There are places that shape you before you’re old enough to know they’re shaping you.
Franklin Road Baptist Church is one of those places for me.
I grew up Catholic attending St. Rose in Murfreesboro — but my mother would allow the Franklin Road bus ministry pull up to our house on Sunday mornings and take me to church.
Kenny Chesney has a song called I Go Back — about how certain moments in life get locked inside a song, and every time you hear it, you’re right back there. The smell of the air, the faces, the buses and the old hymns — take me back. Music is no doubt a time machine.
That’s what Franklin Road is for me. Not a song — but a place. A bus ride. A church who had a heart for children that reached past its own walls to find a Catholic kid on a Sunday morning and bring him in anyway.
Some things you carry your whole life. Franklin Road Baptist Church is one of mine.
About Brigadier General (Ret.) E. John “Dragon” Teichert
Brigadier General (Ret.) E. John “Dragon” Teichert is one of America’s most decorated and faith-driven military leaders — a man who flew combat missions in an F-15E Strike Eagle, tested the legendary F-22 Raptor as an experimental test pilot, and ultimately rose to serve as the Senior Defense Official and Defense Attaché to Iraq, advising the United States Ambassador at one of the most strategically critical posts on earth.
A native of Port Angeles, Washington — a small town on the northwestern tip of the country — Teichert grew up watching Top Gun as an eighth grader in a local theater, and it cemented a dream that would define his life.  After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, he entered the United States Air Force as an F-15E combat pilot.
For more information on Franklin Road Baptist Church visit them at https://franklinroadbaptist.org/our-purpose/
