Stinson concludes 25 years at Congregational Church

GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Rev. David Stinson, 67, of the Glen Ridge Congregational Church, will be officiating over his final service this Sunday, June 25. He is retiring after 25 years as pastor.

“I’m baptising the children of parents I baptised when they were children,” he said earlier this week in his office. “I feel it’s time to leave and for the congregation to have someone closer to my age when I came here.”

With a laugh he acknowledges that considering all the community service done by his wife, Cynthia, who retired last year as a Glen Ridge teacher, she will probably be the the more difficult person to replace.

But one of the hallmarks of his time in borough, Stinson said, has been his teaching of adults. He has two classes.

“We do a Gospel a year.” he said, “The letters of St. Paul and Old Testament lessons, that has been in the forefront of what I’ve done. I love the Gospel of Mark and St. Paul’s letters to the Romans, and Exodus.”

Stinson learned the Gospel of Mark in Greek. And when his instructor told him the Gospel would be accessible, Stinson thought that meant Mark’s message would be easy to grasp. But Stinson learned it was not the message that was easy but the Greek. The writings of the theologian William Lane, he said, gave him a new appreciation of Mark.

“Mark created the form,” Stinson said of the Gospels. “Jewish and Old Testament literature permeates Mark.”

Stinson refers to himself as a storyteller and believes that a story will bear up longer and better, over time, than doctrines.

“Like any good public speaker, I have an anthology,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of stories from my work in the Navy. I grew up in the South. Stories are the way people communicate. If you can connect with a story, you can connect the people to the doctrine. My approach was formed in the Navy.”

Stinson, raised in Bonham, Texas, served 31 years in the Navy and retired in 2010 as a rear admiral and deputy chief of chaplains.

When he first came to Glen Ridge, Stinson was asked to offer a prayer at the Memorial Day service. He ended the prayer, “In the name of our God, we pray, Amen.” A few weeks later, a rabbi who was at the ceremony told Stinson that the way he ended the prayer did not leave him out. Sailors, Stinson said, come from all walks of life.

“No one comes to church because it’s the thing to do,” he said. “They come because they have issues.”

Because people come to church for a particular reason, they have a particular perspective toward what they hear from the pastor he said, and what affects a listener most may be a casual comment from him. But it is one that the person will remember for years.

“Jesus was the premier storyteller,” he said. “The story of the Prodigal Son speaks to you differently at different times of your life. The story sticks with you but you understand it differently at other times of your life. This story doesn’t leave you.”
Stinson recalled a lesson he was taught as a boy. But the lesson changed over the years.

“My father, when we were boys, made us mow the lawn,” he said. “Maybe we weren’t neat and he gave us clippers to trim along the fence. And I resented it. I had better things to do. And he said that it’s not just the grass in the middle that counts.

“I wonder if that’s why I think you have to take care of a lot of little details in the life of a church,” Stinson continued.

He said the church facility, the building, was cared for and that was the easy part. Those unseen things in the church, he said, that are more difficult to assess, might cause a pastor to wonder if he has taken care of them.

“After 25 years, you hope you’ve done that,” Stinson said. “St. Paul said we don’t look to the things we see but to the things we don’t see. The things we see are transitory but the things you don’t see are eternal.”

He said he and his wife will be moving to Swanzy, NH, in July. This town is located along the southern border of the the state.

“There are many pastors in that hill country,” he said. “I hope they don’t look askance to someone from New Jersey who wants to teach Bible studies. I’ll offer my services. But I don’t expect to get up and go to the office every morning.”

  FEATURED, MOBILE