MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
by Stan Paregien, Sr.
My earliest church memory is of attending services at a little country church in Oklahoma. That was a little congregation that met in the school house in the Enterprise Community near Wapanaucka, OK. My maternal great-grandfather, Allen Garrison Walters, was an elder there and often preached. My grandparents, John W. and Veda (Walters) Cauthen, farmed in the community and were members of that non-Sunday School, non-instrumental music Church of Christ. So my family went to worship there when we visited from our home in California.
My father, Harold Paregien, was a farmer for most of his life. He was neither a Christian nor even a church goer until after I grew up and left home. However, my mother, Evelyn (Cauthen) Paregien Spradling, took my sister and me to Sunday School and church as often as she could. And she read Bible stories to us and nurtured us in many other ways.
I would echo the words of theologian Karl Barth who, when he was asked to state the most important theological concept he had learned, said: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” I learned that mainly from my mother and from those Sunday School teachers whose names I have long forgotten.
I became a Christian in 1957. I repented of my sins, confessed my faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord, and was immersed by our preacher, Ralph Downey. That was at the ultra-conservative Church of Christ in Fillmore, CA. I was just entering my junior year at Fillmore High School. Ralph Downey took a personal interest in me and encouraged me to go with him to call on visitors and backsliding members.
By the spring of 1958 I was teaching Bible classes and leading singing (or at least I standing up there and waving my hand while the congregation sang). And by the fall I was “making talks” or preaching periodically. Then, when our preacher left, we had a series of guest speakers during my senior year. And I took my turn doing some of the preaching, and I became the editor of the church bulletin. Those were exciting times for me, as I studied the Scriptures daily and grew in my Christian walk.
However, I was part of an ultra-conservative congregation in a nearly equally conservative brotherhood of the non-instrumental Churches of Christ. The general attitude at that time was that we were the only ones with the Truth and everyone who didn’t agree with us was going to hell. Sad, but absolutely true.
Then, as I approached graduation from high school in June of 1959, I had decided that I wanted to study the Bible and maybe become a preacher. We had little money, of course. But that’s when I learned about the “Amarillo Bible Training Work” in Amarillo, Texas. That was a small “school” sponsored by the Church of Christ which met at 5th & McMasters in Amarillo, Texas. It was, of all things, a “non-Sunday School” church, the kind my maternal grandparents attended most of their adult lives. But the school offered Bible classes and related courses (Song Leading, Music, etc) three or four nights a week. That schedule of evening classes allowed the students to support themselves by working during the day.
So in late August of 1959 I loaded my Bible and clothes in my 1955 Mercury and drove to Amarillo, TX. I stayed at the school for about four months, studying under H.L. Gipson (the local preacher) and G.B. Shelburne (the director of the school). They also let me preach at area congregations, though I came from a “Sunday school” background. I roomed in the home of Mr. & Mrs. H.C. Chandler, sharing that room with Verdon Blevins and Marshall Baldwin. That’s when I got acquainted with such people as Kenneth Castello, Donald Lacy, Doyle Miller, Gene Shelburne, Clarence Eager, David McCormick, Sam McCormick, Tom Williams and others.
I returned home in January of 1960 and continued to teach Bible classes and to preach once in a while. I returned to the Amarillo Bible Training Work in August of 1960. This time I roomed with various guys, including Wayne Wallace, Sammy Joe Smith, and others.
Upon returning to California in the winter of 1961, I went to work full-time and continued to teach Bible classes and to preach as I had occasion. It was then, while teaching a Bible class in Fillmore, that a guest from out-of-town caught my attention. That was a young lady named Peggy Allen. She was the daughter of Mr. & Mrs. W.W. (“Woody”) Allen of Ventura, CA. He was the preacher for the East Ventura Church of Christ, and I greatly admired him and his preaching. But I admired his daughter even more.
Peggy and I began dating in late spring of 1961. By then I had decided to go to college, way up in Portland, Oregon, at Columbia Christian College. So in late August of 1961, my friend Dick Miller and I drove my 1955 Ford to Portland. And it was there that I enjoyed my first college- level Bible teaching under the V.P. of the school, Mr. Otis Hilburn. I also got acquainted with the president of the college, Robert Rowland, and have maintained contact with him to this day. I made a few “talks”, but didn’t get to preach much up there. I stayed one semester, returning home to Fillmore, CA., in January of 1962.
By this time my sweetheart, Peggy Allen, was a senior in high school and going to school to become a beautician. But one night a week we drove to the old Pepperdine University campus in Inglewood to take a Bible course (“Introduction to the Life of Christ”) taught by veteran missionary Howard Horton.
On May 31, 1962, I married my first (and only) wife, Peggy Allen. And that fall we loaded up everything we owned and headed off for David Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN., where I would study to become a self-supported missionary (i.e., teaching speech in college and preaching part-time). I had Bible classes under such people as Batsell Barrett Baxter, A.C. Pullias, Willard Collins, Leo Snow, Rodney Cloud, Carroll Brooks EllisCarl McKelvey, Joe Sanders, J. Ridley Stroop, and Mack Wayne Craig.
Soon after we arrived in Nashville, I began preaching on Sundays. My first church was the Mars Hill Church of Christ, a few miles outside of Bowling Green, Kentucky. I also preached at the Church of Christ in Greenville, Kentucky, then later for the Chestnut Ridge Church of Christ near Petersburg, Tennessee.
Something wonderful happened to me in 1963. I usually spent quite a bit of time in a room in the university library where the religious magazines were kept. One day I picked up a small, plain magazine that changed my whole attitude toward my brethren and toward other believers and even toward God. That magazine was Mission Messenger, edited by W. Carl Ketcherside and published in St. Louis, Missouri.
To my amazement, Carl Ketcherside and his writers were advocating unity in diversity – that is, loving and working with other believers, even though we disagree on various points of doctrine. And what was even more staggering, among the preachers and teachers they were quoting in support of their position was none other than the founder of my university, David Lipscomb himself. And I realized the irony of the fact that if good ol’ Uncle Dave had been alive in 1963 and had spoken those words on campus he would have been disfellowshipped and ushered away. That’s how narrow and sectarian the Church of Christ scene was in 1963.
So I began corresponding with Car Ketcherside and with other leaders of this “unity movement,” such as Leroy Garrett, editor of The Restoration Review. And from that moment to this, thanks to their insights and encouragement, I have learned to question what I hear from a Bible class or pulpit or what I read in print. Instead of searching the Bible for “proof texts” to prove how right we were on doctrinal points, my study shifted to asking what God’s will is for his people and how can we work together to achieve his will.
I graduated from DLU in 1965 with a major in Speech Communication and minors in Bible and History. The day I graduated we moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico so I could work on a master’s degree in Speech Communication at the University of New Mexico. While there, I worked part-time as Associate Minister of the Netherwood Park Church of Christ ( Darrel Rickard was the preacher ).
I finished the course-work for my M.A. in the summer of 1966. And, with my wife now pregnant, I accepted my first full-time ministry. That was with the University Church of Christ in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Besides having a fine group of elders and deacons, they also had a full-time campus minister ( Don Stone; then Beulen Barnes ) for the students at New Mexico State University. This was a time of great spiritual growth for me, as I was able to devote more time than ever before to studying the Word of God. I preached twice on Sunday mornings, once on Sunday evening, and taught Bible classes on Sunday morning and Wednesday nights. I also had a 30-minute radio program, conducted home Bible studies with non-Christians, edited the church bulletin and wrote numerous articles for one of the leading brotherhood magazines, Firm Foundation.
By the summer of 1968, I had completed the work for and had received my M.A. degree. I had also been accepted into the doctoral program in the Speech department at the University of New Mexico. And I had also been hired to work part-time as the Associate Minister of the Mayfair Church of Christ, 2340 NW 50th, in Oklahoma City. Virgil Trout was the Minister and Harold Fletcher was the Minister of Music. Here, for the first time in my own experience, I encountered what I would call “therapuetic preaching” of the highest kind. Virgil Trout had the ability to pack his 20-minute sermons with uplifting grace-oriented thoughts. And I learned much from him.
During this period, another searcher and I began to meet with a couple of preachers who worked for independent Christian Churches. That person was Roy Young, at that time the minister of the Cherokee Hills Church of Christ. Soon we hit upon the idea of inviting all branches of the “Restoration Movement” to meet with us maybe once every three months to study and to pray about our divisive state of affairs. We met some six or seven times, with 50 to 100 people present each time, to hear from people like Tony Ash, C.C. Crawford, Marvin Phillips and others.
Early in 1970 my first book, The Day Jesus Died, was published by Firm Foundation Press of Austin, Texas. It was a collection of the sermons that I had preached at the University Church in Las Cruces, NM. By that summer I had left the Mayfair church and was studying full-time on my doctorate.
Early in 1971 my second book, Thoughts on Unity, was published by Mission Messioner of St. Louis, Missouri. I had conceived this concept more than a year earlier and had presented it to Carl Ketcherside and he liked it. My idea was to invited several leaders from the major branches of the Restoration Movement to contribute essays on some aspect of Christian unity. I was the editor of the project. And we wound up with these eighteen writers: Jimmy Allen, Arthur W. Atkinson, Jr., Dave Bradford, Harvey C. Bream, Jr., Grayson H. Ensign, Leroy Garrett, Perry E. Gresham, Lavern Houtz, Vernon W. Hurst, Ferrell Jenkins, W. Carl Ketcherside, Thomas A. Langford, F.L. Lemley, Ronald E. Osborn, Erskine E. Scates, Jr., Robert W. Shaw, Gene Shelburne, and Carl Herbert Stem.
By the end of the summer of 1971, I had run out of energy and money about the same time. So, with just one language and my dissertation left on my doctorate, I accepted a sales job. And soon we had bought an old farm house on ten acres of land a few miles north of Stroud, Oklahoma. When we moved there, we began attending the local Church of Christ (a relative of my wife’s had been the minister there many years before). I did my share of teaching classes and volunteer work.
Within a few months, though, we found the old sectarian ways far too restrictive for us to endure. That is when we began attending Stroud Christian Church, an independent congregation across town. (The preacher was Kermit Lynch, a man who had been a leader in the non-Sunday school Churches of Christ many years before, so we had much in common.) Yes, they used instrumental music in their worship and, yes, there were other doctrinal differences. But we felt that the Spirit had led us there.
That change was a dramatic one for us, and it was traumatic for some of our Christian friends and fellow preachers. I wrote about that decision in the August, 1972 issue of Integrity magazine ( CLICK HERE to read that article.).
As I said, some were traumatized by our “leaving” the Church of Christ – though we thought of it more as embracing a wider spectrum of Christians. In any event, a prolific writer for the Firm Foundation named Roy H. Lanier, Sr., wrote a four-page (four issues) response to my letter/article. I felt that he misrepresented my position, so I wrote to editor Reuel Lemmons asking for space to reply in the interest of truth. Lemmons, who had published my book of sermons just two years before, refused to allow me to respond. And, so, the door to many of the congregations of the Church of Christ swung shut for me.
After a period of time at Stroud Christian Church, they appointed me as one of their elders. So I continued writing religious articles, teaching Bible classes, shepherding, and occasionally preaching. On Jan. 24, 1973 I spoke before an inter-denominational meeting in Stroud on the topic of, “The Case for Christian Unity” (later printed in the Christian Standard for May 6, 1973).
Other articles on similar topics followed: “Christian Freedom” (Christian Standard, Oct. 14th & 21st, 1973) and “No Creed But Christ” (Christian Standard, Aug. 4th & Aug. 11th & Aug. 18th, 1973).
By 1974, I was wanting to return to full-time ministry. And by that summer I was hired as the preaching minister for the Southside Christian Church, 1919 S. 10th St., in Council Bluffs, IA. It was hard for us to give up our “country living,” but my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed our two years there with a fine group of believers. And we were able to become friends with Richard Hogan, minister at First Christian Church, and Duane King, director of Deaf Missions, and such local congregational leaders as Bob Anderson, Bob Baker and Larry Buckles. And I was active in both the Kiwanis Club and the Ministerial Association.
And I continued my own attempts at helping believers come together. I continued to attend the Abilene Christian University Lectureship in Abilene, Texas. And one year I wrote to the lectureship director to enquire about booth space in the exhibitor area for Deaf Missions (They trained people to use sign language and also prepared teaching materials for the hearing impaired). The request was flatly denied, because this work with deaf people was associated with “instrumental churches.” Duane King’s good-natured reponse to me, upon learning of the rejection, was this: “You know, Stan, deaf people don’t care much one way or the other about instrumental music.”
It was during this time our “home” church (Stroud Christian) had not only changed preachers but had a church split. Now the new preacher was leaving and the remaining people were asking if we would consider returning. And so, one VERY COLD day in late January of 1977, we left Council Bluffs and I became the minister of Stroud Christian Church.
My third book, Twenty-Six Lessons on the Gospel of John was published in 1971 by College Press of Joplin, Missouri. This publishing house, run by Don DeWelt, primarily served independent Christian Churches. And this book was designed for use in Bible classes in churches or Bible colleges.
I may still be the only person to ever have books published by such diverse groups within the Restoration Movement (My first by Firm Foundation; my second by Mission Messenger; and this, my third, by College Press).
Upon arriving back “home,” I worked very hard to try to rebuild the congregation and heal the wounds that were bleeding the congregation to death. But after an exhausting eight months, I felt I could do no more and resigned to become minister of the South City Church of Christ in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
The South City Church of Christ is affiliated with the independent Christian Churches. The people there were warm (sometimes even “hot,” as per their Cajun bloodline). And the elders, though good men, were very traditional and conservative. Their last preacher, who was there several years, preached negative sermons lasting more than 60 minutes. They were used to that and never warmed up to my style. So, following the death of my father in California, I resigned and we moved back to California to be near my mother and my wife’s parents. And that was my last full-time ministry.
We stayed in California about a year and moved back to our little farm house north of Stroud, OK. My wife’s parents soon moved back there, so we again joined with them in worshiping at the local Church of Christ. He was appointed as an elder. And I taught some classes and occasionally preached, as together we tried to change attitudes and broaden their thinking.
By 1987 our jobs had taken us to Snyder, Texas. We became members of the East Side Church of Christ, 201 31st St., Snyder, TX 79549. I taught some classes and preached a few times. And after several months I was appointed as one of the elders (joining Bobby McCormick, Milton Stephens, and James Wesson). Tom Holcomb was and still is the minister. During this time, I occasionally preached at the Presbyterian Church and at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), when their respective preachers were out of town. The other elders and the minister were very supportive of this effort to reach out to other believers.
In August of 1993 we moved back to Oklahoma to be closer to our families (our son at the time lived in Edmond, and Peggy’s parents lived 50 miles south).We became members of the Quail Springs Church of Christ, 14401 N. May, Oklahoma City, OK 73134. We became involved in the “Care Group” activity of this congregation. This chuch averages some 1,100 in morning worship. That is where we are today. Peggy and I both underwent training to teach in the “Let’s Start Talking” program. So this year we each have a student whose native language is not English, and we are studying the Gospel of Luke with them to introduce them to Jesus and to help them with their English. Her student is from Korea and mine is from China.
Now in my mid-60's, I feel a strong calling to return to some area of full-time ministry. That could be as a preaching minister, an associate minister with administrative and/or duties working with senior citizens, a staff member of a college or para-church organization, or something entirely different. I am simply making myself available as the Spirit may lead.
If the Lord opens the door for me to serve somewhere else, in a full-time capacity, I would love doing that. If the door to full-time ministry does not open, that is okay, too. For you see I adhere to the popular phrase going around the churches a few years ago: “Bloom where you’re planted.” That is what I intend to continue doing, no matter what or where.
Now I invite you to read my article, "What I Believe."