Men's Breakfast Report, October 2010

 

The Men’s Breakfast Group met Saturday, October 9 with Nathan Otto, pastor of Velasco Baptist Church.  Nathan is a young pastor who came here as the main pastor after serving as youth pastor in several churches in Texas.

Nathan was raised in East Texas and was the son of a deacon of a Baptist Church.  As a young teenager he rebelled against his parents’ upbringing, which meant that he did not have good grades in high school.  However, one day while taking a shower he felt a call from God and then began devoting himself to the ministry.  He was interested in music and became the youth pastor and music director of his church.  He also had to hold down a job and therefore had to commute considerable distances.  He went on to serve other churches in the same position.  These jobs were not always successful.  In one case he was visiting his girlfriend at her apartment with her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend.  While he was there he heard some gunshots and went to look out.  A large number of police were there and ordered everyone to stay in their apartments since someone was holed up in a nearby house and shooting at anything that moved.  He and the other man spent the night on sofa in the living room and left in the morning for their jobs when the excitement was over.  Unfortunately, someone from the church saw his pickup in front of the apartment between the time the all clear was sounded and when he left for work.  He was therefore asked to resign because of immoral behavior, even though the shooting was in all the newspapers. In another case he was asked to resign, but the elders would not give him a reason.  These instances show the advantage of a connectional church such as the Presbyterian.  He later married the girlfriend and they have two children.  After a couple of other churches as youth pastor he was called to Velasco Baptist church as a full time pastor. 

Velasco Baptist Church has about forty members with an attendance of about sixty people on Sundays.  The church is primarily white with two black families.  The average age is over sixty so they are trying to recruit new members.  The church is next to a large apartment complex with predominately black and Hispanic tenants, which should be their mission field.  They did hold a hotdog roast where they invited all the neighbors for free hotdogs.  When the time for the roast came it started pouring rain.   Instead of calling off the roast they hauled the grill under the porch roof and continued.  Surprisingly, a large number of neighbors came to the roast. 

There was discussion about how to get youth into the churches.  We discussed the possibility of a city-wide youth summer pastor such as we had several years ago.  At that time our church had the parlor to house him as our contribution to his remuneration.  There is probably another parsonage that could be used.  If we are going to do this, now is the time to start planning so a ministerial intern can be found for the summer.  The actual work for this would have to be done by the Ministerial alliance. 

As usual, the men had an interesting discussion and a good breakfast.  The next meeting will be November 12.