FIRST GLIMPSE: Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Just over four years. According to the Bureau of Labor, that’s the average amount of time today’s employee sticks with a job before moving on to greener pastures. With each new generation, the value placed on job longevity seems to diminish.

Contrast that with 50 years in one spot. The concept almost seems laughable by today’s drive-though, sound bite, microwavable, fast-lane, overnight shipping, TikTok culture. Yet, remarkably, last year, three Free Will Baptist pastors each marked a half century at a single church.

January 16, 2022, the congregation at Samantha FWB Church in Springfield, Ohio, honored pastor Wiley Perkins (who died the following December) for 50 years at the church. July 31, Larry Condit celebrated 50 years at Capitol FWB Church in Sacramento, California. September 18, Vernon Maggart completed 50 years as pastor of Freeman Chapel in Easton, Missouri.

Three men. A hundred and fifty years. A century and a half of ministry. And the numbers truly get staggering when you add up sermons, weddings, funerals, hospital visits, phone calls, revivals, outreach events, special services, and classes taught.

For these men, and others like them, the rigors of ministry are standard fare. “I’ve been here 50 years because the Lord has blessed me,” Pastor Perkins told a news reporter. “So brag on God for helping me.”

“I have always sought the Lord’s leadership, and He has just left us here,” says Pastor Maggart. “We’ve never felt led to go anywhere else.”

Seems to me, these men were too busy about the Lord’s work to look for greener pastures.

Let’s put things into perspective. When these men began their pastorates:

• Richard Nixon was President.
  

• Harry S. Truman and J. Edgar Hoover had just died.
  

• The Vietnam War was ongoing.
  

• The Watergate scandal was exploding into the public eye.
  

• Loretta Lynn won big honors for “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
  

• The Dow Jones industrial average broke 1,000 for the first time.
  

• The Apollo Mission put a man on the moon for the last time.
  

• Oh, and yours truly made his first appearance on planet earth.
  

In short, 50 years is a long time. I am grateful to these men and others like them for reminding us young whipper-snappers a life of faithfulness is possible. That we can thrive through the ups and downs of ministry. That we can survive the mundane moments that often become the fabric of a life spent in God’s work. To me, they are living examples of what theologian Eugene Peterson described as “a long obedience in the same direction.”

I want to walk in their footsteps.

Read more about Larry and Joan Condit in Sowing Seeds of Faithfulness.

About the Columnist: Eric K. Thomsen is managing editor of ONE Magazine.