the grand plan of God
AUGUST 24, 2007 (FRIDAY) – This the third and last blog about all the jobs I had as I moved toward graduation from the seminary.
By the time I graduated from the Seminary in 1959, I had worked at many jobs, most of them part-time because I was a student. Growing up as a teenager in Houston, I worked at several grocery stores, in the produce and grocery sections. I worked for one day for a man who bottled his own brand of something, I don’t remember now if it was mouthwash or cologne. I don’t believe I ever knew. I didn’t do so well on that job. I worked in a movie palace downtown, and in a couple of neighborhood theatres. I worked for my parents in their three restaurants around town, as waiter and cashier.
When I became a college freshman, the First Baptist Church of Groesbeck called me at $25 per month to lead singing (title: Associate Pastor), and in my Junior year I went to my first pastorate, Oletha Baptist Church, 15 miles SE of Groesbeck, at $25 per week, meeting every other week at first, but soon voting to meet every week. I also worked at “Baby Percy” medicine company in Waco for a while. After graduation from Baylor in 1953, I resigned as pastor and moved to Fort Worth to go to the seminary. I went to work at a creamery (where we made ice cream). About that time Wanda and I married, and around the end of 1953 moved to Lampasas, where I pastored a mission, commuting to the seminary in Fort Worth twice weekly, for one year, 185 miles one way with my friend, Gene McCombs. The mission became the Northside Baptist Church while we were there. Looking back, I wondered sometimes why I resigned the church at Oletha. But the larger picture shows that our move to Lampasas was necessary in the grand plan of God, accomplishing much in our lives, not the least of which was our eventual move to Rockport.
Moving back to Fort Worth in the summer of 1955, I went to work for General Motors as a clerk, in an exciting factory where we built automobiles: Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs. A recession forced the plant to discontinue the second shift, and without the chance to work at night, my job would not allow me to attend seminary classes. In order to get back in school, I had to quit that job, which I really loved. So I went to work at a granary-feed store, where I developed a muscular frame because of the heavy lifting. In 1957, the church at Briar, where we lived, northwest of Fort Worth, called me as pastor, and I became a full-time student as I pastored the part-time church. After graduation in May, 1959, we moved to Kosse, then to Dallas in 1961, and to Rockport in November, 1964, where we stayed put until retirement in February 1996. After that I kept on preaching, supplying the pulpit at various places, serving as Interim Pastor in Ingleside and Refugio (twice), and becoming pastor of the Timbergrove Baptist Church in Houston. I returned, at almost 75 years of age, to the Rockport church as Interim Pastor in the summer of 2006.
In a few weeks, if the Lord permits, I will be 76 years old. I’ve had a quite a ride, I guess, as I just tried to follow the leading of the Lord day by day. These articles have been about jobs and pastorates, etc. and I have not talked about my family’s participation in all this. I will do that tomorrow.