Did you hear the one about the little boy who opened a Bible to find several withered, old leaves and thought he’d found Adam’s underwear?
Kathleen Young’s got a million of them — well, more than 400, she says — and she used such clean jokes to help entertain pre-adolescent boys for decades as a Sunday school teacher at First Church of the Nazarene.
“The old ones are new again,” she said.
Mrs. Young, 84, is one of many people — every church has them — who have been teachers, ushers, deacons and otherwise leaders in their places of worship for scores of years.
Starting at age 14 with 3- and 4-year-olds, she has taught Sunday school for 70 years. Following her stint with young children, she moved to the 10- through 12-year-olds “nobody wanted to teach” and now has taught senior adult women for around eight years.
Robert Hames, now 102, was treasurer for most of the 50 years he attended Cedar Hill Baptist Church. Now a member of Brainerd Baptist Church, he’s attended that congregation’s Friendship Class since its organization some 18 years ago.
In fact, he still attends, his wife of 10 years, Bula Dell, says.
YEARS OF SERVICE* Name: Robert Hames.* Age: 102 (this week).* Church: Brainerd Baptist.* Areas of service: Sunday school, church treasurer, missions work support.* Comment on his service: “He’s a real fine Christian man,” said his wife, Bula Dell. “He’s done so much for the Lord with his money.”* Name: Kathleen Young.* Age: 84.* Church: First Church of the Nazarene.* Areas of service: Sunday school teacher, chalk artist.* Comment on her service: “I’ve had the enjoyment and pleasure of knowing I was doing something for the Lord. The presence of the Lord has been there to lead me and guide me.* Name: Thomas L. Scott.* Age: 83.* Church: First Baptist Church, East Eighth Street.* Areas of service: Board of deacons, Sunday school teacher.* Comment on his service: “It’s a part of me. I don’t assign a tiredness to it. I want people to be spiritually in the best shape possible.”* Name: Gin Johnston.* Age: Not available.* Areas of service: Sunday school teacher, youth director, membership assimilation director.Comment on her service: “I loved the youth. I have worked with youth all my life.”
“It’s given him focus, a reason to serve, pleasure and fulfillment,” she said. “(Active service in church) is so much a part of his life.”
Thomas L. Scott, 83, has a been a member of First Baptist Church on East Eighth Street since the mid-1950s — almost as far back as the years when it nearly hired a young man named Martin Luther King Jr. as its pastor.
Since 1963, he has been a member of the congregation’s board of deacons and has taught an older adult Sunday school class nearly as long.
“I feel very obligated to pass some spiritual values on to those I teach and whom I have leadership positions over,” Mr. Thomas said.
His wife, Daisy, is likewise involved with the church, having taught Sunday school for many years and serving as Sunday school superintendent for the past four or five years.
Gin Johnston, and her husband, Tad, have roots three generations back in First-Centenary United Methodist Church, but that history doesn’t make them complacent.
Asked to teach Sunday school for the first time when she was 21, Mrs. Johnston found her niche with youth classes and taught that age group– including five years in California when her husband’s work took them there — for about 30 years.
However, it was her first week as a teacher in a sixth-grade class that nearly undid her when a student asked if it was true that all of the early (1st century) church members were Communists.
Those youth classes eventually elicited a call, Mrs. Johnston said, to serve temporarily as director of youth until a new director could be found. That temporary post turned into six or seven years and crowds of more than 100 youth a week.
Now, having been a shepherd for the last 15 to 18 years of an adult Sunday school class, she is teaching some of the same people she did when they were teenagers.
“The most fun,” Mrs. Johnston said, laughter in her voice, “is seeing all of those kids who turned my hair white having their hair turned white by their own teenagers. What goes around does come around.”