Month: November 2012

For a couple years Tim Sitterley, senior pastor of GCI churches in Eugene and Salem, Oregon, spent as much time in a kilt as in jeans. No, he wasn’t living in Scotland; he was playing bagpipes with the MacCallum Highlanders, a group attached to the 127th National Guard in Ohio. Tim grew up in WCG. “My father was a member before I was born, but I was five when my mother and I started attending.” Tim spent the first 9 years of his life on a farm in Pennsylvania. “Then my family moved to a small town (Hubbard) just outside Youngstown, OH.” Tim claims his teen years were “rather colorful.” “I was voted ‘Most likely to be dead by age 30’ in high school, and I’m the only person I know who has been forcefully deported by a foreign country—but that’s a story for another time.”

After high school, Tim went to Ambassador College in Pasadena. Soon afterward his parents also moved to Pasadena so Tim never made it back to Ohio. It was in college Tim met his wife Linda and they married in 1979. “Our daughter Danielle and son Michael are both married and live near us. We have four grandchildren (two to each child), Logan, Ian, Noah and Asia. My daughter attends and is active in my Eugene congregation, and my son and his wife are on pastoral staff at Crossfire World Outreach in Springfield, Oregon.”

“After the college closed in ‘79 I was hired by the church; originally in the mail processing center, and later as a writer in the Personal Correspondence Department.” During a time Tim calls “insanity at HQ” in the early ‘80s, he and Linda decided to move to Eugene, Oregon.

“When we moved to Eugene in 1985, I was thoroughly burned out, and avoided any church-related responsibilities for a number of years. However, by the late ‘80’s I was back on the weekly speaking schedule, and when our senior pastor retired in ’95, I was part of the pastoral team in Eugene until another senior pastor could step in. After a couple of years as assistant pastor, I was offered the senior pastor position when our senior pastor retired. A year later Eugene and Salem were joined in a church circuit.”

Tim jokingly suggests that his favorite part of being a pastor is the ability to sleep in on most weekday mornings. But then he got a bit more serious and said: “I grew up an only child in a family that had little connection. With the exception of my mother’s funeral eight years ago, I haven’t seen any of my blood relatives in well over two decades. But as a pastor, you get to be a part of many families. Sometimes that means getting caught up in the drama. But other times it means getting to share in the joys and triumphs. I’ve stood bedside families as a loved one took their final breath…I’ve joined couples in marriage…I’ve blessed newborn children—all in the same week.

“Yes, when you are that intimate with so many people there can be a good deal of pain involved. But it is the pain that comes from loving and caring—the kind of pain that families share—and I wouldn’t trade it for the safe, distanced relationships that I see so many people living.”

When asked what Tim might like others to know about him, he said, “They already know too much. I get a fair amount of criticism for being too transparent. My congregations already know the details of my health and diet, what Tequila I drink and my favorite brand of cigar. They know I’ve gone through anger management classes and struggle with occasional depression. They know I’m a theistic evolutionist. And they know that I hate cats. There is not much left to reveal.”

Tim calls himself a Bible Geek. “Even during my misspent youth I was constantly in the library reading commentaries and books on early church history. When I was 15 I wrote a letter to a prominent WCG pastor telling him that what I was reading in Galatians regarding grace and the law didn’t seem to line up with what he was writing in WCG literature. I was asked not to attend services for several weeks until I came to see the error of my ways.”

Among his most memorable moments as a pastor, Tim shares this: “A few years back I attended one of the largest counter-culture festivals in the country, and while sitting in a wood-heated sauna I got caught up in a conversation comparing the teachings of Jesus with the writings of the Dali Lama. Later in the day I was walking through the craft market and I heard one of the gentlemen from the sauna yell, “Hey, it’s the preacher dude!” For the next hour or two I found myself surrounded by hippies (and hippy wannabes) who had questions about Jesus and the Bible. For that brief period, I knew what Paul must have felt when he preached in the markets of Athens and Corinth.”

Like many pastors, Tim feels the strongest presence of God when he is preaching. “The speaking part is no big deal. When I worked in the public sector one of my jobs was to speak before large crowds. But when I’m unpacking Scripture, or trying to address a current need of a congregation, I never feel alone on stage. I may joke about many of the aspects of this job, but the moment I feel the sermon is now all about me, and not about allowing God to speak through me—that is the moment I look for another line of work.”

Leroy Joiles, who pastors the GCI congregation in Christian Penn, Jamaica, says, “Perhaps the most rewarding thing about being a pastor is bringing a person to Christ.”

Leroy and his wife, Diane, “a lady who has a heart of gold,” have been married for 16 years. “We have three wonderful children: April, Nicholas and Justin. Another son of mine was killed four years ago, just after his 30th birthday. His son was three months old when he died.”

Leroy grew up and went to school in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital city, but he spent the first few years of his life in a rural district in the Parish of St Ann, living with his father’s parents. “My mother brought me to the country to live with my grandparents because she had decided to migrate to England to join my father who himself had migrated several months earlier.” As a result, Leroy says he grew up without a lot of parental guidance or supervision.

“Both my parents were living in England and my grandparents died when I was young. Even before the death of my grandparents I was placed in situations similar to that of a foster home. I did not have good health while living at my grandparents’ home due to what now seems to have been an allergic reaction to something in the area. Whenever I got sick I would be sent to live with a relative until I got better. As a result, I have lived with most of my aunts and uncles for short periods of time. I must emphasize that it is not because I was a rude child that I had to keep going from house to house. In some cases it was due to a lack of resources on the part of the aunt or the uncle.”

Leroy didn’t meet his mother until he was 15 years old and didn’t meet his father until he was 39 years old. “What I have learned from my situation is this: Despite the difficulties that a person may have to live through from time to time, God is still able to use your life to achieve whatever purpose he wants to achieve through you. I had no idea that I would be doing what I am doing today. I did not plan it and I never saw it coming. However, I firmly believe that God directed the course of events in my life that resulted in being where I am now. It is all a part of his doing.”

God’s purposes were achieved time and again in Leroy’s life. He was drawn to WCG in the late 70s by listening to The World Tomorrow program. “I learned about the broadcast by a cousin who came to my house and told me about this man (Herbert W. Armstrong) who was saying some interesting things about world events and the military might, and achievements of some the world’s superpowers. Interestingly, my cousin was not a part of the Church, and to the best of my knowledge he showed no further interest in The World Tomorrow broadcast from that day he told me about it.”

Leroy claims he had no interest in church, but he found the broadcast to be informative and enlightening. “That was the start of a series of events that God would use over the ensuing years to get my attention.”

In 1981, Leroy was invited to attend a Plain Truth meeting. Afterwards he was invited to attend a Wednesday evening Bible Study. “After attending a few meetings, I was invited to church and I have been attending since. I was baptized in January 1983.”

Leroy became part of the pastoral team in Christian Penn in September 2000 when the pastor was laid off. It was a tough transition. “My most memorable moment is the day I first stepped into the position as a part of a pastoral team whose role was to provide leadership to a congregation that was bitterly divided because their pastor had just been laid off and he was being replaced with persons whom some of the congregation believed had conspired to get rid of their pastor. The ensuing weeks and months were tedious as we tried to serve people some of whom we knew did not trust us.”

The team worked together for a few years until Leroy was asked to pastor the congregation. He initially struggled with this role. “I don’t care much about being in the spotlight. As a matter of fact I prefer not to be. It took me a long time to accept that I was a pastor. I began to accept the role when I thought about what happened to Jonah when he tried to run away from doing what God wanted him to do. I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to find myself in any situation that even remotely resembled what he went through; but there was still the thought – me a pastor, no way.”

Leroy tries to pastor in the way that GCI leadership leads the denomination. “I enjoy being part of this fellowship because the leadership is made up of people who are humble, friendly and who identify with people at the grass roots. Embodying Jesus’ servant leadership, they are simple people who do not set themselves up as demigods who lord it over those they are supposed to serve. This makes it possible for me to feel at home in our fellowship.”

Concerning the church in Christian Penn, Leroy says that “God has set for us a specific task, that when accomplished, will have a tremendous, far-reaching impact on the lives of many who live and work in the community. It is my passion to lead the church so that we can accomplish this task.”

Leroy says he feels closest to God when engaged in long and intense prayer. He prays a lot for Jamaica and the work God has called the pastors in Jamaica to do. “Being a pastor in Jamaica can be bittersweet. There are times when things are good and times when things are not so good. Being a GCI pastor is challenging because our denomination has been through significant doctrinal and structural changes. Despite the ups and downs, God has been good to us and I strongly believe that our congregations here in Jamaica have better days ahead.”