An old cliche, I know…I know…but there is no better verbage to describe how I feel about my childhood pastor. I have been arguing that OLD and NEW pastors need each other, that we are not in competition with each other, and that our preferences for worship or preaching styles are no reason to break fellowship or speak ill of one another. Today I offer a very personal and powerful testimony to exactly HOW the old veterans can help the young lions, because it happened in my life.

The church was (and still is) called Crossroads Baptist Church, and all of my adolescent memories of church and God, to age 14, were formed there, in Sunday school classes, church basketball games, homecoming dinners, fall revivals, even my first real kiss in the church graveyard (true story). It was as TRADITIONAL as it gets. I mean old school for real. We sang hymns (first, second, and last stanza). We had altar calls and Christmas “Cantatas” (I still have no idea what in the world that word actually means, and neither do you, unless you had to sit through one).

Now at age 34, I look back on those days and I LOVE THEM! I am not that person anymore, but I was then, and it made me who I am. But of all the wonderful things that old school church gave me, the most significant came from my pastor. He was old school. He was a seasoned veteran. And he took a chance that paid off.

Wilkes Skinner was not charismatic or flashy, and he never preached past noon. He had 3 suits and rotated them on Sundays. He lived in the church parsonage with his wife. He had lost a 13 year old son in a tragic accident and had an adult daughter who was severely mentally handicapped. While he was our pastor, his wife Mary went through a complete bone marrow transplant in Seattle. They lived there for a year during the ordeal and he would send cassette tapes in the mail to us and we would listen to them as a congregation on Sunday mornings before the interim pastor would preach. I had no idea as a 9 year old boy what kind of impact Preacher Skinner would have on me.

I was saved at age 14 and was obviously clueless about all things “ministry.” I wanted to preach and felt called to spend my life spreading the gospel. Guess what happened? Preacher Skinner asked me to preach on a Sunday night for him. It was Youth Sunday and he gave up his pulpit to a kid. No fear, no jealousy, no insecurity. Nothing but willingness and joy that God had called a young man from his church to preach the gospel.

He would sit with me in his study and brag on me, give me sermon pointers, and talk about the Bible and theology. To even be sitting in his study was enough fuel to fill my preaching tank for weeks. He let teeange boys take up the offering on Sunday nights and would call on me to give the “offertory prayer.” He let me make Sunday morning announcements. He even gave me an open invitation to preach anytime I wanted to.

Do you have any idea what this did to the confidence of a 14 year old boy, to know that my pastor believed in me and had my back?

I credit him personally for what God has done in my life over the past 20 years. The experience, the safety, the spiritual confidence that God built in me was all a result of Wilkes Skinner mentoring me. I am weeping this very second just from the memories.

Wilkes will never read this. He is in a nursing home. He broke his hip recently. His preaching days are behind him, but his legacy will live on. I will preach his funeral when he dies. It will be one of my greatest honors in life.

I stand on the shoulders of this giant every time I preach the gospel. Thanks to Almighty God for a seasoned veteran who invested in a young lion.

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