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As a young man raised in a musical family, joining the ministry was the furthest thing from Pastor Al White’s mind.  However, unbeknownst to him, his mother, Joanne, had something else in mind.

His journey to the pulpit has been defined by a life of service and faithfulness – modeled by his parents – that helped guide him to his current pastoral position with Chapel of the Good Shepherd.    

Looking forward to celebrating his 45^th wedding anniversary this year, White says he entered the ministry and matrimony in 1979. While his journey to the pulpit was years in the making filled with ups and downs of about every sort, the 66-year-old father of four recently took some time to share his experience and speak about life, love, the gift of breakfast, and the importance of faith – especially in turbulent times.  

HSJ: How did you and your wife, Pam, meet?

AW: I got ordained and married in 1979. So, I’ve been doing both family and ministry for all those years. We met when we went to Milligan College in Johnson City in east Tennessee – we are both from outside the Chicago area. It took several trips – she had the car and I was the one who could stay awake – from east Tennessee back to Chicago. We spent many hours together through that. We had a very up and down relationship down in east Tennessee. But she finally succumbed to my advances and said, “Yes.” So, there is quite a parallel between family and church and that is what we’ve been doing the past 45 years.  We have four children and one grandchild.

HSJ: Did you always have it in your mind to be a pastor?

AW: No. I did a lot of music growing up. Both my parents are musicians. When I went to school, I thought that would be my thing, singing, that deal. But you can’t make a lot of money as a musician and it is a whole different lifestyle – I learned that from my dad, Don. He had a backup -- he was a musician in Chicago, and he tuned pianos. I started singing and then I went into business; I was very good with numbers. I would much rather work with people. At that same time, my mom was praying I would go into the ministry and without ever telling me – that is what she was praying. They were both great church people and very faithful, so both Pam and I have parents who modeled service and faithfulness.

HSJ: Tell us a bit more about your ministry career starting out.

AW: I came to be the associate pastor at First Christian in Columbus years ago – that is what brought me down here. That would have been in 2007.  I’ve served in multiple capacities. That is my commitment, as long as I am healthy and available, I will continue to serve. I love the biblical metaphor that Jesus’ followers are called the bride. My life statement is I love the bride and I love my bride. That is probably going to be on my tombstone if my wife cooperates with me.

HSJ: Prior to your initial assignment in Columbus, had you ever visited this area before? Were you familiar with the Columbus/Hope area?

AW: Only driving through 65 from Tennessee to Chicago to see the architectural towers and the bridge. The fellow who opened the door for me [in Columbus] is a guy I built houses with in Mexico for 10 or 11 summers. He said, “Hey, come down here and help me at the church.” I had been at my home church – First Christian Church in Chicago – for 18 years and it was time for leadership to change and so that’s when I responded and came down here to Columbus.  

HSJ: What was it like going from an urban environment to a more rural setting?

AW: The last three years I was in Chicago, I was given the opportunity to teach at seminary. I stepped in and taught a 201 class called The Church and Urban Ministry. Urban is much more populated, but even here at our church of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd it is the same principles just less people. I made those parallels. The church is always called to respond to the community it lives in and so that’s our journey. That was our journey in south Chicago, and it is now our journey on 700 North between Columbus and Hope. it is the same principles just not as busy and populated. I am practicing urban ministry in a rural context.

HSJ: Has your pastoral journey unfolded as you anticipated it might?

AW: No. I’m not the one to ruminate too deeply on that. my waters run pretty shallow, but I’ve been so fortunate to have so many opportunities of ministry – whether it is taking mission trips, preaching or doing strategic planning for the churches I’ve served. It’s been a whole big thing coming out of a traditional background and now I am seeing church in a less traditional way. I think the generations following are looking at the church and saying, “If that is your version of what religion is we don’t want a part of that.” And, so, I am trying to approach that from a new way to simplify what our faith is and how we practice our faith. I’ve been on a staff of one and a staff of 16 when I came to Columbus. My thought is to simplify things and make things more real and practical for followers of Jesus within the church.

HSJ: How did you come to be pastor at Chapel of the Good Shepherd?

AW: After leaving First Christian in Columbus, I was working on the development team for Clarity Pregnancy Services. Clarity is expanding and we have 10 centers now, I was doing development in Jackson and Jennings counties and I thought from my experience I would like to help churches fill the gap between pastors, so I became a transitional pastor for two churches – one in Seymour and at Old Union on 800 North. In that process I was able to fill in and do some pulpit supply and consulting – including marriage retreats and I’d come down to do strategic planning and appreciative inquiry with church leaders and in between that I filled in the pulpit at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd two or three times. They said, “Hey, if you are available, why don’t you become our new pastor?” I had just returned to the Cortland church in Seymour to help them between another patch because the pastor had left. I said, “Sure, I will help out.” Unbeknownst to me, they were kind of attached to me and they waited until I was available and then offered me the position. I said, “I haven’t formally applied or submitted my resume.” And they said, “That is OK. We know who you are, we want you.”

HSJ: What was the transition like for you getting to know the congregation?

AW: They hadn’t had a pastor for a little over a year. They had successfully stitched themselves together with guest speakers week to week, but they still carried on and existed there. They had a couple of programs here and there and were doing it without a sharp focus of what a new pastor could bring. So the door was wide open for me to step in and look and see. They said, “We want direction, vision and to clarify the purpose of what the church is.” They were halfway home because they had so faithfully served and operated without a pastor. So, for me to come in it was an easy transition for us. I came in and they had the piano and organ player and the Sunday morning worship leader and teacher in place and all they wanted me to do was come in and offer the pastoral prayer – which was a great part of their Sunday morning worship experience – and to provide a biblically oriented message. It was kind of nice because my wife and I had done almost everything at other churches. We are growing into the new role to be more of an equipping ministry than actually doing and teaching and we really like that.

HSJ: How did you come to be connected with the local Ministerial Association?

AW: Since I’ve been in the area for so many years, I kind of knew what Andy Kilps was doing at the Moravian Church and what John Marquis was doing. And I met the others here and there over the years – I worked at the local funeral home, so I am always seeing pastors and church people coming through there. It has always been part of my deal to connect with other churches and pastors as best I can. I’ve done that wherever I’ve gone and once a month the Columbus pastors have a breakfast at City Hall. And when I heard of the Hope Ministerial Association, I knew I had to be a part of that. After a casual conversation with Andy, and so I stepped in and because of my background with these types of churches I have no problem stepping over what other people would call denominational lines. No issue at all. It was very natural. One of my gifts is breakfast – I am strong in eating breakfast. Actually, lunch and dinner are pretty good, too.

HSJ: What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

AW: We live on the north side of the Columbus and I have a woodshop where I turn wooden pens. When Pam is gone, I will do that if I feel like it. I think I’ve been given so many opportunities to not only pastor the flock at the chapel of the good shepherd, but my connections here in the town and so I’m always given opportunities to help and visit and do things like that – whether it is through the funeral home here or in day-to-day life. Even though I am officially semi-retired, I still find lots of things to do.

HSJ: How would you describe the importance of faith?

AW: It is all about having a simple, practical, meaningful faith. Being among the community and being loving and forgiving and accepting. And being meaningful so much so that we are attractive to others. We are done with the atheistic materialism. We are done with all those things that don’t answer the big questions of life: Where did I come from? What is my purpose? Where am I going to? If you don’t have a worldview that satisfies those questions, then you are just kind of floating around in the universe.

HSJ: Where do you see this pastoral journey going in the future? What are your hopes for the Chapel of the Good Shepherd?

AW: It is kind of like an old building, we need to dig underneath the building and shore up the foundations. and so, thankfully they are a biblically conservative church so preaching and teaching we want to make sure we are all on a steady diet of God’s word. We have a good history of scriptural authority and some churches are getting a bit shaky on that but the Bible is the answer to all our discussions or differences so we always look to the bible as our sole authority. One thing I want to work on with the church is biblical leadership – so right now they have board and there are some that function as what the Bible would call leaders. We are just trying to put in that we are all pastors or under shepherds who are trying to keep the flock healthy and strong and that is why I love the name Chapel of the Good Shepherd – that gives us good, strong anchor point for how we should operate. Then we have things like serving the community – what is our outreach? How do we recreate a renewed sense of mission? We support several local missions, including the Student’s Fund of Hope and Blue Tassel Farm, but how are we becoming agents into the community of change and transformation.

HSJ: How do you guide your congregation to embrace simplicity in a time when everything seems so complicated and conflicted?

AW: My job is to equip the congregation to be able to sit down with someone who is struggling, questioning and has been so hurt by this world. How do we have a meaningful relationship with them that makes a difference to them? I don’t see that so much being problematic as I do see it as people of authentic faith, sitting down, sharing lives – whatever you call it, we are called to engage with today’s culture in a meaningful way. That is exactly what God wanted to do with the Israelites – he put them in the crossroads of the world so the traveling caravans coming east to west and north to south would pass through Israel. By today’s news, that is still the crossroads of the world. That is the message to us – we are to engage in marketplace, faith-based ministry to connect with people.