Evening Services Preacher
Riley Phillips Short was born in a parsonage In Greenville, Kentucky. His father was Bishop Roy H. Short and his mother was Louise Baird Short. He grew up in Kentucky, Tennessee and Florida. A graduate of Vanderbilt University and earned a degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He also holds honorary degrees from Florida Southern College and Bethune-Cookman University.
Rev. Short started his ministry at County Line Methodist Church in Acworth, GA. He has served churches in Knoxville and Clarksville, TN, St. Petersburg, Leesburg, Miami and Lakeland, FL. He retired in 2003, but has served eleven different interim-pastorates since then. He also served as a professor of homiletics at Asbury Theological Seminary for four years.
Riley, as he prefers being called, has been a long-time speaker at the Lay Retreats of the Florida Conference and at the Youth Camps at Leesburg, FL> For over 20 years he was one of the featured speakers at the Ocean City Tabernacle in Ocean City, NJ. He has been the preacher for the Fedler’s Camp Meeting in Mississippi, Old Salem in Georgia, Malaga Camp Meeting in NJ, as well as the Camp Meeting in Bay View, Michigan.
Rev. Short has four children and fourteen grandchildren. After his wife, the former Claire Malone passed away he married Patty Fouts, a retired teacher in the public schools of Polk County. Florida. She is the mother of two daughters and a son and the grandmother of three girls.