Evolution
of a Legacy
Rod Pamer
interviewed by Cara Baker
November 6, 2000
A cloud of dust creeps
over state route 619, leading from the dirt-laden construction entrance of the
Apostolic Church of Barberton in Northeast Ohio. Streams of brightly-colored
foliage zipping past on your right and left slow as drivers in front of you
stall to see the progress made this week to massive walls of brick covered in
scaffolding. Stretching out on its rural 70 acres, the Apostolic Church of
Barberton continues to grow.
Looking at his office,
one might peg Rod Pamer as a professor not the pastor of a 500-plus member
church affiliated with the Assemblies of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the two
positions are similar, a minister is a teacher, he says.
Giant bookcases line
each wall and a teaching skeleton stands respectfully in the corner. Next to the
couch an antique red barber's chair sits. Pamer bought the chair for $20 at a
flea market for his dorm room in Bible college. Thirty years later, it is still
very much a part of him. From this chair, Pamer spoke with Ninetyandnine about
the church's humble beginnings, its 50th anniversary and why he feels education
is invaluable.
90&9:
How long have you pastored?
RP: I've been pastor five years.
90&9:
How long had your dad [Nelson Pamer] pastored before you?
RP: Since 1965 I think.
90&9:
Describe his role now.
RP: His title is the Bishop
and he is in a senior advisory role. I am pastor of the church but he's my
pastor. He's in a position of what some might call, some would view it as
retirement, I don't. He's a senior advisor for major decisions and so on.
90&9:
The church is celebrating its 50th year. Can you give me a brief history?
RP: The church started in
the garage of my grandparents' home. Their names were Rose and Paul Pamer. I say
garage but it was a nice facility and plenty large enough at that time. So the
church started there and was there for a couple of years. And then they
purchased a piece of property a mile to the north of that location on 471
Jefferson Ave. They built a basement church there and they were in the basement
for a few years until they were able to build a church. About three or four
years later they built a church on top of that basement. They stayed there until
we moved to this present location in 1971. They were there about 25 years.
90&9:
What are your current plans with the new building program?
RP: We're excited about our
new building in that it's something that probably is overdue. And that's not
because we did not begin to think about it. But it's just such a long, arduous
process to bring a building to this place with all the zoning requirements and
permits and drawings and so on that need to be done.
It's going to be about
40,000 square feet. The auditorium will seat 1,500. It will include about a
dozen offices, a large foyer and will be connected to the existing facility.
There will be no steps in either building, other than those that lead to the
platforms and the baptisteries. Bringing everything to one level was a great
deal of added expense but we had to determine it was worth spending that money.
90&9:
How is pastoring now different from when your dad started pastoring?
RP: Well, obviously a great
deal of differences. I can only really imagine what the differences are. When my
dad began to pastor in 1965, He was working full-time at the Goodyear Tire and
Rubber Company…. He gained tremendous respect from that generation. He was a
blue-collar worker, which at that time the church was mainly blue-collar workers
and so they knew that he understood them. He understood how they thought, the
money they had to spend, the schedule they had to keep. You didn't have to worry
about him keeping the service too long on Sunday night and then sleeping in on
Monday morning because everybody knew he had to get up and leave for work at 5:15 [a.m.]... That probably
had a lasting effect on our services. Our services are probably shorter than
most and that might be the cause of that, I don't know. But we've grown up with
it that way so we like it.
Just as he pastored a
blue-collar church I think now we've moved into a different age. A lot of people
now are college graduates or attend college and so God had a hand in turning my
attention and interest to higher education. And I think I can relate now to
people in that respect like my dad did to the blue-collar worker. I think God's
hand was in all of that.
To get back to your
question, we have grown in that, from my dad working alone, part-time for the
church, we now have several full-time people and as many part-time people and so
we have a staff versus my father working alone for the church. That's been
probably been one of the major changes: the culture of the church and also the
leadership of the church.
90&9:
How many started with the church?
RP: It was just a handful
(eleven members).
90&9:
How many do you have now?
RP: We probably have an
active membership of about 700 is what we think. Probably on any given Sunday we
have approximately 500 in the morning and 500 at night. We also have well
attended services Wednesday and Friday.
90&9:
How has pastoring affected your family?
RP: I would not advise
anyone else to do this, but we've always put the church first rather than
putting the family first. That's probably not good advice for anyone. But my dad
always did that. And we grew up a very close family, great respect for my
parents, my mother [Grace Pamer] who was able to sacrifice. We just kinda grew
up that was the way that life was. Now the common philosophy is always put your
family first and I would agree with that, but we always put the church first and
our kids put the church first. So that's affected our family but I think God has
honored us for it and we are the better for it. We have given up a lot in a lot
of different ways but we've always been compensated. We have a very close family
and certainly no regrets.
90&9:
Your family and this church family value higher education unlike any other I've
seen. Why is education important to you?
RP: Well, learning has been
fun for me I guess is why. I enjoy it. I like sports and things, but I love to
learn and as well as my wife, Nan. It wasn't any noble cause. I really started
out thinking that maybe it would be a secondary career, perhaps in addition to
being a minister. I wasn't sure I was a minister. I worked for the church, but I
wasn't sure that's what I'd always do.
So, I started out in
accounting, that would be something I'd do on the side. Well, I got into that
and said, “Aww, I don't want to do this.” Then I thought, “Maybe I could
teach accounting.” That would be something maybe I'd want to try. So after I
graduated from Malone College then I went and spent a year at the University of
Akron, to obtain a masters of accounting degree. Didn't enjoy that either. So
then I decided to switch to higher education. I thought that would be something
I'd enjoy. There were a lot of things I could see that was applicable to the
ministry and really benefited me. I don't know if there were [more than] one or
two courses that I ever took at the University of Akron that did not greatly
benefit the ministry.
90&9:
In what ways?
RP: In higher education you
study a lot of leadership, a lot of how to organize staffs, administration. You
know, technology and education. How to teach. The degree that I received and the
degree I'm now working toward really is designed for the professional teacher.
That's what a minister does, teach. And there are a lot of history courses,
which kind of broaden your view and understanding about society and so on. So it
helped me in that respect. I feel I've greatly benefited from my coursework.
90&9:
Are you pretty vocal about education or is that just perceived?
RP: I would be vocal anytime
anyone gives me an opportunity. I think it's absolutely something every young
person that gets out of high school should attend. One thing I have learned is
my desire and their parents' desire for them to go to college means nothing.
That will last about two weeks. So the young person has to have the desire to go
to school. But I try to foster that and put a fire underneath that; encourage
them in any way that I can. We want to be able to reach the full spectrum of
society. If you don't send your young people to college, you're never going to
reach all of society, because obviously, we're in a world where people value
education. And so to me, there's an evangelistic overtone there that you need to
understand.
And then there are
other things. It's a lot easier to be a good Christian if you're happy in life.
I think it's a lot easier to be happier in life if you make enough money to
support your family, if you feel that you are successful, if you are happy with
your job--
90&9:
Quality of life.
RP: Yeah, quality of life. And you know I think because of the good
positions that a lot of our people have, their wives are able to stay home now.
So that automatically has a great effect on raising children and so on. I think
it's very important. I am vocal about it. I lead by example.
90&9:
Why has or does the church frown on education?
RP: I don't know; I've never
experienced that. I know that's true by observation. But that's never been the
case in this church. I wouldn't say that they always encouraged it to the point
that we do. You know I think--and this is one thing I left out--the best thing
education ever did for me was, when I was in high school I was a little afraid
of what education might have to say. That maybe they had some things that I
couldn't deal with or that I could not make a defense against. So that
frightened me somewhat. There were some young people I remember that went to
college when I was in high school that dropped out of college because they
didn't think they could live for God. And that bothered me greatly. Always in
the back of my mind I had that. I went away to Bible school for three years. God
knows why I did that; I have no idea.
90&9:
Where did you go?
RP: I went to St. Paul,
Minnesota (Apostolic Bible Institute). And I am not that kind of person to up
and move away. I did the direct opposite of what I would have expected myself to
do. But nonetheless I moved back and immediately I wanted to go back to college.
And once I did and found out, "Wow, they don't have anything that I can't
defend and have a better argument for." I loved taking courses on evolution
for example and finding out that the most ridiculous….[He jumps up from his
barber chair to search among two giant wall-to-wall bookcases]--The best two
books I have against the theory of evolution, I'll show you. [He returns with
two books.] The two books that prove the Bible to me is Charles Darwin,
"Origin of Species" and E. Peter Volpe, "Understanding
Evolution," which is the textbook at the University of Akron for evolution.
To read these two, then you really believe in creation. And I mean that, and I'd
defend that against anybody with a Ph.D.
That's a capsule;
that's a microcosm of the value I put on education because--when I was in high
school in 10th grade, I had a biology teacher and she knew--there was someone
from our church who had gone (she really didn't live for God, this girl didn't,
but she was associated with our church) and became a really good friend of this
biology teacher--and so through that relationship, she (the Biology teacher)
knew everything about me when I walked in class. She openly ridiculed me in
class because of my beliefs in creationism. Well, I wasn't a really strong
person; I wasn't what I really would have liked to have been. I didn't have the
self-confidence in myself and I really took a beating there. Everybody knew that
I was the guy that didn't believe in evolution, that believed in the Bible. But
she did me a great favor. She meant it for ill, perhaps, but God meant it for
good because it really built something up within me.
So when I took these
classes and began to study--it all started up in Bible school--sat underneath
Robert Sabin, who has a brilliant mind, one of the greatest minds of anyone I've
ever known including all my professors [from] several schools. He loved
creationism and the study of it. So that was a very, very important chapter in
my life. That was just tremendous. I just loved studying it because now I
realized that hey, all this Ms. Zapatka taught me in high school, it really
wasn't true. Well, but then, I wasn't sure, because I had only heard it from
him. So the opportunity to go back to study in college was just a phenomenal
experience and opportunity. That is just a small example of how I valued
education. Because I found out, you can study anything you want to and there's
nothing that can disprove the Bible. It will stand. The old story is, the Bible
is like a lion. You don't have to defend it, all you gotta do is open the cage
and let it out. It will defend itself. That's an old truism, but it's very
accurate. So that's why I love education because I found out I could get out
there and stand toe-to-toe with anybody and my faith will withstand anything
they have to say.
Visit Apostolic
Church of Barberton’s web site for daily photos and video updates of the
construction of the new sanctuary.
ninetyandnine.com
ã
2000, ninetyandnine.com
---------
Cara
Baker is the associate editor of ninetyandnine.com.
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