This Little Life Of Mine - Chapter 35 The New Pastor Thomas M Parsons

35. The New Pastor

The first Sunday of August, August 6, 1972, Pastor Richard D. Christen and his wife Sherrill and their children were due to arrive in Flint to assume the leadership of the Emmanuel Baptist Church. But Linda and I were gone for most of the month. We had built up a large amount of vacation time, and so from August 11 to August 29 we were on vacation from Emmanuel. Our plan was to seek our own ministry elsewhere as Emmanuel settled in with the new pastor. The vacation time was to recuperate and also to explore possibilites.

We went to Lincoln Park on that first day, Friday, August 11. The next day we went to Beech Grove to visit Linda’s family. And that Sunday, August 13, we went to a church in Westport, Indiana to pulpit supply and possibly candidate for a pastorate of our own.

We spent the week with Linda’s family, and on the 19th we went back to Lincoln Park to spend some time with my family. On the 20th we attended services at First Baptist in Lincoln Park where I had been baptized twelve years earlier and where I had formed some lasting friendships with other believers. We stayed in Lincoln Park until Thursday, the 24th, when we drove back to Flint to prepare for the final stage of our vacation to Ontonagon in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. For the next few days we spent a lot of time in the Porcupine Mountains State Park with Laddie, our puppy. Nikki, our cat, probably stayed in Beech Grove with Linda’s parents. That is usually where he stayed while we were on our various trips.

As a result of our travels, we did not have much to do with Pastor Christen’s first month at Emmanuel. But I began meeting with him on a weekly basis in September. And in one of our early meetings, he asked me if I would consider staying on as his assistant. Since the church in Westport had not responded to us any further, and since we did enjoy working with the people, and since Pastor Christen and I had hit it off from the start, and because Linda and Sherrill got along well, and, most important of all, because we believed it was the Lord’s will, I agreed. Usually during our weekly meetings together, Pastor Dick and I went out to lunch at an area restaurant. He tended to favor one particular restaurant, no doubt because his wife had started working there. The Christens had three school age children, a boy, the oldest, and two girls. While they were in school, Sherrill worked in the line at this buffet-style restaurant.

One day we were in the line waiting our turn when Dick leaned over to me and whispered, “I slept with that woman last night.” I looked at the two or three women on the other side of the counter, one of which was Sherrill, and said with a straight face, “Which one?”

Pastor had a standard joke he liked to pull when he could. Again, the joke was usually stated when we were having one of our lunch meetings in a restaurant. Typically, a waitress would come over to our table carrying a pot of coffee, offering some of the brew to us. Dick would say, “No, thank you, we’re Christians,” leaving the waitress to walk away pondering what kind of Christians did not drink coffee.

We also met for prayer before each service. After praying that God would be pleased to use the service for His glory, just before we were ready to walk out of Pastor’s office and into the auditorium, Pastor would check to make sure no embarrassment awaited him because of an improperly secured zipper. I learned to do the same.

But Pastor Christen was not defined by his sense of humor. He was an excellent teacher of the Bible. His sermons were challenging, comforting, instructive and always Biblical. It was a joy to listen to him for the three services a week in which he preached God’s Word.

Pastor also played the trombone and sometimes he would play for a service at Emmanuel. He did not like to do this too often, because he did not want to appear to dominate the music program at church. But the people, and Linda and I, enjoyed it when he did play.

One day he was in the auditorium practicing when Linda brought our puppy, Laddie in on his leash. We lived in the church parsonage next door (Dick and Sherrill and their children lived in a house a few blocks away), and she was taking Laddie for a walk and stopped in for some reason which I don’t remember. Dick set his trombone on the floor while he talked to Linda and me, and Laddie, curious puppy that he was, sniffed the trombone and then proceeded to lick the mouthpiece. As Linda picked the puppy up to remove him from the area of the trombone, we all had a good laugh. But I suspect that mouthpiece was cleansed thoroughly before the trombone was played again.

Day by day I watched Pastor’s devotion to the Lord and his faithfulness to the Scriptures and his methods of dealing with people in both good and unpleasant situations. And day by day I learned from him, by word and by example. I think that prior to Dick’s coming to Emmanuel, I had been known simply as Tom. But when Dick announced to the people that I had agreed to stay on as his assistant, he asked the people, “What shall we call him?” His answer to his own question was simple, correct, and Scriptural. “I’m going to call him ‘Pastor Tom,’” he said. And that is how people addressed me from that moment on.

Photo: One of Emmanuel's blue and white buses pulling up on Broadway in front of the church.

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My duties were well-defined by Pastor, so I always knew exactly what I was expected to do. I appreciated the fact that he did not look over my shoulder or second guess me in what I did. We did have our weekly meetings where we discussed what I was doing and sometimes new things Pastor wanted me to do, but he allowed me the freedom to figure some of those things out myself. And when I did have a less than stellar performance (which I am certain was fairly regularly), I was not chastised but offered practical advice to help me do better next time.

One of the characteristics of Pastor Christen’s ministry at Emmanuel was evangelism, exemplified in the bus ministry he began. At the time, Emmanuel was located in an older neighborhood of Flint, a little east of downtown on the northwest corner of Broadway and Minnesota. Many unchurched families lived on the streets surrounding the church. Under Pastor’s direction, the church began to purchase used school buses, painting them all the same blue with white roofs. Men in the church who had the correct type of driver’s license were secured to operate the buses. On Saturday afternoons teams of us would go through the neighborhoods inviting parents to send their children to our Sunday School and Children’s Church program held especially for what became known as “The Bus Ministry Kids.”

Many times, the buses would be driven into the neighborhoods on Saturday afternoon to acquaint parents and children with their appearance. Emmanuel was not the only church sending buses out in the area on Sunday, and we wanted to be sure our bus kids got on our bus and not on someone else’s. As the blue and white buses became familiar to families, the number of kids riding the buses increased.

I have no recorded numbers from the time, but I know there were many children who accepted the Lord as the result of the ministry of a bus captain, or the special service conducted for bus kids each week. Some whole families eventually came to know the Lord as the result of this ministry. I have photographs I took at one Vacation Bible School in which the buses went out every morning for the five days of VBS. That was one of the best-attended VBS programs in which I have been involved. Preaching opportunities for me in the regular adult services of Emmanuel were occasional. Pastor was a member of the board of a college and/or a mission agency, so he sometimes had to fly to Pennsylvania or New York state for board meetings. On those occasions when he would be out of town on a service day, I usually was given the opportunity to preach.

The Lord used Pastor Christen to help me form principals and methods that I would later use in my own pastoral ministry. By observing his ministry up close, and assisting him in it, I learned what a pastor must be and must do to please the Lord and to minister to people.

My ministry as Pastor Christen’s assistant lasted only about two years. Pastor’s involvement with a major Christian school in the east led to an offer from that school to serve on their staff. Both Pastor and Sherrill were from New York state and he had pastored in Pennsylvania, so there was a natural attraction for them in those states that did not extend to Michigan. Also, Pastor’s involvement with the school had been long and blessed by the Lord. I knew when he first told me he was considering the offer that he would accept it. He did. I know the reason he accepted the offer was because he prayed about it and felt it was God’s leading to do so. I know he would not have made any major decision without a conviction that God was in it.

In the summer of 1974, Emmanuel Baptist Church had a farewell service for the Christens as they prepared to move to Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania. It was a sad time, but a joyous time. No one likes goodbyes. But everyone who loves the Lord enjoys having other believers obey the Lord Jesus Christ and follow Him in service, no matter where it takes them.

Throughout the years of ministry that followed for me, I often found myself using Pastor Dick as my model and absent mentor. Some things about his way of ministering found their way into my way of ministering. And, to this day, before I go out on a platform to teach or preach, I make certain that a certain clothing closure device is properly secured.

After leaving Flint, Pastor Christen and his family moved to Clarks Summit where he served with Baptist Bible College for several years. Later he pastored a church in Hemet, California, surviving an earthquake that hit the area while the family lived there. Today, Pastor and Sherrill live in New York state. He is retired, but still pastors a church in the Bahamas. He is now one of my Facebook friends, and he gave me permission to use his and his wife's names here.

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