Scott Cates, a Georgia Baptist pastor, is touching thousands of lives from Tiger, a town that sits at the base of 2,856-foot Tiger Mountain, a prominent Blue Ridge Mountain peak in the far northeast corner of Georgia.
Some say that Tiger derived its name from a Cherokee chief named Tiger Tail, but others contend that the town’s name came from the cry of roaming panthers in the area. However, the call and cry of Scott Cates in his podcast, Grounded, reaches the far corners of the earth. Grounded with Scott Cates is labeled as “the place to hear the salty truth.” In an age of artificial intelligence, disinformation and fake news, multitudes of people love to hear an honest and truthful podcast.
Cates’ podcast covers topics such as “In What Exactly Do We Trust?,” “Three Powerful Words for Every Relationship,” and “From Hilarious to Hysteria and Back Again.” Grounded has garnered as many as 70,000 people who regularly listen to Cates’ podcast.
Cates grew up in a Christian home in Pensacola Beach, Florida, completed high school there, and after a year in college joined the U.S. Air Force. After four years of military service, he returned to Pensacola and taught a Sunday School class with 50 couples involved.
The first vocational ministry opportunity for Cates was in Milton, Florida, as the youth pastor of Ferris Hill Baptist Church. He was then called to fulfill the same role at Calera Baptist Church in Calera, Alabama. He then became the youth pastor at First Baptist Church Nashville, Georgia, during the pastorate of Bill Southerland.
While in Nashville, Cates acquired an affinity for broadcasting when he became the local AM radio station voice designated to answer questions from a biblical perspective.
Cates explained, “The pastor was not particularly interested in being featured on the radio program and asked me to do it. I discovered that it was something I enjoyed.”
Making it personal
For the past 21 years, Cates has been pastor of Liberty Baptist Church in Tiger. Andy Childs, the Georgia Baptist Mission Board pastor wellness catalyst for the Northeast, calls Cates, “a faithful pastor to whom God has given an amazing platform to spread awe-inspiring truth around the world. He is fully aware of our culture, but he is not afraid of it and doesn’t back down from it in his podcasts.”
The Liberty pastor, along with hundreds of other pastors and churches, began providing live-streaming services during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Cates contends he soon discovered that Facebook censored portions of his sermons and corrupted the audio of others.
“I became weary of the temptation to be politically correct,” Cates said, “and stopped live streaming the services because I wanted to be able to say what I felt needed to be said.”
That unfortunate circumstance ultimately led the Liberty pastor to start his podcast.
“I wanted it to become my personal podcast,,” he said, “and completely separate from the church’s ministry. With Grounded I feel free to use satire, have no qualms about voicing my opinion, and sense an empowerment to tell the salty truth.”
The versatile pastor enjoys restoring Victrolas, old clocks and phonographs. He frequently goes to the Charles H. Templeton Music Museum at Mississippi State University to restore and maintain automated musical devices. He also spends time talking to students about the way music was recorded and dispensed in previous decades.
The connection, Cates says, he has with the students at MSU is rewarding because he has the chance to explain to interested students the greatness of America’s past. He emphasizes that our lives are influenced by what has gone on before us. Indeed, it is helpful to be absorbed in the good things of the past, so that our future will be spiritually and ideologically enriched.
Presenting the gospel
Although Scott Cates never identifies himself as a Baptist pastor on his podcasts, he ends each one with spiritual truth including a presentation of the gospel.
Recently a man from Oregon contacted Cates to tell him that he had trusted Christ because of what he heard on the Grounded podcast. His family members subsequently listened to the podcast, and they were all saved and baptized.
Cates’ Grounded podcasts began in January 2023, and he broadcasts one each Monday. There are no commercials and the best way to get the podcast is through Spotify.
EDITOR’S NOTE —This story was written by J. Gerald Harris and originally published by the Christian Index.
