HALLSVILLE, Texas (ABP) — A Baptist church in rural Texas recently licensed one of its own to preach the gospel — 82-year-old Buck Lineberger.
The ceremony at First Baptist Church in Hallsville, Texas, came 65 years after Lineberger initially felt God's calling to ministry. For more than 60 years, he had deferred what he considers his true calling because he thought his brief first marriage and subsequent divorce disqualified him from service.
Needless to say, the licensing service was special to everyone in the congregation, senior pastor David Massey said.
“Usually when you license somebody, it's a young man about to go to college or seminary and there's a vote and that's about it,” he said. “But we wanted it to be a little more special than that and called him up to receive a framed certificate of his license. The whole church stood up and applauded.”
Lineberger, who has had a connection to the church for most of his life, said he made a profession of faith in Christ during a weeklong revival in 1935. After graduating from high school in 1942, he rode out World War II aboard a Navy ship in the Pacific Ocean.
While on board that ship, he said, he would often commune with God.
“While I was in the Navy, God would reveal things to me and I would say ‘Oh, man, I could preach that,'” he said, but he did not tell anyone that he felt called to preach.
After the Navy, Lineberger married a woman from California, but they quickly divorced. He assumed the divorce precluded him from a vocation as a minister, he said.
“Because I had a divorce, some people looked down on me, and I kind of thought maybe God did, too,” he said.
He later remarried and eventually became heavily involved in church life. He also began serving on various Baptist associations — positions that allowed him to preach some Sundays.
Lineberger has been a member of 11 churches by his count, and “every church I've been in I've jumped right in and served,” he said.
In 2001, the Linebergers moved back to Hallsville. Since then, he has taught the 10th and 11th grade boys Sunday school class, spoken to youth on Wednesday nights, visited homebound and hospitalized church members, regularly filled in for the pastor at prayer meetings, mowed the yards of church members who can't cut their own grass, and repaired the lawnmowers of those who can.
Lineberger said he has prepared more than 150 devotionals to use for ministry purposes — he gets his best ideas from his simple daily life.
“I do a lot of sitting on the back porch watching the birds around the birdfeeders, and God shows me more sitting there than anywhere else. God just keeps giving me these devotionals, and for that I'm grateful,” Lineberger said.
So after Lineberger mentioned to Massey and Monty Pierce, the minister of education, that he once believed he had been called to ministry, it was a short road to his licensing.
“Everybody who knows Buck knows that God's hand is on his life, and God is evident in his life. The church was just a little slow in officially recognizing that,” Pierce said.
Massey agreed. “We may have licensed him to ministry, but he was already doing it and doing it very well.”
And after preaching more than 60 funerals, Lineberger says he has “preached more funerals than a lot of preachers.”
Apparently, he plans to add to that number. Lineberger enjoys good health — he takes no medications — and he says he's not interested in slowing down.
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— This story is part of a series on “hearing the call” for vocational ministry.
Read more:
Hearing the Call: Congregations strive to create a culture of calling
Hearing the Call: Clarification an important task at Baptist schools
Hearing the Call: Ministers hear call to service from different voices