My family’s first Sunday at Butte Assembly of God was Easter 1995, and Dennis greeted us in the foyer with, “Hi, I’m Pastor Masters.” I immediately received a strong nudge in the arm from my mother after I giggled aloud at the fact that his name rhymed: my five-year-old self didn’t realize ‘pastor’ wasn’t his first name. I treated it like one, and it stuck—through today.
‘Pastor’ always smiled at the feisty blonde girl who’d get in trouble in kids’ church—a.k.a. me in my early days. He’d bend down to my level to say something kind or to tell a joke. Gradually I leveled out and curbed my talkative nature (Hold your comments, people…) because there was something about his kindness that disarmed me: he knew my tendencies, and he loved me anyway.
Within months of beginning to attend Butte Assembly, my own grandfather died, and Pastor and his wife were there for my family in ways that a blood-related family would be. Without anyone asking, and perhaps even without either of us knowing it was happening, Pastor slowly became like a grandfather to me.
They say that pastors in small towns are really pastors OF small towns. They don’t just make a Sunday appearance: they live and eat and breathe with the people who sit in their pews. That’s what Pastor did for my family and me.
I remember spying Pastor as he washed his F-150 across the street from where I had my first piano lesson. My feverish waving flagged him down, and he came over to say hello. I took such pride in the fact that my lessons were up by his house and always craned my neck out the truck window on the way up his sloping road, hoping to see him outside.
I remember trying to force my way into a baptism class as a seven-year-old until Pastor empathetically explained to me that the church’s guidelines were for eight-year-olds: he made good on his word when he, beaming, baptized me the following year.
I remember hearing the clinking sound in his pocket from the Tic Tacs he carried almost constantly, so I’d save my allowance money to buy him Tic Tacs at Christmas and on his birthday – August 19.
I remember crying after eighth grade soccer practice when my first non-co-ed team was filled with catty girls, and Pastor encouraged me to stay close to Jesus and to keep being myself because I was fine just the way God made me. (I mentally replayed that pep talk in high school, college, after college…)
I remember glowing with pride as he and his wife showed up to a scholarship breakfast as stand-in grandparents since mine couldn’t attend. I remember that he and his wife drove me forty miles one way to a concert hosted by my future university so that I could meet professors with whom I’d hopefully study in the future. (And I did.)
When Pastor and his wife (a grandmother to me still) announced their retirement, my 15-year-old world shattered because I felt my family was leaving. The church culture that Pastor and his wife forged was that which treated congregants like relatives: and with most of my extended family living cities or states away, my experiences with ‘aunts,’ ‘uncles,’ ‘cousins,’ and ‘grandparents’ came largely through Butte Assembly. In some ways, I feel that that I grew up with a large extended family. I mourn their passings as much as I mourn those who are blood-related.
Pastor hadn’t lived in the same town as my family for 14 years when my parents and I had the opportunity to visit Montana last autumn (for a funeral of another church/family member). That was the last time I saw Pastor. We knew he was ill. Throughout our visit, I wasn’t sure he recognized my parents and me because of his deteriorating condition. At the end, his oldest son asked him to stand up with us and pray—and Pastor came back to life. His cognitive functions snapped back in place as He thanked the Lord for bringing us together. Everyone in the room wept, yielding only sniffly offerings after that. When the prayer ended and Pastor was again seated, the conversation drifted off, but I noticed that Pastor was still speaking quietly. I leaned in and heard, “Bless them, Lord, bless them. Just bless them. Keep them on your path.” Those were the last words I heard Pastor speak to my family. His spirit was alive as ever, inwardly renewing as his body did the opposite.
His funeral in my home church was days before my wedding in Missouri, so I watched online through tears, simultaneously grateful for and despising technology. It kept me close, but I was still far. Today would have been his 80th birthday.
I may go buy some Tic Tacs.
“If I know what love is, it is because of you.” -Herman Hesse
Photo: Pastor, Barbara, and me in 1998