Gary Chapman is best known for writing the bestselling book Five Love Languages, but he also has served a local congregation — the same congregation — for 50 years.
He recently retired from full-time ministry but hasn’t retired from carrying out his spiritual calling.
“Fifty years as an associate pastor in one church, it may be a record, especially for a Baptist church,” Chapman said as he reflected on his time as associate pastor at Calvary Baptist Church, in Winston-Salem, N.C.
“There is certainly a sense in which you look back and think, ‘Wow this happened fast.’ But when it was in process, of course, it was a day at a time. For 10 years I led our college ministry and worked on the Wake Forest University Campus starting small groups and then on Sunday mornings we had a college class with a hundred college students in it. Every Friday night we had college students in our house, and those were 10 great years.
Gary Chapman
“Then the pastor asked if I’d start a single adult ministry, started that on Tuesday nights. Within a month we had over a hundred single adults and did that for 10 years and of course, during all this time, I was doing marriage and family counseling and also directing our adult education program. So, it’s been full and good and, yes, over 50 years I’ve done a lot of weddings and a lot of funerals.”
Chapman genuinely loves people and counts his ministry as that of a servant leader first and an author second.
“I realized early on that being a senior pastor was not my role. God gifted me to be an associate pastor, which focuses on the counseling part of my ministry,” he explained. “When I got in the church and began to work with people, I found out people wanted to talk and they needed help.
“I’d taken courses in counseling, of course, in seminary and in graduate school. Counseling became a major part of my ministry and then the writing which I never anticipated early on. God just blessed the love language book; it’s now has sold over 20 million copies all over the world and has been translated in over 50 languages.”
Chapman makes clear that God is the one he ultimately serves and that God has been more than kind to him along life’s journey. From these blessings and life experiences, he has some advice to offer younger church leaders about how to remember their calling and put on the hat of a servant leader.
“If you read the Scriptures and you seek to hear what God’s saying to you, we’ve been called to be servants.”
“If you read the Scriptures and you seek to hear what God’s saying to you, we’ve been called to be servants. You know Jesus said about himself, ‘I did not come to be served. I came to serve.’ And he also said, ‘When you do it to the least of these, when you serve others in whatever way, you’re doing it to me.’ What can be more satisfying than that, you know, than to be serving other people with whatever God is giving you and knowing that you’re serving Jesus?
“So yeah, having a servant’s heart is at the very center of God’s desire for all his children. If we have that concept, there’ll be plenty of places to serve and God can use you to touch the lives of others.”
And people today definitely need ministers to nurture them in the here and now, he said. “Wherever you are, be all there. That is, give yourself to the church that you’re now at and don’t spend your time dreaming about where you want to be.”
He added: “The last two years now have been very difficult times for a pastor because they want to see the flock together. And the Bible says don’t forsake assembling yourselves together, and yet there’s many ways people can come together. Of course, through technology, Zoom and other forms of technology that we can minister to people even if they’re not assembled with us.
“It has been a hard time, and I think pastors have to recognize that this is a season. Hopefully it’s not going to be forever. If it is, then God’s going to have to give us real wisdom on how to do this long term. But recognize it’s a season and it’s a hard season.”
Now on the retirement side of ministry, the seasoned pastor believes today’s church leaders are up to the task to do and be what God has called them to do.
When asked what advice he would give to a younger version of himself, Chapman doesn’t miss a beat: “Just realize that you can have wonderful ideas and they’re good ideas you know, there’s nothing wrong with my idea of being a missionary, but our ideas are not always God’s ideas. Give your life to God, let him steer it, you know, let him close doors and open doors and let him get you where he wants you to be.”
Maina Mwaura is a freelance writer based in Atlanta.
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