[This is another of several stories I intend to post from now through Christmas or perhaps New Year's. This one first appeared in my Once for a Shining Hour, available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon.com.]
“And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed . . .”
As I was growing up in West Texas, I had heard and read Luke’s Christmas story so often, I could quote from memory that opening verse and the entire story of the shepherds’ visit to the manger, including the decree from Caesar Augustus.
Nobody had ever questioned my pronunciation of anything in that passage as I read it out loud from time to time while I was in high school, college, or seminary. But then, there was my first Christmas in my first church after seminary.
I had come to Pope Drive Baptist Church in Anderson, South Carolina, a few weeks before Christmas 1959 as a co-minister with multiple assignments. As a young, single minister, I spent a good bit of time with young people from the very beginning.
The morning service on the Sunday before Christmas was devoted to a program of music by the choir, interspersed with Scripture readings. On this, my first Christmas with the church, I was given the reading assignment.
I began reading Luke 2, with my West Texas pronunciation. That included pronouncing the emperor’s title as Caesar “AW-gustus.” This was natural for me, as someone born in August, who had heard that pronunciation all my life.
That handling -- or mishandling -- of the name doubtlessly brought smiles to the faces of adults in the congregation, but the teenagers didn’t stop with smiles. They guffawed as I tried to continue the narration.
After the service, the youngsters mobbed me, peppering me with questions and teasing as they sought to set me straight on the way to say the word:
“Is that the way y’all talk out in Texas?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of uh-GUST-uh, Georgia?”
“You’re the minister of education? We need to educate you!”
And educate, they did -- the kids and their parents during my four years with them.
The church was experiencing growing pains. The founding pastor, George Roberson, had the reputation among other ministers as the most persistent pastoral visitor in town, especially at the local hospital. When he started the church, he initially refused to take any money. Instead, he and his wife eked out an existence on her salary as a public school teacher. As an additional money-saving step, he and other men in the congregation had worked alongside local contractors in erecting the first unit of the church building. That first unit is now the Roberson Memorial Chapel.
In those early years, with “Preacher” Roberson’s constant visitation and the construction work in the neighborhood location, the church attracted attention and began to grow. So church lay leaders saw the need for a second minister to take care of aspects beyond the lead pastor’s favorite focus. That’s where I came in.
I did make visits to homes and the hospital, though I did not attempt to duplicate Mr. Roberson’s day-in, day-out schedule.
I was the only paid worker besides the pastor and the janitor, and at times I helped both of them. Our choir was directed by a layman who refused to accept pay. We may have paid the high school girl who played the organ five dollars a week. I was variously perceived as minister of education, associate pastor, youth worker, assistant song leader, phone answerer, and typist. Two single young women volunteered their services to type the stencil for the Sunday order of worship and run off copies on the Mimeograph machine. My job description was basically, “Help Preacher Roberson and help us.”
In retrospect, I think of how I helped raise a generation of young people, and their parents helped raise me. When I came to the church, I didn’t own a car and didn’t even have a driver’s license. Two men in the congregation put their lives at risk as they rode with me in preparing me for the road test. No doubt, the prayer life of those parents increased exponentially when their teenagers started riding with me.
Baptists in the South in the 1960s had a multiplicity of educational organizations: Sunday school on Sunday morning and Training Union on Sunday night which sought to strengthen awareness of Baptist beliefs and traditions. Brotherhood for men and the Woman’s Missionary Union had age-level auxiliaries for children and young people. As minister of education or “educational director,” I planned and led various leadership training sessions on how to understand the Bible and how to break away from the lecture method in Sunday school; led weekday Bible studies for women who were not employed outside the home; and worked cooperatively with other churches in leadership training sessions.
When John F. Kennedy became the Democratic nominee for president in 1960, many Baptists were concerned about the implications of a Roman Catholic in the White House, fearful that President John might install a hot line to Pope John at the Vatican. So, at the request of some church members, we spent several Wednesday night sessions studying Catholic beliefs as objectively as Baptists of that era could do on our own. It didn’t occur to us to invite a local priest or articulate lay member to give the Catholic perspective.
With young people, I planned times of food, games, and informal fellowship after the Sunday night service, often in homes of members. I planned recreational outings, took them to summer camp, and tailored various church meetings to their needs and interests.
Though I was an ordained minister and had studied to be a pastor-preacher, Mr. Roberson was not inclined to share his pulpit. In my four years with the church, I preached four times, including my final Sunday night with the congregation before I joined the faculty at Anderson College -- now Anderson University.
Though it sounds like a cliché, the folks at Pope Drive accepted me into their homes and into their hearts. That is an understatement. I was often invited to Sunday dinner with various families, and there were several families where I often dropped by on week nights to share whatever fare, light or lavish, they were having. Deep bonds were formed which have lasted across the decades since I left their church.
After my four years at the church, I also spent four years at the college. While I was at the college, Pansy and I married. Then our path took various turns through several states before I was invited to return to the faculty in 1981. So we came back to Anderson and have continued to make this our home after we both retired in 2000.
With the concepts of ministerial ethics I had learned in college and seminary, when I ended my formal association with the church, I basically sought to end any regular contact with the church. But that did not mean I terminated my friendship with the many people who had ministered to me as I sought to be one of their ministers. It was and still is natural to have occasional contact with many of these dear friends who nurtured me in my beginning years of ministry. In those contacts, I have made it a point not to discuss internal affairs at the church.
Over the years, I have returned to Pope Drive occasionally to perform weddings and have frequently been called on to be one of the ministers for funerals. Most of these funerals in recent years have been for people in their eighties and nineties whom I had first known when they were middle-aged men and women, truly the “backbone of the church.”
When Pansy and I left Anderson, I never dreamed I would have opportunity to return to this town, to teach again at the college and to be reunited with so many wonderful friends in the community at large and at Pope Drive. But people in the congregation were never far from my memory.
My pronunciation gaff in the Christmas program at Pope Drive stands out as one clear memory, but in the four years with the church, I never actually spent Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in Anderson. The church was gracious in expecting and encouraging me, as a young, single man far from home, to go back to Texas to be with my parents and brothers and sisters and the extended Webb family.
The church gave me lasting Christmas gifts: loads of love and patience, right from that very first Christmas when I learned to pronounce Caesar Augustus, South Carolina style.
Nobody had ever questioned my pronunciation of anything in that passage as I read it out loud from time to time while I was in high school, college, or seminary. But then, there was my first Christmas in my first church after seminary.
I had come to Pope Drive Baptist Church in Anderson, South Carolina, a few weeks before Christmas 1959 as a co-minister with multiple assignments. As a young, single minister, I spent a good bit of time with young people from the very beginning.
The morning service on the Sunday before Christmas was devoted to a program of music by the choir, interspersed with Scripture readings. On this, my first Christmas with the church, I was given the reading assignment.
I began reading Luke 2, with my West Texas pronunciation. That included pronouncing the emperor’s title as Caesar “AW-gustus.” This was natural for me, as someone born in August, who had heard that pronunciation all my life.
That handling -- or mishandling -- of the name doubtlessly brought smiles to the faces of adults in the congregation, but the teenagers didn’t stop with smiles. They guffawed as I tried to continue the narration.
After the service, the youngsters mobbed me, peppering me with questions and teasing as they sought to set me straight on the way to say the word:
“Is that the way y’all talk out in Texas?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of uh-GUST-uh, Georgia?”
“You’re the minister of education? We need to educate you!”
And educate, they did -- the kids and their parents during my four years with them.
The church was experiencing growing pains. The founding pastor, George Roberson, had the reputation among other ministers as the most persistent pastoral visitor in town, especially at the local hospital. When he started the church, he initially refused to take any money. Instead, he and his wife eked out an existence on her salary as a public school teacher. As an additional money-saving step, he and other men in the congregation had worked alongside local contractors in erecting the first unit of the church building. That first unit is now the Roberson Memorial Chapel.
In those early years, with “Preacher” Roberson’s constant visitation and the construction work in the neighborhood location, the church attracted attention and began to grow. So church lay leaders saw the need for a second minister to take care of aspects beyond the lead pastor’s favorite focus. That’s where I came in.
I did make visits to homes and the hospital, though I did not attempt to duplicate Mr. Roberson’s day-in, day-out schedule.
I was the only paid worker besides the pastor and the janitor, and at times I helped both of them. Our choir was directed by a layman who refused to accept pay. We may have paid the high school girl who played the organ five dollars a week. I was variously perceived as minister of education, associate pastor, youth worker, assistant song leader, phone answerer, and typist. Two single young women volunteered their services to type the stencil for the Sunday order of worship and run off copies on the Mimeograph machine. My job description was basically, “Help Preacher Roberson and help us.”
In retrospect, I think of how I helped raise a generation of young people, and their parents helped raise me. When I came to the church, I didn’t own a car and didn’t even have a driver’s license. Two men in the congregation put their lives at risk as they rode with me in preparing me for the road test. No doubt, the prayer life of those parents increased exponentially when their teenagers started riding with me.
Baptists in the South in the 1960s had a multiplicity of educational organizations: Sunday school on Sunday morning and Training Union on Sunday night which sought to strengthen awareness of Baptist beliefs and traditions. Brotherhood for men and the Woman’s Missionary Union had age-level auxiliaries for children and young people. As minister of education or “educational director,” I planned and led various leadership training sessions on how to understand the Bible and how to break away from the lecture method in Sunday school; led weekday Bible studies for women who were not employed outside the home; and worked cooperatively with other churches in leadership training sessions.
When John F. Kennedy became the Democratic nominee for president in 1960, many Baptists were concerned about the implications of a Roman Catholic in the White House, fearful that President John might install a hot line to Pope John at the Vatican. So, at the request of some church members, we spent several Wednesday night sessions studying Catholic beliefs as objectively as Baptists of that era could do on our own. It didn’t occur to us to invite a local priest or articulate lay member to give the Catholic perspective.
With young people, I planned times of food, games, and informal fellowship after the Sunday night service, often in homes of members. I planned recreational outings, took them to summer camp, and tailored various church meetings to their needs and interests.
Though I was an ordained minister and had studied to be a pastor-preacher, Mr. Roberson was not inclined to share his pulpit. In my four years with the church, I preached four times, including my final Sunday night with the congregation before I joined the faculty at Anderson College -- now Anderson University.
Though it sounds like a cliché, the folks at Pope Drive accepted me into their homes and into their hearts. That is an understatement. I was often invited to Sunday dinner with various families, and there were several families where I often dropped by on week nights to share whatever fare, light or lavish, they were having. Deep bonds were formed which have lasted across the decades since I left their church.
After my four years at the church, I also spent four years at the college. While I was at the college, Pansy and I married. Then our path took various turns through several states before I was invited to return to the faculty in 1981. So we came back to Anderson and have continued to make this our home after we both retired in 2000.
With the concepts of ministerial ethics I had learned in college and seminary, when I ended my formal association with the church, I basically sought to end any regular contact with the church. But that did not mean I terminated my friendship with the many people who had ministered to me as I sought to be one of their ministers. It was and still is natural to have occasional contact with many of these dear friends who nurtured me in my beginning years of ministry. In those contacts, I have made it a point not to discuss internal affairs at the church.
Over the years, I have returned to Pope Drive occasionally to perform weddings and have frequently been called on to be one of the ministers for funerals. Most of these funerals in recent years have been for people in their eighties and nineties whom I had first known when they were middle-aged men and women, truly the “backbone of the church.”
When Pansy and I left Anderson, I never dreamed I would have opportunity to return to this town, to teach again at the college and to be reunited with so many wonderful friends in the community at large and at Pope Drive. But people in the congregation were never far from my memory.
My pronunciation gaff in the Christmas program at Pope Drive stands out as one clear memory, but in the four years with the church, I never actually spent Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in Anderson. The church was gracious in expecting and encouraging me, as a young, single man far from home, to go back to Texas to be with my parents and brothers and sisters and the extended Webb family.
The church gave me lasting Christmas gifts: loads of love and patience, right from that very first Christmas when I learned to pronounce Caesar Augustus, South Carolina style.
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