Music has played an outsized role in the life of Warren Coile, the senior pastor at Starkville First United Methodist Church.
So when the formally trained and accomplished baritone breaks into song in the middle of one of his sermons, it’s not at all surprising to the congregation. At least not anymore.
“It’s always good and appropriate,” said Peter Infanger, the church’s director of music.
This month, Coile celebrated his first anniversary with the church. He takes the job incredibly seriously, but he doesn’t mind having a little fun in the process – whether through creative illustrations in sermons or starring in a car dealership-style commercial on social media advertising the church’s attic sale.
Infanger characterizes his pastor as “quirky, in a good way.” Coile, laughing at the notion, says he’s simply “joyful.”
“I don’t know how else to be. So I don’t know what they say is ‘quirky,’” Coile said. “… Nobody wants a sour Christian. We’ve got enough of that kind of sanctimony running around.
“I just feel like joy is a whole lot more important than just about anything else you can get yourself into, and it helps you get through a whole lot of stuff,” he added. “… There is sort of an inner contentment of being free to be oneself.”
Coile, who was born in Jackson but graduated from Warren Central High School in Vicksburg, said he first felt the call to preach when he was 16. He ignored it, instead attending Northeast Louisiana University in Monroe with aspirations of becoming an emergency room doctor.
“The very last thing a 16-year-old boy wants to be is a Methodist preacher,” he said. “So I spent the next four years ‘proving’ I wasn’t going to do that.”
At NLU, he played the trombone in the marching band on scholarship. But a lady from his church back home gave him $25 a week throughout his freshman year to pay for voice lessons. That led to a job as a paid soloist at an Episcopal church in Monroe, and by his junior year he switched his music scholarship from band to voice.
“It’s a whole lot easier practicing for things in the air conditioning because August is pretty brutal in Louisiana,” he said, laughing.
Coile also became heavily involved in opera workshop at NLU and landing parts in area musicals, where he sometimes shared the stage with well-known talent. He played in “Carousel” and “Annie Get Your Gun” with Judy Kaye, the original Betty Rizzo from “Grease” on Broadway. He had a non-singing role in a “Westside Story” performance that starred Eddie Mekka, best known for playing The Big Ragu on “Laverne and Shirley.”
But the call to preach never abated, and Coile finally surrendered his junior year.
After graduating from NLU, he went through seminary at Emory University in Atlanta and started his professional ministry career in Wesson in 1988. From there, he’s served in churches across Mississippi, coming to Starkville after a 10-year stint at St. Mark’s in Brandon.
He may have left the theater behind when he donned his first stole, but he had one more tangential brush with showbiz.
“When I was in Bolton, there were about three or four men (in the church) who redid antique cars. That was their hobby,” Coile said. “‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou’ was filmed right outside of Bolton. All those cars (in the movie) belonged to my members.”
Coile came to Starkville at a challenging time for United Methodist churches, as many churches across the nation voted to disaffiliate from the denomination primarily due to its more tolerant views on homosexuality.
Starkville FUMC did not disaffiliate, but it lost about 300 members over the issue, Coile said. Though numbers are still down from where they once were, he said the past year has brought an uptick in attendance and participation in the church’s ministries.
“The people who are here want to be here,” he said. “… We’re the only ones who can blow our own horn, and we are doing good ministry. … What does it mean to love God and love your neighbor? There are some folks who want to cut and paste who their ‘neighbor’ is. If we aren’t welcoming people, where are they going to go?”
Coile keeps his singing voice sharp with the Starkville Community Choir and through performing in special programs at the church.
Though Coile never became a doctor or built a career as a professional musician, he saw those talents and passions come to fruition after all. He and his wife, Linus, have two children. One is a doctor; the other, a band director.
“Interesting how my brain went two different directions,” Coile said.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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