Gentle Spirit Christian Church
Staff & Leaders

  • Alyce Keener

    Alyce Keener
    Vicar

    A founding member of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Alyce serves as the Vicar of Education and treasurer, teaching and preaching from the pulpit and during weekly meditations, and is the leader of the church's Bible study curriculum. She has served as chair of the congregation and completed the church's deacon training as part of her discernment that the diaconate was not her calling.

  • Rev. Paul M. Turner

    Rev. Paul M. Turner
    Senior Pastor

    A native midwesterner who was raised in the United Methodist Church, Rev. Turner has felt a call to pastoral ministry since early childhood. He founded Gentle Spirit Christian Church in 1998 after serving as clergy in the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in Ohio and Atlanta. Since his arrival in Atlanta in 1994, he has been at the forefront of leadership and activism for the LGBTQ+ community and the community at large, volunteering for and serving on the boards of organizations focused on civic engagement, transgender identity, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, health services and mental health. Rev. Turner serves as Editor-in-Chief of Whosoever and is a longtime umpire in the Amateur Softball Association of America, where he has called both slow- and fast-pitch softball games in several divisions and has served as board president for the Southern Crescent Umpires Association. He and his husband, Bill, celebrated their 39th anniversary in June 2021, the same month that the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land, and they legally tied the knot on November 21, 2015.