Our Staff

Patrick Womack, Senior Pastor

Patrick and Kathy Womack are excited to serve at Bay Presbyterian Church. They have been married and serving together for over 27 years.

A native of Haywood County, North Carolina, Patrick grew up in the Hazelwood Presbyterian Church where he was baptized, came to faith in Jesus, and was called into the Gospel ministry. As a member he sang in the choir, served on the Board of Deacons, taught Sunday School and, in 1986, having been called to the Gospel ministry, preached his first sermon. Kathy is a native of Danville, Virginia where she was raised in a Christian home and came to know the Lord.

Patrick is a graduate of Western Carolina University and Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson Mississippi. During seminary he preached weekly at the Cuba Presbyterian Church in Cuba, Alabama and during his senior year he met Kathy. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Kathy earned a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy at Reformed Seminary.

In 1992, Patrick accepted a call to pastor the Westview Presbyterian Church in Mt. Holly, North Carolina and he and Kathy were married there on March 13, 1993, during what the Weather Channel has called “The Blizzard of the Century.” Patrick next served as the lead pastor of Carolina Presbyterian Church in Locust, North Carolina, from 1996 until 2010. During his ministry there, the church completed a major expansion of its facilities and organized Carolina Christian School, a fully accredited K through 12 school that also includes a preschool. In 2010, Patrick became the pastor of his home church in Waynesville, North Carolina and served there until accepting the call to Bay Presbyterian Church in 2020.

In addition to his pastoral responsibilities, Patrick is a member of the Committee on Mission to the World, the global missions agency of the Presbyterian Church in America, which oversees the work of missionaries and national partners in some 80 countries. He also is on the board of Christ’s College in Taipei, Taiwan.

Patrick and Kathy are blessed with two adult children. Their son Joe, also a pastor, and his wife Faith have two sons, Winchester, and Sutton, and they live in Kingstree, South Carolina. Their daughter Sarah is completing a degree in Christian counseling and is married to Hunter Wood. They live in Waynesville.

John Anderson, Founding Pastor of Bay Presbyterian Church comes from a tradition of Presbyterian pastors. His great grandfather (Milton Moses Kilpatrick) was a church planter in California in the early 1900s. His grandfather (Willis Kilpatrick) pastored churches in Newburgh, New York and Greenfield, Ohio. An uncle was a Presbyterian pastor in Idaho. John graduated from Furman University in 1976 with a B.A. in Humanities. He started seminary at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS where he also was an assistant to the founding pastor of Pear Orchard Presbyterian Church in greater Jackson, MS. John finished seminary at Westminster’s exclusive (read – short lived) Florida program while on staff at Spanish River Church in Boca Raton, FL. From Seminary John started a church in Phoenix, AZ - Calvin Presbyterian Church (OPC). He left Phoenix to make his fortune in Naples, FL in 1986, starting a couple of businesses and getting his MBA degree. Having failed to make a fortune he re-entered the ministry in 2000 as the interim pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Naples. He served off and on at Covenant for 4 ½ years before departing. In February of 2005, the Presbytery hired John to do church planting in South Lee County. Bay Presbyterian Church is the flagship of that effort. John continues in that ministry aided by his helpful wife, Carey, and with the encouragement of his growing family, their son Luke and his family, Theresa, Clayton, and Knox Anderson, and their daughter Paige and her husband Jeff Rothblum.

Rev Dr. Greg Poland, Assistant Pastor, was born in Virginia, growing up and living in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota and Florida. Having received a call to ministry from the Great Physician, he did his seminary studies at Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) in Glenside, PA (2018-2022) where he completed a Master of Arts in Theological Studies and serves on the Board of Trustees at WTS. He received his medical degree from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and completed his residency at the University of Minnesota/Abbott-Northwestern program, and advanced post-graduate course work at the Mayo Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. He is a physician-scientist and the Mary Lowell Leary Emeritus Professor of Medicine and a Distinguished Investigator at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota since 1988, specializing in internal medicine and vaccinology. He was elected President of the Defense Health Board and appointed by President George W. Bush, serving two terms, and was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service by Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – the highest civilian award given by the Department of Defense. He has been married to his wife Jean for 46 years and has three children (Caroline, Eric, and Matthew) and two grandchildren (Emmett and Issac). His first love is preaching and teaching God’s Word and his favorite Bible verse is Romans 8:28. Rev. Dr. Poland teaches the Adult Sunday School and preaches regularly. His heart is irreversibly gripped by God’s unfathomable grace and love, and he describes himself as truly “lashed to the mast” of God’s Word.