Front Page story for April 13, 2006
By Jim White, Editor
One would never suspect upon meeting him that Robert Carpenter, pastor of Norfolk's Talbot Park Baptist Church, was told by his closest friends that he could never become a pastor-let alone a Navy chaplain. His blue eyes sparkle with intelligence as he speaks fluently and with feeling about a painful past.
“I stammered so badly that I couldn't say my name and couldn't answer the phone,” he explains. When Carpenter was about 9 years old, he began to stutter. By the time he entered middle school, the other students were merciless in their teasing. His high school years were less traumatic but brought no improvement in his speech.
It was at this point that a part-time job at a fast food restaurant changed his life. He got a job at the Lynnhaven Mall Chick-Fil-A in Virginia Beach and discovered something at which he was really good. “My coworkers used to tell me, ‘Robert, you can't talk, but you can sure sell chicken!' ” His competency extended to all phases of the Chick-Fil-A operations-except answering the phone-and before long he was traveling to distant places helping to open new stores. He was urged to apply for and was accepted in a position on the “blitz team,” part of a national marketing campaign that traveled across the United States in the summer of 1984.
While training for the blitz team, he met Truett and Jeanette Cathy, Baptists and owners of Chick-Fil-A, and was entertained in their rural Georgia home. They took special note of the young man from Virginia with the stuttering problem and encouraged him to apply for a scholarship for Chick-Fil-A employees to Berry College in Georgia. “This was part of a foundation they established in 1984 called WinShape to train and shape young people,” says Carpenter.
In his junior year at Berry, he began to sense that God was calling him to preach. For months, he tried to dismiss the idea. “I was 20 years old and I couldn't say my name. It was foolish to think that God would be calling me to preach.” But, he couldn't shake the idea. When he shared his concerns with his friends, they reacted quite understandably and with the frank counsel only good friends can offer: “No church would call you, and if they did, nobody would listen to you!”
Carpenter agreed with them. Yet he could not shake his sense of call. Exodus 3:10-12 and 4:10-12 vividly reminded him that God had called and used unlikely persons in the past. Identifying with Moses' reluctance, he graduated from Berry hoping that he could forget the “call” and concentrate on a promising career selling chicken. But God wouldn't leave him alone.
When Truett Cathy learned of his dilemma, he invited Robert to Georgia to spend three days with him and his wife. Carpenter and Cathy spent the days riding off-road motorcycles over Cathy's farmland and the evenings talking about their faith. Finally, Cathy spoke words that lifted the fog from Carpenter's vision: “Robert, if God is calling you, you have to go.”
Still stuttering severely, Carpenter enrolled in Southern Seminary in August of 1989 and later that semester, hearing of openings for chaplains in the Navy, he applied. After noting his speech impediment and interviewing him, the Navy accepted him into the reserve chaplaincy program which he began in January 1993 after he graduated from Southern.
Later that year, following his military training, the Modest Town Baptist Church on the Eastern Shore called him as pastor even though his stuttering was still pronounced. Ironically, his speech was less affected when he was preaching, notes his wife, Suzanne.
Another pivotal point in chaplain/pastor Carpenter's life came when he learned of a program offered by the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. In 1997, he entered the Precision Fluency Shaping Program that retrains stutterers to speak fluently.
“Occasionally, I will still have trouble pronouncing certain words,” acknowledged Carpenter, “but now I don't get stuck. I refer to myself as a recovered stutterer.”
Last August, the Cathys re-entered Carpenter's life when they invited him to Atlanta to lead the devotional for a corporate meeting at the home office. Inspired by his story and awed by the part their foundation had played in it, WinShape decided to feature Carpenter's story on a DVD it was preparing for the 2006 seminar.
On Jan. 29, 2006, his first Sunday as pastor of Talbot Park Baptist Church, WinShape camera crews recorded the message and his interaction with members of his new congregation. Unknown to Cathy, whose advice had been so instrumental in Carpenter's call experience nearly 20 years earlier, Carpenter was scheduled to appear in person at the seminar and greet Cathy following the showing of the DVD.
“What a great reunion we had,” recalls Carpenter. “Truett and Jeanette Cathy are truly unique in blending their Christian principles with business practices.”
As Navy Reserve Lieutenant Commander Carpenter shared this story in-appropriately enough-a Chick-Fil-A restaurant, he leaned across the table for emphasis. His crisp uniform and athletic build added to his impressive presence. “When the pastor selection committee from Talbot Park contacted me, a friend told me not to tell them that I once had this problem. But Suzanne and I agreed that it is part of who I am. Even more, it speaks to the faithfulness of God to overcome the difficulties in our lives. In Exodus 4:12 God answers Moses' fear that he cannot speak well with these words: ‘Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.' It isn't about me, it's about what God has done in my life! I want everyone to know what God has done.”
In one way, God has brought Carpenter full circle in leading him to Talbot Park. His parents lived in an apartment just a few blocks from the church when he was born. On sunny days, his mother pushed him in a stroller on the sidewalk past the church building, little imagining that one day he would be the pastor there.
It may be ironic to think that God would call to preach someone who couldn't say his own name. But perhaps this is as it should be. What matters is not whether we can pronounce our own names, but can we proclaim the name of Jesus?