ON TO THE SEMINARY

            I grew up in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas where a person who felt called to the Pastoral ministry just started preaching so what was I doing going to seminary anyhow? My grandfather Lauther Chadwick had a sixth grade education that is of formal schooling. He was self educated and knew the bible frontward and backward. There were other preachers who could not read so when they preached they had their wife or someone else read their text for them. And the pastor of the church in Compton, California where I was a member at the time of my commitment to become a pastor was not college or seminary trained but was self trained. So why go to college and seminary to train for ministry?

            I asked Rev. Van Griffin my pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Compton, California, “Do I need to go to college and seminary in order to be a pastor?” and he told me, “No but it will take you 20 to 30 years to learn what you could learn in college and seminary.”  That influenced me somewhat but the real kicker was that I felt called to be a missionary and the requirement for appointment was a college and seminary degree. So in 1965 when I finished my college with a BA degree, I was ready to go on to seminary

            I resigned my position as associate pastor of First Spanish Baptist Church in El Monte, California, loaded up our household goods in a U-Haul truck and took them some 40 miles to Palmdale, California where I unloaded them into my younger sister’s garage. This was a Tuesday, so on Wednesday I left my wife and 3 children at my sister’s house and headed to Mill Valley, California to find a job to support my family and myself while attending seminary.

            Jack Combs was Director of Language Missions for the California Southern Baptist Convention. He had asked me to stop in at the Convention Headquarters in Fresno on my way to Mill Valley. Around noon I arrived in Fresno and met with Jack Combs. He asked me to postpone my trip to Mill Valley while he worked out a request that had come from the First Southern Baptist Church of Hanford for a mission pastor for their Spanish Mission. He called R. T. Strange the pastor of the sponsoring church and worked out with him for me to go to speak at the mission that night in view of a call as their mission pastor. I drove to Hanford and met with the pastor R.T. Strange and the man (I don’t remember his name) who was the fill-in pastor at the Spanish Mission. They had done a good job at getting the word out and there was a good turnout of Spanish members present for me to preach to that night. I spent the night at Pastor R. T. Strange’s home then returned to Fresno the next day. Jack asked me not to go up to Mill Valley but instead to go to the Jenness Park Baptist Camp and work on the Mission Compound. While the church issued a call right away, the Baptist Mission Board had to process my application as a Student Missionary. Before the summer was over the Board had appointed Barbara and me as Student Missionaries.

            Somehow I made contact (I have forgotten the details) with an aunt and uncle in Lemoore, Ca which is just a few miles from Hanford and my uncle made a large two wheeled trailer available to us to move our household goods from my sister’s garage to seminary housing. Thus I began three years of seminary studies and more than two hundred mile commute one way every weekend.