SUNDAY SITDOWN
with JOHNIE WOOD
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH CROCKETT
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
This is a series of reports the Messenger will be doing each Sunday about local Pastors in our area. To see the full interview, check out the video online at the end of this page.
Johnie Wood has been the pastor of First Presbyterian Church for the last six months. He speaks several languages and served in Army Intelligence for many years, living and working around the world.
When did you first feel the calling to become a preacher?
“My mom will tell you it was when I was four. When I was in my teens, a pastor told my mother he thought I was called to be a pastor. They didn’t think I heard them, but I overheard their conversation. But when I actually went to seminary – I had been married to my wife for about 10 years when she got diagnosed with breast cancer. I was still in the military and she had breast cancer that kept coming back time and time again. So I retired from the military pretty quickly to be with my wife. I went on a silent retreat, and I heard an almost audible voice saying I was going to go to seminary. I grieved my wife’s death for about two or three years and then I did start seminary.”
What is the most difficult thing about being a preacher?
“What I like best about being here specifically is that my wife and I were drawn to Houston County. She is an occupational therapist who wants to concentrate on kids with special needs in rural health. This church has gone through a lot of pastors in the last ten years and I want to be here. These are turbulent times and I just want to love people. They call these things ‘culture wars’, but really it is just Satan trying to divide us. Love God with all your heart, your soul, your strength and your mind; love your neighbor as yourself and try to love your enemies as best as you can. I will not get into a fight about any other issue except those things.”
What do you think God wants from each of us?
“Love. I know that sounds kind of hippie and a simple thing to say, but God really does want love. He created us to glorify His name and to be in a loving relationship with Him. He doesn’t need us, but He really wanted to be in a loving relationship with His children. And that should manifest itself into loving those around us. I think that is what God wants from each of us. Not like a tally sheet like, ‘Oh, you didn’t love enough today…bad mark on you.’ I think God is like the best Father. I think he just says, ‘You can do better tomorrow.”
What can be done do to get more young people involved in church?
“We need to be a more relevant and authentic church to get people to come back, and the youth will naturally come. It’s great for me to get up every Sunday and say, ‘love thy neighbor,’ but if we need to be showing that we are doing it. We need to be out in the community showing people how much we love them and finding practical ways of doing that. I honestly believe that if we do that, people will come and youth will come. I remember when I was a teenager, every time someone tried to ‘target’ something at me, I saw right through it. The youth will come if they see authentic love, just like everyone else. Teenagers want to know they are loved authentically just like anyone else.”
Do you have a favorite verse or passage from the Bible?
“Jesus in Luke Chapter 4. Jesus was out in the desert after the Holy Spirit comes on him. He comes back to his home town and he gets up in the synagogue and he unrolls a scroll and preaches from Isaiah Chapter 61. He says that the blind have received their sight, the sick will be healed, the broken heated will be comforted. And says this is being fulfilled in your sight now. Everyone loves Him for this. But then he goes on and talks about other places in the Bible where God helped non Jews. He left out the part where the Jews will conquer the non-Jews; he left that part out. So to me, Jesus’ message is I am going to love you radically and it is never going to look like you think it should. The deeper you get into His love the more inclusive it is, the more you will love yourself and others.”
What will you say to or ask God when you meet Him?
“That’s a good question. I guess if I had to answer I would ask Him, why did he make some things in the Bible abundantly clear? And some things He put in there are vague. One of the problems today of our culture is that people are grabbing on the vague verses and they want to make whole theologies out of a vague verse. They don’t take the Bible in its entirety and interpret the verse according to those standards. So I might ask God, ‘Why would You stick these two verses in this one place that seem to be incongruent with everything else?’”
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
