Chapter 41 The New Parish

We moved into the parsonage. The interior was in not much better shape than the exterior we had seen on our first trip to Huntington, tired orange shag carpet throughout, walls in need of paint, the bathroom needing repairs. Karin immediately began planning improvements.

The day after we moved into the house, I drove down to Babylon to check out the church building. Mabel Smalling lived in a large, old house next door. It was owned by the church. The ground floor and basement served as a clothing distribution center. The second and third floors had two apartments. Mabel lived in the top apartment.

She showed me around. The concrete on the front steps, a steep, full flight of a dozen steps, was crumbling. Inside, the sanctuary featured Massive, dark beams above white walls. The windows along the side were unremarkable stained glass. At the front of the room, the platform was in a kind of alcove with a low ceiling. The carpet was threadbare and needed replacement.

Standing in the center aisle, she told me about the terrible pastor who had preceded me.
“Why, one Sabbath when I got to church,” she said, “the pulpit was missing. When I asked the pastor about it, he said he had moved it! We found out later he had gotten Oliver Spencer (he’s one of the new people) . . . He got Oliver to help him, and they put the pulpit up in the attic! I couldn’t believe it. My husband made that pulpit! We got it back down right away, I tell you. I am so glad you are here. We certainly needed a new pastor!”

We went downstairs to check out the space used for children's Sabbath School and potlucks. The linoleum tiles were broken and peeling off the floor. The men’s room stank. The plaster was cracked.

I liked Mabel. She was energetic, and bright-eyed. To hear her talk, she was a worker.



The Huntington Church was in better shape. It was a classic white rural church, inside a white ceiling made of pressed tin, white walls, frosted glass windows that filled the place with light on sunny days. Up front was a low, open platform.

My first Sabbath as the new preacher in the district, I was introduced in the Huntington Church by the Lay Ministries specialist from the Conference. The congregation was an interesting ethnic mix–about fifty percent from the West Indies, thirty percent Anglos, a few African Americans, several Hispanic families and a large Chinese family. Mr. Dennis, the head elder, was there that first Sabbath. He more than matched his reputation. He was tall and dignified with beckoning charisma.

I could tell this was going to be a fun place to minister.




The next week I was introduced in the Babylon Church by the conference treasurer. The weather was gloomy, but I boldly preached on a Bible passage describing the work of John the Baptist. “And all Judea went out to hear him.” I called the church to a new enthusiasm for serving God. We were going to do such a tremendous work that all of western Suffolk County would be drawn to us. (In the years since Karin has occasionally remarked on her amazement at my grandiosity. Fortunately, at the time, she did not tell me this.)

Huntington's Good People


I began visiting my parishioners. I learned Mr. Dennis was a brother-in-law to Mabel. He had been one of the key leaders of the Huntington Church when it was established twenty-five years earlier after an evangelistic campaign on the North Shore. Everyone in both churches revered him, even Mabel. He was dying of cancer. He had dragged himself out of bed to welcome me that first Sabbath. He was not able to make it again. His was my first funeral.

Mr. Hsu had his own dental appliance manufacturing business. Charlie, an African American was a machinist. Mr. Robinson appeared to be the unofficial leader of the West Indians. He commuted into the city to work. Mr. Johnson was an electronics engineer at Grumman Aerospace. He had built the church sound system, which was state of the art, and was nearly always there to operate it. Usually he was accompanied in the sound booth by one of the Acosta boys. All the kids seemed to like him. He would do anything needed except speak in public or pray out loud in any setting.

The Acosta clan were fascinating. It was three generations. The third generation formed a third of our youth group. The aunts and uncles lived in Huntington and New York City and Puerto Rico. And people seemed to move between these places without anyone thinking much about it. But Huntington, and granddad’s house, was the center.

The Saints of Babylon

The head elder at Babylon was short, five-six or five-seven, and heavy. His hands were hard and massive. His handshakes bone-crushing. He wore a perpetual grin. He hugged men and women indiscriminately. He owned a boat cover business where he worked a hundred hours a week from March through October and sixty hours a week the rest of the year. As I visited others in the church I heard nothing but affection and admiration for Sam.
Hans the second elder was a crusty German engineer. He had no use for anything other than perfect order and the meticulous performance of any assignment. The treasurer was another German, Mrs. Schoeps. She attended fairly regularly when they weren’t traveling. Her husband, who owned a machine shop, attended infrequently. Karin and I were immediately drawn to the Loughlin’s. He was a math professor. She was a nurse. Their four kids were fun. Veronica had a quiet, subtle charm. Her husband wasn’t a member, but her teenage children were in church every week. Jim and Marion were quiet, pleasant people you could trust with your life.

In the Huntington Church, sixty-five percent of the membership was non-white, but all the leading lay officers were White–head elder, head deacon, head deaconness, Sabbath school superintendent, treasurer. In the Babylon Church sixty-percent of the membership was White, but the head elder, head deacon and Sabbath School superintendent were West Indians.

Nothing in seminary could have prepared me to understand the social networks of a small, long-established church. These people had known each other forever. They knew who could do what, who would do what. As pastor, I fit into a predetermined slot in the networks, but the networks functioned quite independently of input from the pastor. I entered the pastorate with visions of revolutionary activity, visions fueled by books and conversations with fellow dreamers in seminary. As I got acquainted with my churches and with Long Island culture, revolution appeared increasingly inappropriate as a goal for ministry.