Meet Chris, TVP’s New Learning Hub Coordinator

After years of the Lord bringing the right elements together at just the right time, we’re delighted to officially introduce Dr. Chris Horne. Chris is our first learning hub coordinator and the newest team member of the Tennessee Valley Presbytery Church Planting Network.

In his full-time work, Chris is the Dalton Roberts Professor of Public Administration at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. He also serves as UTC’s Political Science and Public Service Department Head and teaches in the Master of Public Administration program. His research is primarily about the relationships between government and the nonprofit sector and has been published in a number of journals, plus he has extensive experience as a program evaluation consultant for government and nonprofit agencies.

How exactly did a poli sci professor and academic become connected with our church planting network? For one, Chris and his wife, Sally, are members of Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church, but also, he became interested in alternative seminary models years ago while he himself was earning a masters in biblical and theological studies.

He learned about LAMP Seminary, Birmingham Theological Seminary, and other affordable models that made seminary training accessible to working adults. “I had a nagging question,” he remembers, “Why doesn’t Chattanooga have something like this? Birmingham can pull it off, Atlanta has options, so why can’t we? Chattanooga is so resource rich with so many PCA churches, Covenant College, and retired PCA pastors. I had this question: Why weren’t we doing this?”

Next came years of conversations about needs, existing resources, and possibilities for a hub that would grow the church planting pipeline and help men access seminary training. Chris became aware of the need for more PCA pastors, and he learned about the current landscape in our presbytery. “Everyone was very interested and supportive, but it became clear that nobody really owns this,” says Chris.

In August 2025, Chris and Travis Vaughn (TVP’s executive director of church planting) at last connected, and it became clear that Chris’s idea fit under the church planting network, and we welcomed him to the team near the end of 2025.

Read more about the learning hub and Chris’s work with our network here.

Chris earned his PhD in Public Policy from Georgia Tech and Georgia State University’s joint program, his Master of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies from Belhaven University, his Master of Science in Social Work from University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Berry College.

Chris and Sally live on the Tennessee side of Lookout Mountain and will be celebrating their 30th anniversary this May. Their family is a blur of activity and excitement with one married adult child, two in college, and the fourth in high school.