Rev. Hammonds serves as the VIP Services Coordinator for the Meeting Management Division of the AME Church Finance Department. A Nashville, Tennessee-native who had lived in four other states before graduating from high school, Rev. Hammonds earned a BBA from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and a M.Div. from Vanderbilt Divinity School. She is a graduate of John A. Gupton College and is pursuing a D.Min. in the Strategic Leadership in Black Congregations cohort at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary and a Certificate in Non-Profit Management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

 

Following a successful and multi-faceted career in consumer lending, Rev. Hammonds answered her call to the preaching ministry in 1996. She was ordained an itinerant deacon in 1999 and an itinerant elder in 2000, both in the Tennessee Annual Conference of the 13th Episcopal District in the AME Church.

 

Rev. Hammonds serves as the treasurer of the Fellowship for Women of Color in Ministry, assistant treasurer for the Nashville Branch of the NAACP, and treasurer for the Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship (IMF), and is the board secretary for Congregational Health and Education Network (CHEN) at Nashville General Hospital. She is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Nu Kappa Omega Chapter. She enjoys traveling and self-identifies as a “foodie.”

 

She is a licensed funeral director in Tennessee, and in 2016, became the assistant editor for The Christian Recorder, the oldest existing periodical published by African-Americans in the United States and the AME Church’s official news organ.

 

Over 22 years, she has served congregations in Columbia, Nashville, and Clarksville, Tennessee. In March of 2018, she was appointed as the senior pastor of her home church, St. John AME Church in Nashville, the “Mother” Church (oldest) of African Methodism in the state of Tennessee. This is an opportunity for which she is most proud and excited!