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34. Interim Pastor

After the Bowens retired, and the church made no step in the direction of calling me to be their pastor - and I am not certain to this day if I would have accepted an offer if they had extended a call - the church began pursuing a new pastor. That took time.

What the church did ask me to do was to stay in place at least until they found a new pastor. They asked me to be their interim pastor. An interim pastor is, of course, the guy who fills in between pastors. I accepted their offer.

I started the year 1972, the second day of January, as the interim pastor. On that first Sunday of the new year I preached a sermon I called "Happy New Year" in the morning, and preached "A Pastor’s Support: Prayer" in the evening. I also led the church in communion that day. But then for the rest of month, the church invited pastoral candidates to preach the services. There were five Sundays in that first month of the year, and we had four candidates preach, none of which would become the church’s pastor.

The man who did become the next pastor preached on the first Sunday in February. But he did not become the next pastor for several months. I had opportunities to preach four of the eight sermons preached that month. I preached on "The Pastor’s Qualifications" from Paul’s letters to Timothy, "The Pastor’s Helpers: Deacons", "The Pastor’s Responsibility: Church Behavior", and "The Pastor’s Responsibility: Personal Behavior." I wanted to help the people be prepared for the serious responsibility they had in calling a new pastor.

Linda and I went to Grand Rapids that month for our alma mater’s annual Bible conference. We stayed at the home of a former seminary friend and his wife and enjoyed excellent preaching at the conference.

I had a group of deacons from Pentwater, Michigan come to visit our service in March. They asked me to come and preach, which I did. But nothing ever came of it.

A fifth possible candidate preached the last Sunday of March. He was to cause a bit of a stir in the congregation. Many liked him. Some did not. He was brought to a vote the Wednesday after he preached. The vote failed to be a large enough percentage to extend a call to him.

Although I did vote for the man, I have to admit I was glad the vote failed. Although a good man, he did not seem to be what the church needed at the time.

Easter came, and the church was still without a permanent pastor. I preached on "The Almost Empty Tomb," citing that things found in the tomb of Jesus were evidences of His resurrection. The grave clothes, primarily, were arranged in such a way that would support resurrection. If a person had simply become unconscious, as some have argued, and awakened in the tomb, he would have unwrapped the cloth around his head and laid it aside, and then unwound the strips of cloth that enshrined his body to free himself tossing them aside in a pile with the head cloth. But that is not what John reports in his gospel. John, you remember, was one of the two disciples who came to the empty tomb (Peter was the other). John reports that Peter, the more impetuous of the two, ran right into the tomb. John, the more reticent, stooped and looked in, but then followed Peter into the tomb.

What they saw and what John describes is and the napkin (face cloth) that was about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. And when John entered the tomb to see for himself, he reports that he saw, and believed. The positions of the cloths convinced John that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Why?

Because the cloths were lying in the places where they were when the body of Jesus was laid in the tomb. They were not heaped in a pile, but lying exactly where they had been placed. The face cloth was in a place by itself, where the head of Jesus had been. It was as if the body of Jesus had simply passed through the cloths, leaving them undisturbed except for falling in on themselves since the body was no longer there to support them. That is what I believe happened. That is what I preached on Easter Sunday, 1972. Two people came forward for church membership when I gave the invitation that morning. Praise the Lord.

Linda and I went to Howard City, Michigan the third Sunday of that month, April. On the last Sunday of the month, the man who would

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become the new pastor came for his second visit. A week and half later, May 3, 1972, the church voted to extend a call to Rev. Richard Christen. He accepted the call. However, because of prior commitments, he would not actually arrive in Flint to take up his new duties until August 6.

That meant I would continue to be the interim pastor for another three months. That meant I would be able to preach every Sunday, since no further candidates would be coming. That meant I would the pastor in charge when the church had its Vacation Bible School. This was a great opportunity God gave me to help prepare me for the next ministry God would give me.

That also meant I would be the interim pastor the last week of June when the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches would hold its Annual Meetings. The church always sent its pastor to the Association meetings. This was a well-established procedure left in place by Pastor Bowen who felt it was the church’s obligation to send its pastor and wife to the meetings. I agreed.

We had been to the meetings before. Pastor Bowen had encouraged the church to send Linda and me the year before when I was his assistant. The conference in 1971 was held in Winona Lake, Indiana. We drove to it. We enjoyed the services and the preaching. We enjoyed seeing old friends who were in the ministry in different locations. We drove home.

But 1972 was different. The GARB is a national association of Regular Baptist churches, and although most of its churches are in the east and midwest, it has a significant number of churches on the west coast. It varies the location of its annual meetings to accommodate the different areas of the country where it has churches. And in 1972, the conference was to be held in San Diego, California.

What a week it was! We flew from Detroit Metro Airport on Monday morning and arrived in San Diego that afternoon anddrove our rented car from the San Diego Airport to the El Cortez Hotel near downtown. By 7:00 pm we were suppered, registered for the conference, and sitting in the auditorium getting ready to hear Rev. Robert Gage bring the opening message of the conference.

The preachers who opened the Word for us that week represented many of the best in the GARBC. Rev. Wilbur Rooke brought a series of four messages, one each morning Tuesday through Friday. We also heard Rev. Walter Lepp, Dr. David Nettleton, Dr. Viggo Olson (the author of Daktar) and Rev. Donald Tyler. We heard reports from Dr. James Jeremiah on the GARBC approved schools and from Rev. Albert Williams on the mission agencies approved by the GARBC. We heard from our chaplains, from Regular Baptist Press, and others. And on the last morning of the conference, at 10:15 am, we heard Pastor Lloyd Morris preach.

Pastor Morris was the pastor of one of our sister churches in Flint, Riverdale Baptist Church. The assistant there, Rev. Charles Alber, was one of my fellow Gen-O-Shi-La leaders. It was interesting to have a local Flint pastor preaching in San Diego. But there was something else about it that made it poignant.

Pastor Morris had recently been diagnosed with cancer and had been given several months to live. He preached a message entitled "With Eternity’s Values In View." It was difficult not to get emotionally involved in his message. Why would anyone not want to be emotionally involved? After all, Pastor Morris was challenging us that we all had a limited time to live on earth. Everything we do every day should be done keeping in mind that eternity is coming.

The next day, Saturday, we returned from San Diego arriving at Detroit Metro about 6:00 pm, praising the Lord for the perks that went with being the Interim Pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in the summer of 1972. We were thinking that God would now send us away from Flint, to some other location and to a new ministry. But God had other plans. God's "other plans" have always proved better than my immediate ones.
Copyright © 2009, Thomas M. Parsons, All Rights Reserved. - 46