Jo Carr

Who was Jo Carr?

Bettye Jo Crisler Carr was a preacher, a teacher, an author, a missionary, a mother of five, and a leader of the Girl Scouts of the USA. She was an English professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock when she proclaimed her call to pastoral ministry, and became the first woman appointed superintendent in the Northwest Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church. She served from 1989 to 1993 as superintendent of the Pampa district and in the administrative role of dean of the bishop's cabinet.

Carr was born in Greenville, the seat of Washington County in the delta section of western Mississippi, the only child of Joseph Neal Crisler and the former Bessie Esther Gilley. She graduated from Texas Tech and worked as a professional Girl Scout in the Texas Panhandle. She then spent five years with the Methodist Mission service in Zimbabwe, where two of her children, Michael and Glenna, were born.

A single parent, she supported her children with free lance writing. She wrote curricular materials for the Methodist Church Publishing House in Nashville, Tennessee and several devotional books with Imogene Sorley and advent calendars with Sorley and Donna Cash. The first of those books is entitled Bless This Mess and Other Prayers. Another is The Intentional Family.