Episode description
This episode picks up in January 1975, when Dad was 24 years old and the newly-appointed minister for the West Side Church of Christ in Akron, Ohio. That Dad ended up here was a surprise to everyone. Just one month prior, he had no plans to be a preacher and no plans to ever live north of the Mason-Dixon line. In our conversation today, we talk about what it was like for Dad to take on his first full-time ministry as the “face” and “voice” of a local Church of Christ congregation. We talk about the difference between what Dad learned about church work growing up in the Bible Belt and what he found in the Rust Belt. Dad will talk about how he had to prepare and train himself to be a “pulpit man” and how he did it. He’ll tell us about the sermons he preached, why he chose to preach them, and whether he would ever preach them again. Finally, Dad will talk about what he did right as he began his life in ministry and what he could have done better starting out. We’ll even get into some of the strange expectations that churches place on their ministers, including an insistence that Dad preach his sermons from a 50 pound Bible.