Pastor Bob’s Mission: Faith, Art and Community in Clinton 

| January 14, 2026 |

Thanks to Cara Pridemore and the Clinton Courier for the original.
Post-publication Edits and Additions by Bob Blanton.

After serving in the Peace Corps, starting his own business, and working for city, state, and federal governments, 46-year-old Robert Blanton figured there was one thing left to do: answer God’s call to go to seminary.

Blanton said, “Once at a retreat Opal Steinhoff, an 82-year-old church friend, told me this story; she said, ‘When you were back in Knoxville talking about going to seminary, a bunch of old ladies were standing out in front of the church’—she called them “old ladies”—‘when one of them said, ‘Why is he going off to seminary? He’s going to be over 50 years old when he gets out.’ And Opal told her, ‘Well, how old will he be if he doesn’t go to seminary?’”

Now 80, Reverend Robert Blanton, better known as Pastor Bob, wears many hats as pastor of Clinton’s Episcopal Church of the Creator, the founding president of Lutheran Episcopal Disaster Response, and a volunteer board member for the Clinton Arts Council, or the Arts Connection, the Brick Street Players and Main Street Clinton.

Pastor Bob grew up in east Tennessee and obtained his undergraduate psychology degree at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating, he served in Nepal as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, working on rural community development for four years. He then returned to the states to study architecture at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he later served as a probation and parole officer and then worked for the City of Knoxville as Director of Downtown and Waterfront Redevelopment. During this time, he met and married his wife, Joan Eisenhardt, in Atlanta, Georgia, and founded his own design-build business in Knoxville and in Charleston, South Carolina, where their son, Geoff, was born.

It was in Knoxville that Pastor Bob became active in St. John’s Lutheran Church, after helping to negotiate a long-term lease between the Church and the City for a piece of public land as a memorial honoring one of its diseased members.

“They invited us to the dedication service, and, before long, we were at St. John’s every time the doors opened, I was teaching Sunday school, and Pastor Steve Meisenheimer was saying, ‘I really want you to think about going to seminary.’”

In 1993, Pastor Bob and his family moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where, in 1997, he received a Master of Divinity degree from Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. Their first pastoral call was to Trinity Lutheran Church in Southwest Jackson. In the 28 years since answering that call, his family has lived in Clinton, where their son Geoff, who attended public school in Clinton, participated in the High School Band and played trombone and bass in the Attache’ Pit.

Among the significant events of Pastor Bob’s ministry was Hurricane Katrina. In January 2005, Pastor Bob representing the Southeastern Synod of the Lutheran Church worked with the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi to found Lutheran Episcopal Services in Mississippi (LESM). That summer, Katrina hit, and Pastor Bob became the chief operations officer of what became Lutheran Episcopal Disaster Response, working with The Mississippi Case Management Consortium (MCMC) to manage a huge budget from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“All of a sudden, we grew from managing around $100,000 a year to over $3 million, so we really had to get organized,” Pastor Bob said. “Along with working as part of MCMC, we managed three Katrina Recovery Volunteer camps along the gulf coast. In the ensuing years, we hosted over 35,000 volunteers in those camps.”

Under the MCMC umbrella with LESM’s leadership, over 8,500 families impacted by Katrina were moved from temporary housing to permanent housing.

“It was just an incredible time,” he said. “After the storm, we couldn’t even identify street intersections. Where before there had been streets, all we could see was sand. It was amazing. For the longest time, finding our way around was pure guesswork.”

Six years later in 2011, as Chief of Operations, Pastor Bob worked with the Board of Directors to close down Lutheran Episcopal Disaster Response. While their primary focus had been Katrina relief efforts, as the work of LESM became less essential, funds were freed up to support the 15 other case management groups continuing to engage in recovery. Then “COO Bob retired and went home.”

 Pastor Bob said, “I told Joan that I was going to take three months off after that, and she said, ‘Well, I hope you plan on getting back to work at some point,’” His wife’s wish was fulfilled when he ran into Bill and Nancy Schmit at the Clinton Kroger, and they asked him if he fill in on alternating Sundays part-time pastor at the Episcopal Church of the Creator. By early 2012, the congregation decided to call Pastor Bob, and he began working there part time and has remained there ever sincThrough Creator’s traditional support of the Arts Council of Clinton’s Fall Taste of the Arts Festival, Pastor Bob became involved with that organization. In the past year it has begun to do business as the Clinton Arts Connection; and he now serves as its president. He also serves on the boards of the Brick Street Players, Clinton’s theater group, and Main Street Clinton community revitalization organization. His wife, Joan Blanton, PhD, shares his passion for service, through her work with Habitat for Humanity Mississippi Capitol Area, the board of the Lakeview Heights neighborhood association and as Adjunct Professor of Urban Design at the School of Architecture of Mississippi State University.

By being a community volunteer, Pastor Bob hopes to contribute to Clinton’s vitality and says, “Ideally, Clinton would have its own Public Art Gallery where any local artist could showcase and sell his or her work. I would love to see a downtown bed and breakfast. I’m committed to restoring the eastern emphasis of the Main Street development along Clinton Boulevard and strengthening our Main Street downtown development partnership with Mississippi College.”

“Joan and I both love small towns; we love the greater possibility of being in relationship with people,” he said. “Life is just richer at this scale, and it’s our relationships in this community that make our lives rich.”

In everything he does, Pastor Bob hopes to enrich community life, nurturing those within their congregation and reaching out beyond.

“Our church is our heart, our home,” he said. “And what really matters is when we go out through those doors into the community. That’s where our lives begin to make a difference – how we interact and care for other people. That’s our larger vocation, our larger calling.”

More than three decades after entering seminary, Pastor Bob is still following what he considers his calling to live out faith within community saying, “It’s never too late in life to build something meaningful.”