Dr. Shane Stanford is the founder and CEO of the Moore-West Center for Applied Theology, as well as the president of JourneyWise, the Moore-West Center's faith-based media network. Previous to that, he served as a pastor and church planter for more than thirty years. Most recently, he was the sixth senior minister of Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. He also served as host of The United Methodist Hour, a television and radio ministry reaching more than thirty million homes nationwide. Stanford was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity from Asbury Seminary in 2014. He also holds a Master of Divinity degree in theology and ethics from Duke University Divinity School, where he won the prestigious Jameson Jones Award in homiletics. He has traveled extensively, sharing his personal testimony as an HIV- and hepatitis-C-positive hemophiliac, husband, father, and pastor. Stanford has appeared on several media outlets, including Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, CNN, and Canada's Harvest TV. An accomplished author, he has written numerous books, including Cure for the Chronic Life (with Deanna Favre); A Positive Life; When God Disappears; Making Life Matter; Five Stones: Conquering Your Giants (with R. Brad Martin); Mosaic: When God Uses All the Pieces; and What the Prayers of Jesus Tell Us About the Heart of God. He is married to his high-school sweetheart, Dr. Pokey Stanford, and they have three daughters and two sons-in-law. Anthony Thaxton is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, television producer, and painter. He directed the acclaimed documentary Walter Anderson: The Extraordinary Life and Art of the Islander, directed projects with Morgan Freeman and Dolly Parton, and is the producer of Palate to Palette on public television. Thaxton is a founding partner in the Southern Storytelling Institute at Mississippi College, where he was named the 2019 Distinguished Art Alumnus of the Year. He is the owner of Thaxton Studios, a thirty-year production company whose work includes numerous corporate, government, educational, inspirational, political, commercial, and short film projects, including shows featuring Thaxton's skills as a painter and illustrator. His photography has been featured on Good Morning America, CNN, and Fox & Friends, and his vibrant watercolors have been featured in books and on numerous television programs. He and his wife, Amy, live in Raymond, Mississippi. They are the parents of two grown children, Bryant and Sydney.
