How to go
What: Retirement Banquet for the Rev. Charles S. Brown
When: 6:30 p.m. March 25
Where: Presidential Banquet Center, 4548 Presidential Way, Kettering
Dress: Semiformal
Donation: $50
Reservations: (937) 222-4373
DAYTON — The 400 members of Dayton’s Bethel Baptist Church have benefited from at least two of the major decisions the Rev. Charles S. Brown has made during his lifetime.
The first was his decision to leave his job as a mathematician at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and enter the seminary. The second was his decision to leave his post as an academic at Yale Divinity School and return to Bethel as its pastor.
The congregation will celebrate both of those decisions when it honors their pastor at a banquet and religious service next weekend. The public is encouraged to attend.
A banquet will be held at the Presidential Banquet Center on Friday evening, March 25. A Sunday morning service at the church, March 27, will feature two of Brown’s former Yale students: the Rev. R. Drew Smith and the Rev. Angelique Walker-Smith.
Brown, who grew up in Florida and graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta at 18, said he was born into the church; his father was an A.M.E. minister.
“Even though he died when I was young, I felt that sense of calling,” said Brown, who first came to Bethel as a member of the congregation when he moved to Dayton and worked at Wright-Patt. It was the church’s minister, the Rev. George Lucas, who encouraged and inspired him to go into the ministry.
“I was planning to work an extra year in order to afford the seminary,” remembered Brown. “But Rev. Lucas got the church to pay for my three years there — room, board, tuition, everything.”
His great appreciation, he says, was part of his decision to return to Bethel in 1982 as its interim pastor when Lucas died. By that time Brown had gained degrees from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Boston University and Central State University. He served as professor of church and society at UTS, and was working as an associate professor of practical theology with tenure at Yale.
The choice was one he has never regretted.
“What’s been rewarding is being the shepherd of a flock and relating to people with whom I had a history,” he said.” It has been a real joy.”
What he’s discovered about himself over the years, he says, is that he has two callings — as a pastor and as a teacher.
When he retires at age 73 next week, he’ll return to teaching as a distinguished professor of Christian social ethics at Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce. Brown says he always planned to return to the academic world after retirement so that he could draw on experiences gained as a pastor.
One of the members of his congregation, Cheryl S. Johnson, wears many hats at Bethel: she’s a trustee, treasurer, business manager and organist. She says her pastor is both knowledgeable and kind.
“He has so much knowledge to share, he is a New Testament theologian and he’s also so good with leading the congregation forward,” she said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2440 or MMoss@Dayton DailyNews.com.
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