Teresa Anderson Franklin grew up in Clarkesville, Georgia, and graduated from Habersham Central High School in 1978. She attended college at Georgia Tech and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management degree in 1982. She worked for Southern Bell/BellSouth Corporation in Atlanta from 1982 to 1996, and Standard Telephone Company in Cornelia from 1996 to 1998, in the capacity of Telecommunications Engineering or Marketing Management. Teresa sensed a call to ministry in the spring of 1999, when employed briefly by Truett McConnell College in Cleveland as Assistant Vice President for Strategic Planning. She got her seminary education at the McAfee School of Theology, a graduate school of Mercer University in Atlanta, starting in 1999, and graduated with her Master of Divinity degree in 2006.
Teresa grew up in the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Clarkesville, where her childhood pastor was the Rev. Furman B. Lewis (one of the ministers who helped ordain her to pastoral ministry in 2010). While in seminary, Teresa served briefly the Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Demorest, and the First Baptist Churches of Cornelia and Gainesville, mainly in the area of Children’s Ministries. She began attending Nacoochee Presbyterian Church in 2004, was ordained as an Elder at Nacoochee in 2006, then went to serve as Director of Christian Education at the First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland from 2006 to 2009. On February 28, 2010, Teresa was ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament at Nacoochee to serve as Stated Supply Pastor of the Mount Hermon Presbyterian Church in Ila, Georgia, a position she has now held for twelve years.
Teresa is married to Phil Franklin, whom she has known since high school. They have two grown children, Cassie Shaver and Kyle Franklin, and two granddaughters, Arianna Stevens and Isabella Shaver, ages 7 and 4, respectively. They live in a 100-year-old farmhouse near Clarkesville, where Phil enjoys retirement (from the USPS), gardening and reading. Teresa likes to hike in the mountains and practice yoga and Tai Chi Chih, a moving meditation, which she also teaches.
Teresa counts among her spiritual mentors Miss Anita Roper, retired Baptist missionary to Nigeria; Rev. Miriam Dunson, retired Presbyterian missionary to Korea; the late Rev. Russ Barker; the late Rev. Dr. Bill Jackson; the late Rev. Dr. Keith Nickle; and Rev. Bob Prim.