Wayne Herring was a beloved teaching elder and founding father of the PCA who served as a pastor, church planter, and pulpit supply during his five decades of pastoral ministry. He concluded his ministry by serving as a church relations officer with the PCA Administrative Committee (AC).

Since his death on March 11, 2025, many have joined the AC in thanking God for Herring’s life, ministry, and impact in the churches he served and the denomination at large. Though many mourn his passing, they also celebrate the many ways God used him in the life of the church. Those who sat under Herring’s ministry remember him as a man who loved God and his church and gave his whole heart to following him.

A native Mississippian, Herring was born on June 13, 1946. He received his undergraduate degree from Mississippi State University and attended seminary at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson. Following seminary, Herring served congregations in South Carolina and Forest, Mississippi before planting Faith Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

He eventually moved back to Jackson to teach at RTS before serving as pastor at Woodland Presbyterian Church in Hattiesburg and Faith Presbyterian Church in Brookhaven. Herring was then called to serve on the pastoral staff at Independent Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee, before planting St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Cordova. After it was organized, Herring accepted an opportunity to serve as assistant pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville.

The final call of his pastoral ministry was serving as a church relations officer with the AC. In this role, Herring worked with churches to connect them with the resources and support provided by the AC.

Paul Kooistra, a colleague at the AC and close friend to Herring, remembers, “Wayne was very energetic. He was always moving fast. He was thankful for the things God had already done and was always anticipating more and wanted to be a part of that work. What I appreciate more than anything else was that whenever we got together, we were focused on Christ and how what we and the institutions around us were doing would more and more reflect Christ’s kingship”.

Additionally, Herring spent the later years of his life in a consultancy with James “Bebo” Elkin to help recruit and place pastors in churches and ministries across the PCA. As Elkin puts it, “He loved God, and God loved him. That was Wayne. Wayne was a spiritually-minded guy, and dear to me.”

One of Elkin’s earliest memories of Herring was when Herring shared his testimony at a beach bonfire shortly before the two men started seminary. Elkin said, “The Lord used him in that moment to give me the confidence to know I didn’t need a radical testimony for it to be a good testimony.”

Herring and his first wife, Joyce, had five daughters. After Joyce passed away in 2014, God used Elkin to introduce Herring to another companion for life, his second wife Dena.

Herring leaves behind a legacy as a pastor, husband, father, and friend marked by love and faithfulness. God used him in many ways, and the fruit of his labor will continue to be felt for years to come.