2000, it became apparent to Mark that it was time to pursue God's call to pastor people formally as the next step in his career. (There is plenty of opportunity to pastor people while managing a restaurant.)
Mark grew up in the Southern Baptist Denomination, mostly in California, also attended an independent Baptist Church for some of high school and college. His family also has a rich vein of "charismatic" experience. And Mark has received seminary training at a vibrant Presbyterian seminary. This has helped Mark to realize that God is at work in powerful ways in different churches right now today. This is good news and should cause us to expect God to work in our lives in unique ways!