c. 1999 Religion News Service

HAZEL GREEN, Ala. _ Only one current member of the St. Rebecca Primitive Baptist Church was in the congregation when the Rev. Joe Pendleton stepped to the podium a little more than 60 years ago to deliver his first sermon there.

Since that Sunday in January, 1939, Pendleton, now 95 years old and believed to be one of the oldest still-active pastors in the country, has given many sermons to that member, Alta Lee Rice, and other members of the congregation _ homilies that often began as texts that he spent hours in study and meditation preparing before typing them up for Sunday’s delivery.

Often, though, he recalled in a recent interview, he was unable to give his prepared text.”I would have a prepared text in my grip, and as I was sitting meditating and thinking about that sermon, the Holy Spirit would come over me and give me Scriptures I had not even thought about before then,” he said. “I would go to the podium and let the Holy Spirit preach what he wanted me to that Sunday. I never told my congregation I had another sermon in my grip.”

Earlier this year, members of the congregation, along with worshippers from several other area churches, gathered at St. Rebecca’s to celebrate Pendleton’s 60 years in the ministry.

Pendleton said he did not start out in life to become a minister and actually resisted what he felt was God’s call for quite some time. His main occupation was laying track for the Southern Railroad, something he continued to do even after he began preaching at St. Rebecca’s. He retired from the railroad in 1955.”I raised my family on the Southern Railroad,” he said.

After finally heeding the call, he preached his first sermon in 1935 and was elected minister at St. Rebecca’s in 1939.

Over those 60 years, Pendleton said, he has seen many changes _ both in and out of his church. Most of those changes, he said, have made the world a better place. But he also worries about many things taking place today:”There are so many people who have turned away from the Lord.” Pendleton said he was especially disturbed by the way President Clinton was treated during the impeachment process.”Some of these people have forgotten what the Scripture says about casting the first stone,”he said.

While he said what Clinton did was wrong, he argued that the Bible says people are to forgive.”I believe they need to forgive him and let him get along with his job,” he said.”God forgives us, why can’t we forgive? When you forgive you are supposed to forget. There is only one righteous person and that’s the master (Jesus).”

As for his longevity, the 95-year-old said it is “strictly the Lord’s doing. I don’t take any kind of medication, and if it wasn’t for this arthritis, I wouldn’t have a thing wrong with me.”

The arthritis has kept him from doing as much lawn work and gardening as he would like, but he said his congregation has pitched in and done that and other tasks around his home.”They have been so good to me,” he said. “They built me a ramp so I could get up and down and they planted my garden.”

But members of his congregation say they will never be able to give as much to him as he has given to them over the years.

It is, said congregant Clarence Stewart, the least the church can do for all that Pendleton has given to them. Pendleton had such an effect on Stewart’s son, Anthony, that he was called to the ministry and is now pastor of a church.

Kay Miller said Pendleton has made an impression on all the youth in the church.”Although he is a lot older, he has always been able to change with the younger generation,” she said. “He has always been involved with the youth. He wants them to stay as members of the church, so he has always gotten them involved in church activities.”

Pendleton is the only pastor Miller has ever known and she does not want to think about him not being there.

“He baptized me, he baptized mother and even my grandmother,” she said. “I don’t think we will ever be able to find the kind of pastor he is.”

But Miller may not have to worry about that for quite a while, because retirement from the ministry is not on Pendleton’s agenda and he would like to stay around “as long as the good Lord wants me to.”

“Right now, I am living it up,” he said. “This is such a good church and they have been so good to me. As long as the good Lord is passing it on to me, then I am going to keep taking it.”

DEA END GREENWOOD