By Leah Dumas, Staff Reporter
Tiffany Stotts is the heart behind worship on campus. She has been employed on campus since April 2018 as the associate director of Spiritual Formation for worship. The daughter of a Hardin-Simmons University alumni and former worship minister, Stotts has always held a special place in her heart for both music and HSU.
“I grew up coming to Hardin-Simmons every fall for Homecoming. HSU was always a special place in my family’s life,” Stotts said.
Stotts moved to Abilene in 2017 with her husband Craig, who is the worship pastor at Pioneer Drive Baptist Church, and their two sons, Maddox and Austin. She got connected with HSU while they were looking to do more with worship on campus, and she currently oversees the chapel band where she maintains a team-based model that rotates band members from week to week in order to allow for as many students as are interested to be involved.
“It’s my job to make sure that everybody who wants to be on the team understands our philosophy of worship. Worship doesn’t just equal music. It’s aberration and respect and love for God in every aspect of our lives, not just when we’re in a room singing together,” Stotts explained.
This philosophy on worship is at the heart of everything Stotts does on campus, and she hopes to take worship here to a deeper level. She also values leadership over performance.
“To me, performance is focusing on the audience and doing something for entertainment. That can be incredible, but we don’t build that as our philosophy for the worship teams. Musically, it needs to be excellent, but we don’t want to be a distraction. We have to be able to play together as a team,” Stotts said.
Teaching the students on the chapel band to work together as worship leaders is an important part of what Stotts does. She has a passion for music, something that has always been a part of her life.
“I don’t have any memories in my life where music was not involved,” Stotts said.
Even still, she didn’t know until college that music ministry was where God would call her. She attended Dallas Baptist University and received both her bachelor’s degree in music business and her master’s of worship leadership there with the intentions of becoming a contemporary worship pastor.
“It’s always changing and always morphing. Right now, I’m not an official worship pastor at a church, but I’m doing that job on a university campus,” Stotts said.
Stotts is not only trained in worship ministry but also has experience working in real estate. She is still a licensed realtor, but in the meantime, Stotts is loving her time here at HSU.
“I can honestly say this is the best job I’ve ever had. I don’t feel like I’m at work. I feel like I’m doing things that matter. This is a place where I see genuine people who are being genuine,” Stotts said.