"50 YEARS!"

 “50 YEARS!”

Caroline and I were married 50 years ago on May 18, 1974, in Ed Loring’s back yard in Decatur, with Ed and Caroline’s long-time friend Sandy Winter officiating.  It was an outdoor “hippie” wedding, though we did not think of it in those terms then.  We asked people not to bring gifts but rather to make donations to four non-profits that we designated – if they did not like any of those, we asked them to make a donation to a non-profit of their choice.  We had a potluck, covered dish lunch, and many people brought dishes and Corningware.  They did not clean them up and take them home with them.  We wondered what was going on – how would we get all those dishes back to the owners?  Then it dawned on us – they had left them as “unofficial” wedding gifts for us.  We are still using some of those Corningware dishes to this day.

Caroline did not want to be a June bride, so we got married in May in the middle of my final exams at Columbia Seminary.  We only had a couple of days for a honeymoon, and we are ever grateful to Erskine and Nan Clarke for allowing us to use their apartment for it in Montreat.  During that time, we went in to Asheville (long before it became so hip), and we toured Thomas Wolfe’s home there.  As we were approaching the Wolfe home, we saw a man who had huge hands and who looked like a Wolfe.  He introduced himself, and it was Fred Wolfe, brother of Thomas Wolfe.  We had a great and somewhat awed conversation.

Caroline and I met at Robin and Linda Williams’ wedding in Nashville in June, 1972, and I was smitten with her.  I moved to Decatur in the summer of 1973 to resume my seminary career at Columbia, after serving as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.  Spurred on by Pat Loring (now Pat Hiott-Mason) who played matchmaker for us, we started dating that summer.  Caroline had already been ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1973, to serve as a campus minister at Georgia Tech, with an emphasis on the growing number of women students there.  I had one more semester to complete my seminary career, and we began to look for churches where we could serve as a clergy couple.  There had never been a clergy couple serving in the same church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church, so we started a pioneering ministry there.  Indeed, our pioneering and partnering ministry will be the subject of our next book.

Though the denomination’s leadership discouraged us –(“you’ll never find a call – just let Nibs find a church, Caroline can find something in the area”), we were blessed to find a church in Norfolk, Virginia that was looking for a woman pastor to minister to Navy families in a huge housing complex in Norfolk.  They were willing to add me on as part of a clergy couple, and we became co-pastors of St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk.  The ministry that we established there became a powerful one, even with only 12 official members.  We were blessed to receive the Presbyterian Women’s Birthday Offering in 1978 to establish St. Columba Ministries, which still is rolling today, even though the church itself is closed.  Our son David was born in Norfolk in 1980.  He was conceived in Montreat – we had gone there to do study leave with Ed Loring and Murphy Davis at the Davis home in Montreat.  It was in April and still cold in Montreat, but being the Spartan people that they were, Murphy and Ed would not turn on the heat.  We found a way to stay warm, and David was born 9 months later.

We left Norfolk for Nashville in late 1980, and it was a difficult parting with St. Columba Church – it had grown, and the ministry was booming, even as we fought the city, which wanted to tear down the apartments to make an industrial park.  The elders and members were shocked and hurt when we announced that we were leaving for Nashville, where I would be working on the staff of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons.  Our hearts were hurting too, but we missed our families.  That pain lingered for a long time, and perhaps that is one of the reasons that we stayed so long at Oakhurst – we did not want to experience that pain again, nor inflict it on anyone else.

Since it took so long to get pregnant with David, we began pretty quickly “working on” getting pregnant with Susan, and she was born in September, 1982.  I had been a part-time supply pastor at Second Presbyterian in Nashville while they were between pastors.  They were such a great congregation to us, and it reminded me how much I missed being a pastor in a local church.  I began looking for a church, while Caroline stayed home with our small children.  Through Ed Loring, we were connected with Oakhurst, and I was called to be their pastor early in 1983.  Caroline continued to stay home at first, but she came on staff on a part-time basis in the fall, 1984.  We would remain as co-pastors there for 30+ years, and Caroline had to work several other part-time jobs to keep us afloat financially.  But, it worked – Oakhurst became a nationally known leader in multicultural ministry, and the membership grew to over 400.  You can read more about this part of the journey in our book “O Lord, Hold Our Hands: How a Church Thrives in a Multicultural World,” which the denomination asked us to write in 2003.

So, 50 years of pioneering and partnering – quite the journey!  We’ll celebrate our 50 years this Saturday, June 22 – lift up a glass to us, and of course, we’d be glad to see you or hear from you.