The Rev. Dr. Mashaun D. Simon (he/him/they) is a preacher, public speaker, award-winning journalist, author, and thought leader. A survivor of neuroendocrine carcinoma, a rare cancer that accounts for roughly 0.5% of all cancer diagnoses, and a native of Atlanta, Georgia, Mashaun’s work is rooted in a passion for community curation and bridge building. His commitment is shaped by both personal and ministerial experience and informed most recently by his doctoral research which explores the relationship between Black church culture, church hurt, and Black LGBTQ+ grief.
Mashaun is also the author of Faith Deconstruction For Dummies (Wiley Publishing). Faith Deconstruction For Dummies gives readers from all walks of life permission to think critically about their faith and what they’ve been taught to believe. It serves as a tool to help readers develop a stronger and more authentic relationship to their faith.
Deeply rooted in the Black church, Mashaun was raised in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) tradition. In 2012, he was licensed to preach in the AME’s Atlanta North Georgia Conference. A year later, he met the late Rev. Pierre D. Cox, founder of House of Mercy Everlasting (HOME) Church, a non-denominational church with Pentecostal leanings in College Park, Georgia, where he was eventually ordained an Elder at HOME. Subsequently, he was named assistant pastor and then senior pastor of HOME following Pierre’s passing in the summer of 2020. In 2022, he stepped away from full-time pulpit ministry, and turned his focus to public ministry as a public theologian, writer, and scholar. In 2025, he was publicly affirmed and accepted into The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries as a Privilege of Call inductee. And in the spring of 2026, Mashaun was named to Morehouse College’s College of Ministers and Laity Board of Preachers.
A product of the Black press, Mashaun began his professional career as a journalist. He started his full-time journalism career at the Atlanta Daily World, where he earned four Excellence in Newspaper Reporting awards from the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists (AABJ) between 1999 and 2004. He has since written for NBC News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Black Enterprise, Bloomberg News, Ebony, and ESSENCE. He has also written for the Counter Narrative Project’s The Reckoning and GLAAD, and served as co-associate editor of Geez Magazine, a seasonal, nonprofit print publication focused on social justice, art, and activism for people on the fringes of faith in the U.S. and Canada. In 2025, he received the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists’ Excellence in Online Journalism Award for his work with Q.Digital’s LGBTQ Nation.
Alongside his writing and ministry, Mashaun has led cultural competency and affirming-practice initiatives, directed regional and national media relations campaigns, and developed strategic communications and recruitment messaging for nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education in metro Atlanta and beyond.
He has participated in several national leadership and fellowship programs, including the DO GOOD X Startup Accelerator (2022), the Collegeville Institute Emerging Writers Fellowship (2022–2023), the Sojourners Rising Leaders Fellowship (2021–2022), and the Counter Narrative Project Narrative Justice Fellowship (2021–2022). He has also served on the Counter Narrative Project Leadership Council, the AID Atlanta Advisory Board, and the inaugural PRISM board of Teach For America Metro Atlanta. Mashaun is a co-founder of the LGBTQ Task Force of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and, in 2005, became the first openly LGBTQ student representative on the organization’s national board of directors. He is also believed to be the first out, Black and gay male president of the Candler Coordinating Council (C3) at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.
His other honors include the Peter Gomes Award for Transformational Leadership and Service in Church, Community, and Academy; the Community Service Award; and the John W. Rustin Award in Preaching all from the Candler School of Theology. He was also named to Who’s Who in American Universities and Colleges in 2013.
Mashaun holds a professional writing degree from Georgia Perimeter College, a Bachelor of Science in Communications from Kennesaw State University, and a Master of Divinity from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. In December 2025, he completed all academic requirements for the Doctor of Ministry degree at Columbia Theological Seminary.
