From a Pastors Study

Good Morning or Good Day - whichever is appropriate! I have been down a long road and now in the ninety third year of my journey my son Jim has persuaded me to enter a new venture. So from the salt-shaker of life's experiences I will try to draw out some of the things I have experienced, or have learned, or have been interested in.

First of all, a word about our heading. I am a pastor, or used to be, having begun full time ministry in 1938, but now in advanced age and not often in the pulpit ministry. I describe my present ministerial status as being somewhat like that of an old horse turned out to pasture. Actually, my last pastorate ended in 1993. Years ago I wrote for our church paper under the heading "Meditations From A Pastor's Study." Our present plan is to post or discuss a variety of things ministerial - a sort of smorgasbord of things hopefully interesting, informative and sometimes personal, but also meditative, scriptural and doctrinal.

The churches I have pastored are Fulton, Moberly, Bynumville, Kansas City and Kirksville, all in Missouri. I was associated with the Kansas City College and Bible School in one way or another from 1943 to 2009. For more than fifty consecutive years I served on our world missions board. So I have preached to Cree Indians in Saskatchewan, several camp meetings in Arizona to Hopi, Navaho. Apache and more than twenty other tribes, to Christians and natives of Mexico and to Aymara and Quechua Indians in Bolivia. This ministry also has taken me from the Cayman Islands and Jamaica eastward to Haiti and the American and British Virgin Islands and Anguilla in the Caribbean. My work has taken me to Nigeria and Liberia on the African continent. All of this time I was pastoring in the Show Me State of Missouri.

Early in life I taught three terms in the one-room schools of Callaway County. The school year was eight months. That was where I got into high finance, earning $400 for the first term. Then not long afterward, I taught in a certain Bible School for nine months and was paid the total of $270! I was reminded of the fellow in the Bible who sent his laborers to work in his vineyard with the promise, " Whatsoever is right, I will give you." But the experience was worth something! All I had to do was to teach college classes, serve as dean, and handle a few other chores. Fortunately, I was pastoring all the while and had a little extra income.

Through life I have enjoyed brief stints of hunting and fishing, but the catch of my life was, after four years of courtship, mostly by mail, being married to Carol Yocum, the best wife and companion a man could have, for over sixty four years. She graduated ahead of me to the Better Country in 2004. Our two sons are Jim and Phil.

All of my ministerial life has been spent with the Church of God (Holiness). My conversion was in the rural church at Reform, Missouri. As far as we know, it is the oldest church of this connection that has been in continuous operation since its founding. A close second would be the church at Cuba, Alabama. These churches have their background in the old Methodist Church founded by John Wesley and his contemporaries.