CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

After graduation it seemed appropriate that i seek another Pastorate. The Executive Secretary of Massachusetts Baptists put me in touch with the Summit Avenue Baptist Church in Jersey City. I was invited to visit with the Church and the Pulpit Committee and was called to that pastorate. The Church was at 5-corners, and not far from the entrance to the subway to the Hudson Tunnel so there was easy access to New York City. As I recall the Moderator was a member of AA and an Al Anon group met in the basement of the Church. Among other opportunities I became an advisor to AA groups in the area. (Not a member.) I enjoyed living in this Metro area, but I suspect it was not a favorite place for Betty. We had a large parsonage next door to the Church. Plenty of room for a family of 5 kids, mother and father. Paul was to be born in July 1960 at the Margaret Hague Memorial Hospital.

A continuing memory of this era was the meeting of Leonard Ballesteros who pastored the North Baptist Church in a primarily Spanish part of town. He is Mexican. I participated with Len’s father in his marriage to Nancy Lee, a talented young lady who is Caucasian. That would have been in the early 1960’s. They are still married and are living in Florida after Len’s retirement from the M & M Board of American Baptists.

Another of my deep memories of this time was the chance to visit the opening of the Guggenheim Art Museum in NYC. The Pastorate, itself, went well and my intention was to stay there a long time. After about a year I got a letter from my twin brother, John, stating that he was teaching part-time at a small Church related college in Billings, MT - Rocky Mountain College, and that they were looking for a Director of Guidance who could help in the establishment of a Department of Psychology. Would I be interested? Of course. I was ordained and had a Master’s degree in Psych. It did seem, however, that it would not be fair to the Church to leave after such a short time. During the Easter Season of 1961 a friend who was an Episcopal Priest invited me to a day long retreat at one of their “retreats” in Jersey. I accepted and spent most of that day in meditation and prayer as to what my decision should be since the College had made a direct offer to me to join their staff. Mid-afternoon it became clear to me that this open door was one i should walk through. As Editor of my College Annual I had chosen those words: "Doors are opened, Ways are made" for the title page. I had walked through a door to become a College professor at Marshall. I had walked through a door to Graduate school at Penn State and then as Psychologist in residence at children’s homes in Iowa. I had walked through a door to Andover Newton, then Jersey City. Here was another opening. Now it seemed that my whole life experience had prepared me to “walk” through this door to Billings, Montana, and Rocky Mountain College. More on that later.