Advice to coaches and preachers: Rent, don’t buy.
Once, it was not uncommon for a person to get a job and hold it until retirement, but longevity is a rarity in most professions today and few jobs are more precarious than that of a coach or a preacher, where years of tenure can usually be counted on your fingers.
Some fall victim to the whims of their followers or the vagaries of internal politics. For others, a job is merely a step in the progression toward bigger and better things.
There are exceptions, however.
This week, the congregation of Zion Gate Missionary Baptist Church will commemorate a truly remarkable milestone — the 50th anniversary of Rev. James A. Boyd as its pastor.
“It doesn’t take much to put you out in a black Baptist church,” Boyd acknowledges. “All it takes is a first, a second and a vote and you’re out the door.”
That never happened to Boyd. Instead, he stayed. And stayed. And stayed.
It all sort of sneaked up on Boyd, he says.
“I never thought of it in terms of, ‘Well, I want to preach this many years or that many years,” Boyd says. “I just wanted to preach. The years just accumulated.”
Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature…For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. – 1 Samuel 16:7
Boyd was born and raised near Starkville and still lives there, where he raises a few head of cattle and grows a modest vegetable garden. He calls that his personal workout program and it’s hard to argue with the results. At 74, he is fit, his posture upright, his eyes clear, his voice steady.
He is the grandson of a white plantation owner and his “slave wife” and son of a minister, one of nine children.
The story goes that his father prayed for God to give him a preacher when James was in the womb. At the age of 19, Boyd answered the call to the ministry. One problem: Nobody called back.
As he waited for his first church, he attended Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, graduating with a degree in English in 1964.
“I decided I better make a living while I waited,” Boyd said, “but I never gave up on wanting to be a preacher.”
He landed a job teaching English at Hunt High School, the black high school in Columbus. In the meantime, he actively pursued preaching opportunities with no result.
For six years he waited, watching as all of his friends who also aspired to be pastors found churches.
In the summer of ’65, Boyd finally got his shot.
And Nathanael said unto him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” – John 1:46
In 1965, the pastor of little Zion Gate M.B. Church died. The church wasn’t doing much better, truth be told.
Its congregation numbered just 43, including only 10 men. It was a poor little church in a neighborhood afflicted with poverty, crime, broken homes, broken hearts. The church held Sunday services just twice a month. It was a job that had “dead end” written all over it. Its existence relied on finding someone desperate enough to take the job.
Desperate? That would be Boyd. He could not have known it at the time, but teaching at Hunt was his pathway into the ministry.
“I was teaching some of the kids who attended Zion Gate,” Boyd says. “They went back to church and suggested their teacher to fill in as interim pastor.
“So it was the children of the church who got me the job.”
He started his role as pastor at Zion Gate in late August of 1965.
Boyd was thrilled, although his excitement on landing his first job as pastor was shared by few, he recalls.
“I remember when I first learned I got the job, I shared the news with a lady I knew,” he said. “She kind of frowned and said, ‘That little church on the Southside? You never gonna make it work there.’ But I lived in Starkville. I didn’t know anything about Southside. All I saw was an opportunity.”
For Boyd, it was not only an opportunity; it was a training ground, a place where a young, unpolished first-time preacher could learn and grow.
“When I was getting started, I had an ego and I had a temper,” Boyd admits. “I was strong-willed, I was stubborn. I realize now that I fought a lot of battles that I didn’t have to fight. But as a young pastor, I didn’t have a model to follow. I made mistakes, but I had sense enough to correct them and the church, especially the women of the church, allowed me to make those mistakes and learn.”
Slowly, the church began to grow. In 1970, the church began holding services every Sunday.
It was just the start.
As the church grew, so did Boyd, not only in his capacity as a pastor, but in his continuing pursuit of training.
He earned his bachelor’s in theology at Mississippi Baptist Seminary in Jackson and his doctorate in divinity at San Francisco Theological Seminary.
He served for 16 years as a civilian chaplain at Columbus Air Force Base and has served on the regional and national boards of the National Baptist Convention, USA. He has been a mentor to countless young pastors over the years and has taught homiletics — the study of preparing and delivering sermons — to innumerable seminary students. In fact, his sermon outlines are now standard practice in many black churches and there is scarcely a black pastor in the area who doesn’t consider Boyd a mentor.
He is also something of a legend on the revival circuit, traveling the country 32 weeks each year, preaching at revival services five days a week before returning to preach on Sunday at Zion Gate.
As Boyd’s reputation grew, there were many opportunities to move on to bigger churches with bigger resources, facilities, ministries. Somehow, though, Boyd just couldn’t bring himself to leave.
“I guess, maybe, it was because I had waited so long to get this job,” he said. “Then, there were the people, especially the women of the church, who had supported me all those years when I was making mistakes and learning. It just never felt right to leave. So I didn’t.”
Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches. – Luke 13: 18-19
For most of its 99-year existence, there was nothing to suggest to the casual observer that Zion Gate, located at 1202 Fifth St. South, was anything but a typical, small black church. It consisted of two buildings — a sanctuary, pastor’s office, tiny fellowship hall — no more than 2,000 square feet all together – and a two-story building on the north side of the property that was once a two-unit apartment building the church purchased in 1970 and converted into offices and classroom space.
That is changing. Work is well underway on a $900,000, 15,000-square-foot expansion to the south of the current church. By mid-summer, as Zion Gate celebrates its 100th anniversary, the church will hold services in a new sanctuary that will seat 675 and enjoy a fellowship hall that will seat 225, as well as classrooms and other spaces. The current sanctuary will be used as a chapel.
When completed, Zion Gate will truly stand apart from its neighbors. In truth, however, Zion Gate has long stood apart, not by its physical appearance, but through the influence of Boyd, whose shadow extends far beyond the Southside, throughout Columbus, the state, region and even the nation. When Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign made a stop in Columbus, the first visit paid by the candidate was to the pastor of the little church on the Southside.
Zion Gate has grown for the 43 members it had when Boyd became pastor to 475 today.
“We don’t have the largest membership in Columbus, but it’s one of the largest,” Boyd says. “Among black churches, we would be considered a mega-church.”
For all of his achievements, talents and vision, Gail Manning, who has been officer manager/secretary at Zion Gate for almost 15 years, says there is another quality to sets Boyd apart: His humanity.
“I believe what has made him so successful is his ability to be personal with the people,” Manning says. “He can be serious with you, and he can be light-hearted and casual. He always seems to be able to read people, to know what it is they need and how to approach them.”
And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. – Job 42: 12
About the only thing Boyd has had longer than his job is his wife, Kathrene. The Boyds have been married 51 years and have three children, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
He has no idea of how many sermons he has delivered – 10,000 would not be an exaggeration. Add to that innumerable weddings, baptists and funeral services.
Boyd is not one for counting sermons or milestones, though.
“I never thought about it,” he said.
It is not his nature to look back.
An inveterate sermon writer, he says he has about 30 sermons he’s written but hasn’t preached yet. He is also looking forward, naturally, to the possibilities that the church expansion will provide.
But mostly, he’s looking forward to doing what he’s been doing for half a century.
“God willing, I plan to keep preaching until my eyes are closed,” he says.
While he admits to being touched by the celebration his church has planned for him this week and marvels at how far the church has grown over his half-century of service, Boyd says it is important to stay grounded.
“God doesn’t call us to be successful,” he says. “He calls us to be faithful.”
In the case of Rev. James A. Boyd, sometimes you get both.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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