Pastor’s Corner with Rev. Georgia Hill

There are some stories that don’t just inspire you—they quietly challenge you to live with more courage, conviction, and hope. The story of Rev. Georgia Hill is one of those stories.

Rev. Georgia Hill

Rev. Georgia Hill is the lead pastor at LifeChurch Riverside in Detroit, MI, a relatively new church plant within the Great Lakes Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church. What began with just about 30 people has now grown to a vibrant community of over 100 worshipers. Over the last six years, Georgia has poured her heart, her gifts, and her hard-earned wisdom into this church, and it shows. LifeChurch Riverside is not just “growing in numbers”; it is growing in depth, compassion, and impact.

To understand why her ministry is so compelling, it helps to know where she comes from.

Georgia grew up in Detroit, raised by two loving, Christian parents alongside her two sisters. Her family’s spiritual roots stretch deep into the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, a historically Black Methodist denomination founded in 1816 in protest of slavery and racial discrimination. This is not just a historical footnote for Georgia—her great-great aunt helped start a church in Pennsylvania that later joined the AME Church. In other words, resistance to injustice and faithful leadership are part of her spiritual DNA.

By her own account, Georgia’s childhood was wonderful—surrounded by family, church, and a city she loved. It was not until she traveled outside Detroit that she encountered the harshness of racism that so many faced during the mid-20th century. One painful memory still stands out: on a trip to South Haven, Michigan, her father, despite having a hotel reservation, was turned away at the front desk because they would not allow “their kind” to stay there. Georgia watched this unfold as a child, and the sting of that rejection has remained with her. We have made progress as a country since then, but stories like Georgia’s, and so many others, even today, remind us that there is still significant work to do.

Georgia graduated from high school and was accepted to Harvard University—far from home and into a culture very different from the Detroit neighborhood that had shaped her. At Harvard, she faced racial struggles on a large, complex campus where belonging did not come easily. Still, she persevered, studied diligently, and graduated with a degree in Romance Languages and Literature. At first, she imagined journalism or teaching as her life’s work. After two years something in her kept searching for the right fit, a place where her intellect, her sense of justice, and her compassion could come together, that search led her to law school. She chose Howard University School of Law—a historically Black institution known for its legacy of civil rights advocacy. There she earned her law degree and took another step toward the work she felt she was meant to do.

She began her legal career in law firms but ultimately found her place at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). There, she had the opportunity to stand with citizens who brought claims against employers for discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, and gender. In many ways, this was a natural expression of the justice-oriented faith she had inherited—a way to confront the very kinds of prejudice she had seen as a child.

Even as her professional life advanced, Georgia remained deeply involved in her church. Her pastor saw in her a calling that went beyond volunteer service and invited her to teach Bible study. From there she began to attend Bible studies at other churches as well. After several years of teaching and attending multiple Bible studies, she spoke to her pastor about going to seminary. For someone who loves to learn as much as Georgia does, this invitation resonated. She enrolled at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, commuting from Detroit for three years, balancing work, ministry, and study. With determination, she completed her Master of Divinity, preparing for a new season of ministry as an ordained minister.

After serving her church for some time, a friend encouraged her to explore the Evangelical Covenant Church. That simple suggestion opened the door to a new chapter. Georgia discovered in the Covenant a spiritual family committed to both the authority of Scripture and the pursuit of justice and compassion. Eventually, that journey led her to become the planting pastor of LifeChurch Riverside—where now, week after week, she shepherds a growing, multi-generational congregation. At LifeChurch Riverside you are stepping into the fruit of all these chapters of Georgia’s life: the roots of her mother’s family’s faith in the AME church, the resilience forged through personal encounters with racism, the discipline of Harvard, the passion for justice sharpened at Howard Law, the advocacy experience at the EEOC, and the deep theological training at McCormick.

As you get to know Rev. Georgia Hill and LifeChurch Riverside, you are invited into more than a Sunday service. You are invited into a story of hope—rooted in Detroit, attentive to injustice, and confident that the Holy Spirit is still at work, calling ordinary people into extraordinary service. Why does Georgia’s story matter for us today? It reminds us that God does not waste any part of our journey. All of it has been used to shape a pastor who preaches with conviction, listens with empathy, and leads with courage. It urges us to believe that our own stories, too, can be used by God to build communities of love, justice, and transformation. This is a leader who now preaches hope in Detroit—a city that knows pain, struggle, and rebirth all too well.