Meet Your Neighbor: Pastor identifies with Jonah

Special to Wesson News

Pastor Ken Dale Sullivan with children at Union Hall Baptist Church. (Photo credit: Special to Wesson News)

            Around town, folk know Ken Dale Sullivan as a former mortician who brought his specialized skills to the public and private sectors, a politician who sought local and state elected offices and a restaurateur.

            Sullivan, who says he identifies with Jonah, the Biblical character who ran away from God’s call and was swallowed by a whale, is now serving Union Hall Baptist Church in Brookhaven as its pastor and looks on his past career life as an attempt to run away from God’s call to his new ministry.

            Born in 1976, Sullivan grew up in the New Zion community outside Crystal Spring, a rural area where he learned hunt and fish and went to kindergarten, elementary, middle and high schools.

            Baseball was a sports passion in his childhood and youth, but he was a better musician than an athlete, and went to Co-Lin on a band scholarship after graduating from Crystal Spring High School in 1995.

            “I studied pre-med at Co-Lin, but interrupted my education there to take a job at Stringer’s Funeral Home in Hazlehurst, where I was fascinated by the work,” he says.  “I returned to Co-Lin, went on to Southern Mississippi University, where I earned a degree in business administration in 2000, and then studied mortuary science at Gulf Coast Community College.”

            Sullivan started 15 years in mortuary jobs at Moore Funeral Service in Hattiesburg, moving to the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in 2006 as the anatomical materials specialist working with surgical students, teachers and researchers in using cadavers.  From 2006-2017, Sullivan also operated Clean Scene, a small business that remediated crime scenes for law enforcement agencies throughout Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

            In 2017, UMMC made Sullivan Associate Director of Environmental Services to oversee 63 workers in its janitorial division, a short-lived job, as it turned out, because UMMC contracted out the division’s work to a private organization later that year.

            “I was offered a job by the private contractor, but I grew up in a family the enjoyed cooking good food and had always dreamed of operating a restaurant.  Things fell into place in 2018, and he opened Dump’s Barbeque in the old Newman’s Liquor Store in Wesson,” Sullivan says.

  Sullivan also ran away from God’s call, pursuing public office twice in elections for the state legislature and Copiah County supervisors.

Five and one-half years after opening Dump’s, however, he finally yielded to God’s call when Union Hall Baptist Church him to become its interim pastor.

            “I knew as a child that I was called to be a pastor,” Sullivan recalls.  “I even preached a sermon on Jonah and the whale when I was three or four years old.at New Zion Baptist Church.  I continued Dump’s while serving as an interim pastor at Union Hall, but closed the doors there in May 2024 for the last time when the church called me to serve full time.”

            The same day he closed Dump’s Sullivan learned another would-be Wesson restaurateur was ready to take over the building – “another sign I made the right decision to pursue the ministry,” he says.

            At Union Hall, Sullivan says he found a “loving congregation” and “I have worked with it to become a praying congregation.”  The response to his pastorate have been marked with Sunday worship services now drawing 70 to 80 persons compared to 30 when he came on board as the interim pastor.

            Sullivan calls his wife, the former Kris Santa Ana, his “partner in ministry.”  He met the sister of Nelson Santa Ana, former pastor at Wesson Baptist Church, in 2012 and married her the same year – “one of my best blessings,” Sullivan says.  She is now a counselor at Utica Elementary School and a former journalist, salesperson and teacher.  They have two daughters – Kenzie, 23, who is married and lives in Colorado, and Mary Grace, 20, a third-year education student at Ole Miss.

What are your hobbies?

I like spending time with family, working on a 1972 Cadillac, fishing and cooking

Are you a reader?

I read the Bible and commentaries.  For pleasure, I read biographies to learn about real people.  Understanding people is what being a pastor is all about.  I recently completed reading Cornbread Mafia – a story about people.

How about music?

When I was in a band, my instrument was the trombone.  I can play the guitar a little bit.  I love to sing and I enjoy listening to all kinds of  music – Christian, country, rock.  I am also an Elvis fan.

Do you go to the theater or movies?

I like ballet.  I enjoy the old gangster movies.  If sports events are theater, I am looking forward to rooting for a new Jackson minor league team following the departure elsewhere of the Mississippi Braves.  I also follow the New York Yankees.

If you won a lot of money in the lottery, how would you spend it?

The one thing I wouldn’t do, unlike many people, is quit my job.  I might buy some land with a pond, where I can fish.

How would you change the world?

That’s what we’re trying to do at Union Hall Baptist Church.  Showing the love of Christ, helping people understand the blood of Christ through which God changes people.