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.