Beeson Podcast, Episode 484
Rev. Thomas Wilder
Feb. 18, 2020

Announcer:
Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla.

Doug Sweeney:
Welcome to the Beeson podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney here with my cohost Kristen Padilla and we are thrilled to have another friend on the show with us today who can help us with our African American ministry emphasis month here at Beeson. February is a special time at Beeson Divinity School when we shine a light on God's work among our African American brothers and sisters. In fact, today, February 18, Beeson alumna Cokiesha Bailey Robinson, founder of Cross Spring Ministries is on campus with us. She is preaching during community worship at 11, in Hodges chapel. She will also speak to our women's theological colloquium after chapel and then to all students tomorrow February 19, for a conversation hosted by our minority student fellowship, a new student group yet to be given its permanent better name, so stay tuned for that. Next week, we will welcome a good friend and former student of mine Reverend Charlie Dates as we continue this special emphasis.

Doug Sweeney:
And you can find all of our events on beesondivinity.com/events. They are free, they are open to everybody and we would love for you to join us. Now Kristen, would you please introduce today's guests?

Kristen Padilla:
Yes, I will. And hello friends. We're so glad you've joined us for another week on the Beeson podcast. Today's guest is Reverend Thomas Wilder. He is pastor of Bethel Baptist church in Collegeville a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. He is currently enrolled in our doctor of ministry program and he is married to Michelle and they have four grown children. So welcome pastor Wilder to the Beeson podcast.

Thomas Wilder:
Thank you. Glad to be here.

Kristen Padilla:
Let's begin with you sharing more about yourself. Where are you from? If you want to say something about your family and your spiritual journey.

Thomas Wilder:
Okay, great. I'm really from a place called Aliceville Alabama, which is way out in the middle of nowhere actually, we're not too far from Tuscaloosa, not too far from Utah, Alabama, and not too far from a Meridian in Columbus, Mississippi. So we're right on the state line. I grew up there and my parents and grandparents were from there and went to the university of Alabama in 1976, graduated in 80 came to Birmingham in 80 and started working for Alagasco there. I came to faith the age of 16 it actually came about because of just really pondering life after a cousin of mine and good friend was killed in a car accident. And just really thinking about life up until that point, my philosophy was that I'd go to church, which I had to do my parents were elders in the Presbyterian church. But I'd go to church, I'd stay in church and have all the fun I wanted, but then when I got to be older then I would try to get saved and live right.

Thomas Wilder:
And when he died, it destroyed the myth that everyone lives a long time, he was 15 years old when he was killed and I was about to turn 16 and it just really threw me for a loop. And I began searching for meaning and purpose in life and read a lot of literature about religions and ended up with Christianity even though I had been in church. The thing that turned me away and started me to looking at other things is when my cousin was killed, one of his relative said that he was killed because there was sin in the house. And I just, that just crushed me because I couldn't envision a God who went around killing young kids because somebody in the house had sin because everybody has sin somewhere. And so that put me on a rebellious path, an intimately rebellious path. And thankfully God saved me out of it. So here I am.

Doug Sweeney:
Pastor Wilder, you are the pastor of one of the most famous churches in the state of Alabama, Bethel Baptist church in Collegeville. I bet lots of our listeners know a little bit about the history of Bethel. I bet some of our listeners don't know that it's one of the most famous churches in the state of Alabama. So we thought we'd begin by just educating our people a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about your church and its history and especially its history during the civil rights movement because everybody needs to know about that. And they we'll ask you more about what the Lord is doing there today later in the broadcast.

Thomas Wilder:
Bethel was the place where a man, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth started a lot of the demonstrations that took place here in Birmingham. He came to Bethel in 1953 and around 1956 he started demonstrating because he wanted some police protection out in the community and did not get it. And so he began to challenge the whole segregation system. So in 1956 the church was bombed, church and house was bombed the first time. Then in 1958 the church was bombed second time and then in 1962 the church was bombed the third time and all that time we thank God, did not suffer any loss of life, nor did we have a missed church service, the church was still standing. Reverend Shuttlesworth then left in 61 to go to Cincinnati, but he was still traveling back and forth to lead the movements here in Birmingham. He was the one that invited Dr. King down in 1963 which is when you see all of the footage of the dogs and the hoses and everything like that.

Thomas Wilder:
It was also the year when the four little girls were killed at 16th street. Bethel has been recognized as a national historic landmark. Right now we're on the short list for world heritage site, meaning that we would be one of the most historic places in the world to visit, and we hope to get that done the next five to eight years. That's primarily why people would know Bethel. It was the place where the Alabama Christian movement for human rights started. It was the Alabama Christian Movement for human rights started because the state of Alabama outlawed the NAACP in an outlaw, the NAACP, because they had challenged Reverend Shuttlesworth to turn over the names of every person who was on row. Well, he knew that the reason they wanted to do that is so that they could selectively pick them off and prosecute them. So he did refuse to turn it over, so the state of Alabama said that the NAACP, since it was founded in New York, was a foreign corporation and had no right to exist or operate here in the city and also in the state.

Thomas Wilder:
And so that's when he started Alabama Christian Movement for human rights. And that's primarily why people wouldn't know us. It was the place where a lot of the modern civil rights movement started. A lot of the demonstrations that started here in Birmingham started because of Reverend Shuttlesworth.

Kristen Padilla:
You mentioned how you came to know the Lord, but how did you go from becoming a Christian and then eventually finding your way to Bethel Baptist Church to serve as pastors? So what led you to Bethel and your role there as pastor?

Thomas Wilder:
When I was in the Presbyterian church, when I was 18 years old, my church ordained me as an elder. I was one of them, I was not the youngest elder ever ordained, but I was a young elder, I was 18 and in college. In the common Presbyterian church, you can lead a congregation as an elder even if you're not an "ordain minister". And so when I left college in 1980 there was a church up here that had just split and my pastor from home asked me if I would come and help that church while they looked for a new pastor. So I started working with the McDowell Cumberland Presbyterian church in Norwood in 1980. Well, in 1984 I'm still there as their pastor. Late 1984, early 1995 I resigned and was asked by Reverend John Porter to come and work on the staff of sixth Avenue Baptist church.

Thomas Wilder:
He was about to go on sabbatical, he had an associate pastor there that was going to do most of the preaching, but he asked me if I would come and help, his name is Dr Ben Led, Dr Led do the preaching while he was gone for three months. So he issued me a reciprocal license, became Baptist as opposed to Presbyterian. I stayed at sixth Avenue after Reverend Porter came back for about five years from 83, were actually, no, it was from '85 to '88, so I stayed there three years. And then one of the ministers at sixth Avenue told me about this opening at Bethel Baptist church and he said, I should apply. And I asked why? He said, well, because they are looking for a minister. And I said, well, if it's such a good church, why aren't you applying? And he said, because they're looking for somebody with experience and I don't have any experience, but I think you have the experience.

Thomas Wilder:
And so Reverend Maurice Johnson, who's also, I think he also went here to Beeson, recommended me to go to Bethel. I went to Bethel initially they turned me down because I was working full time and needed to work full time because my wife was at home. We were pregnant with one child and already had a child. So they turned me down because they wanted somebody full time, I was just like, I can't do it full time because I need the insurance, et cetera. Well, there was a teacher who asked me, where actually secretary for my first church, asked me to come and speak at a school to middle schoolers. So I went to speak to the middle schoolers. Well, one of the people who was on the pulpit selection committee, his wife was a teacher at that same school.

Thomas Wilder:
So when I spoke, she went back, told her husband, you got to give this guy a chance. So she, and this is Mrs Ann Ruth Gunn, talked to her husband Audrey's Gunn and they gave me an opportunity to speak. And so I spoke at Bethel in July of 1988 and I have been there ever since.

Doug Sweeney:
Well thank the Lord for Mrs Gunn.

Thomas Wilder:
Indeed.

Doug Sweeney:
And I think something that certainly I want to know more about and I bet listeners who are like me would like to know more about is, how Bethel and how Collegeville have changed from first of all, 50s and 60s the heyday of the civil rights movement. Second of all, the time when you actually were called to go and serve that congregation and then thirdly, what's it like in the present? And if I can, I won't load this up, make this question too complicated, but we want to know what's it like to be the pastor of that church with so much history in a day and age when things are just different than they were in the fifties and sixties?

Thomas Wilder:
Well, in the fifties and sixties Collegeville was a lower middle class community. It had lots of teachers and people that worked on the railroads because Collegeville is surrounded by railroads they're basically, at one point there were five major railroads coming in and around Collegeville, so at any point in time you were going to be stopped by a train in Collegeville. But the thing that was progressive by Collegeville as I said, is that it did have a lot of people there who were teachers, who were nurses, who worked downtown. There were people who worked on the railroad so they could go to all parts of the country and bring those ideas back. So it was progressing. Bethel was probably one of the more progressive churches in the area. We were the one that first to have a separate education wing and own its own indoor baptistry, things like that.

Thomas Wilder:
So it was very flowing community because those people had got old now the community has gone down a bit, and if you come through Bethel right now you will see blight a lot of blight and so what we are trying to do is help to erase that. In addition to the blight, one of the things that we're facing now is an environmental justice issue where a lot of the factories there have polluted part of the area. There's a high incident of cancer among people who've been there for a long time. OSHA has been in for a long time trying to clean up the soil, doing things like that. We're working on getting a super fun designation that we can speed up the progress of cleaning up the community. There are some who want to leave the community and there's a group who really have been pushing for that. I don't want to leave the community. I don't think the church wants to leave the community because it is a historic community.

Thomas Wilder:
This name, Collegeville came from the fact that there was a college there a long time ago called Lauderdale college. It was founded by a man named John Lauderdale who knew that at one point in Alabama, Black schools only went to about the eighth grade. Well, he knew that in order for you to get a good, decent job, you need more skills past the eight grade, you need to be do more than reading right. So he started Lauderdale college, which was where Collegeville again, got it's name to help with additional skills so that people could get jobs. Today what we are trying to do is maintain the heritage of what people have done before, we do want to maintain the civil rights history. But we don't want to get stuck there in terms of what happened in the past so what we're trying to do now is work on some of the houses in the community. Right now we own about 30 lots. There's a lady yesterday talked to me about giving us some more land around the church.

Thomas Wilder:
And our goal is to try to build up the community such that people want to come and live there again. We work with the community in terms of working on the economic justice, I mean not the economic, the environmental justice issue. We are doing things to try to clean up the community, as I said we bought several of the lots there and trying to work through that. We have a ministry where on Wednesdays we feed a lot of the kids that come from the community because we realized that a lot of my kids are hungry and so on Wednesday we give them a full course free meal. They come and eat and then we do Bible studies and we do a lot of other things with them. Two years ago we took a group of our kids to Washington DC because a lot of our kids don't get out of Collegeville, they'd never seen anything other than Collegeville.

Thomas Wilder:
And we feel like in order for you to strive for more, you need to see more. So two years ago we took them to Washington DC, this year we're looking at taking them to New York City so that again they can see more. One of the great things I like about our church is that from a terms of economics, we have a very diverse group of people that come. We have doctors, we have people who are in the business ranks, we have teachers, we have nurses, we have people with PhDs. We have just a lot of different people and then we have people who are just running a meal, people which is good and we all seem to get along, which is also great. Our goal is to try to expose our kids to different kinds of people so that they can aspire other things.

Kristen Padilla:
We have a lot of listeners who are pastors or serving in pastoral ministry and you've been a pastor now for more than 20 years. Could you say a word to those listening who are in the throws of pastoral ministry, perhaps they are in a bi-vocational role. What have you learned as a pastor and what would you maybe say to encourage our listeners who are not only serving in ministry but perhaps are serving in those difficult ministry context?

Thomas Wilder:
I do have, first of all a great respect for the bi-vocational pastor, because I did that for 34 years. I was fortunate in that both of the jobs I had were corporate jobs so that I had some flexibility in my schedule. But if I work, let's say at a factory where I was on a shift for 10 hours a day and then had to get off and then go try to visit or teach Bible study or go to the hospital, that is a very daunting task. My heart really goes out for people who have to do that. And yet I know that there are a lot of people who do and I respect that role not only because of what I know they have to go through, but I think you really have to love your people and love God in order to do that because it is tiring, it's exhausting. My job, as I said was corporate, but I traveled a great deal.

Thomas Wilder:
I was a recruiter for a long time and so there would not be, there would be times that I would teach Bible study on Wednesday night, get out of eight, get in the car, drive mobile because I was out of my territories, get there at midnight, start working next day. Or there were times that I'd fly in Sunday morning just in time, get off the plane, run up to the pulpit and preach and then, so it was tough. But my word of encouragement would always be to know that God knows what you're going through and God will give you strength to do that, particularly if he's called you to do that. It helped me tremendously to know that God had called me to do this. So I wasn't just doing it because I wanted to do it, I was doing it because I believed that's what I was called to do and I was called to do that, I believe one of the reasons is so that I would not be a burden to my church.

Thomas Wilder:
I knew that they were doing the best they could to take care of me and support me and my family, but I have four kids and four kids are very expensive. And so it'd help for me to work so that I wouldn't have to try to demand so much of the church and then more importantly, I didn't want to be the kind of pastor that had to preach all over the world just to keep myself going economically. I didn't think that was fair, I think if I'm going to pastor a church, then I need to be able to devote as much time as I can to that church and to those people and my bi-vocational work helped me to do that

Doug Sweeney:
Pastor Wilder, one of the things we're excited about here at Beeson is that you're also doing your doctorate in ministry with us. And thought I'd ask you why you're doing it. What drew you to Beeson and what would you like to get done in your doctoral program?

Thomas Wilder:
Correct. First of all, let me thank you for allowing me to be here for first in the main program. I was so excited when I got accepted, I really was. I want to go and finish the doctorate because to me the best way I can serve is to prepare myself in a better way. The more Greek and Hebrew, the more of everything history, the more I know, the more I can serve. And so that's my impetus behind it. You can't teach what you don't know and so in order for me to teach better, I need to learn better. I need to put myself through the rigors of studying. I also think it's important for me to set an example for the kids coming up after me. I don't think we should ever come to a point where we stop learning, we have to continue to learn because there's so much to learn, there's so much of God that is there for us to know.

Thomas Wilder:
And I'm sure all of have done this, you can study a passage for years and then one day you go back and God opens up something else to you and you wonder, I've been reading this, where does that come from?

Doug Sweeney:
That's right.

Thomas Wilder:
So I like to do that, I think it's important, as I said, to be able to prepare myself to serve more. And so that's why I'm glad to be here. I've learned so much. The last class I was in, I really wanted to just go back and start all over again because after listening to my professors, I just realized I don't know anything. I don't know any, what have I been doing all this time?

Kristen Padilla:
Well, a lot of our listeners, perhaps after hearing this conversation will want to know how to pray for you and your church and your ministry. And I know you've already given us many things that are going on in your community and church, but are there specific ways that we can support you and pray for you and be involved in the ways that God is at work at Bethel?

Thomas Wilder:
Well, I do have a couple of staff positions down there, I'm trying to fill, I'm looking for youth minister. I'm also looking for another music minister to supplement minister music that I have now. But just personally my goal is always to have clear vision, to know what God is saying to me now and to be able to do that. It's important to make sure I'm hearing and I'm doing exactly what I'm called to do. There are a lot of things in ministry you can do, a lot of things that other people will call you to do. But I think we'll be held accountable for what God has called us to do and so that's always my goal. Am I doing today what you want me to do today? Am I leading the people in the way you want me to lead them? Am I serving the way I need to serve?

Thomas Wilder:
So that's my biggest prayer, just that God will give me just clear insight as to what my calling is and my purpose is. And that I wouldn't be willing to do that and to do it to the fullest of my ability for as long as he's calling me to do it.

Doug Sweeney:
Well, may it be so. We will continue to pray for you and the people of Bethel Baptist church.

Thomas Wilder:
Appreciate that.

Doug Sweeney:
You have been listening to one of Beeson's best and brightest, Pastor Thomas Wilder. More importantly, he is the pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Collegeville, here in Birmingham, Alabama. Very important historic congregation, but a vital congregation today as well, where the Lord is at work in a mighty way. And we thank you, Pastor Wilder for joining us and we thank you our listeners for tuning in as well. Goodbye for now.

Kristen Padilla:
You've been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the cathedral church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis, our announcer is Mike Pasquerilla, our cohost are Doug Sweeney and myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at beesondivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.