Pastor Willie D. Kitchens, Jr.
Willie D. Kitchens, Jr. was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on January 6th, 1956. He was the only boy of six siblings and was raised in a musical-influenced family environment. His father, a musician in his own right, started Willie and his sisters performing in churches in and around Chattanooga when he was seven.
He graduated from Howard High School and attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) as a Music Education student. Despite being recognized as one of Chattanooga’s highly sought-after musicians, singers, and performers, he decided to pursue his career as a writer, arranger, director, musician, and singer. This path led him to perform with some of the most well-known Gospel and R&B artists of all time.
At the age of 24, Kitchens began to concentrate on gospel performance. Over the years, he taught himself to play the bass, lead and rhythm guitar, harmonica, piano, and electric keyboards. Kitchens performed and ministered everywhere, from “Bobby Jones Gospel” to colleges and prisons.
In 1995, Kitchens became Music and Performing Arts Director for the Bethlehem Center, a ministry in inner-city Chattanooga. While there, he created a traveling youth choir for children from two to eighteen years of age and opened the Bethlehem Recording Studio for the Bethlehem Center’s radio and television programs. Kitchens’s choir recorded four projects, three of them at the Bethlehem Recording Studio. Kitchens also performed for luminaries, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In 1999, he and his youth choir members also performed on stage with Shania Twain at her concert at UTC Arena in Chattanooga.
In the early 2000s, Kitchens became the lead singer of the Impressions, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Group. He was named to the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the Library of Congress as a History Maker in 2011 and the Beach Music Hall of Fame. In 2022, he was inducted into the Tri-City Southeastern Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
He sang worldwide, including in London and Africa, and has been on tour with Grammy Award Winner Eric Clapton. Kitchens, a long-term resident of Chattanooga, Tennessee, left the Impressions in 2002 and continued working as the Music and Arts Director for the Bethlehem Center. He also served as pastor at Bethlehem-Wiley United Methodist Church from 2013-2023.
At the age of 56, he received his degree in Business Management at Miller-Motte Technical College. His beautiful wife, Barbara, sings and serves with him as a Leader in ministry. Barbara is a Surgical Tech Instructor at Miller-Motte Technical College and President of the Southeastern Conference of AST Surgical Technology. They both are excited and energized about what God is doing in their lives to reach others for him. Although this season of his life has led him in a different direction, he still travels to do music for retreats, conferences, and special events. Kitchens has served as Gospel Music Director at Christ United Methodist Church for over 23 years. Pastor Kitchens is an ordained minister who began Thorns2Crowns Ministry in July 2023, serving as the founder and senior pastor. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13
