SPRINGWOOD, Va. (ABP) — It's different at the white frame Baptist church on the hill this week. There's no Harold Cook with his white cat, Chrissy, to do the things he's done for the past 25 years. With his retirement, the pastor and his wife, Joy, have moved back to the house in Buchanan, Va., where they lived until 1981.
When they arrived in Springwood a quarter century ago, the parsonage on the hill next to the church was in dismal shape. Joy Cook cried when she thought of having to live in it. After all, the family with their two small children had a nice home where Harold ran his sales business. And in taking the little country church full time, he took a considerable salary cut.
But after the pastor announced his retirement from Springwood Baptist Church last November, she said she'd be sorry to leave the parsonage.
That's the way things have changed for the Cooks and a congregation that not only survived a split four years ago over Southern Baptist differences but is holding its own, with about 65 people at weekend services. Since 2002, the church “has learned its identity” as a caring, family group, Cook said.
At 67 years old, his health remains good — he has never missed a Sunday in the pulpit due to illness. He hopes to continue to work as a guest preacher.
Though Springwood Baptist's building is up to date, as is the parsonage where the Cooks' son and daughter grew up, the congregation dates back to 1832.
The building started as a log meeting house for Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists. By 1885, the other groups had erected their own houses of worship and the Baptists remained.
Cook has spent much of his adult life in the area, balancing two jobs. He grew up in Springfield in the northern Virginia suburban county of Fairfax when it was a rural community. Raised a Southern Baptist, he loved the church early in his life and considered pastoral ministry as a vocation.
But by the time he graduated from Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, Texas, he was headed for a teaching career. While teaching history in Culpepper County, he met Joy Snyder. They married in 1972.
Contact with schools had led Harold Cook into selling textbooks for the major publisher, Houghton Mifflin Co. He loved selling, he recalls, and was able to work from his home in Buchanan, Va.
Despite Cook's satisfaction with selling, the pull of the church continued.
In 1985, he began working toward a divinity degree at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. He did not finish his degree, however. Tensions from the takeover of the seminaries by conservative leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention made him decide to continue his education on his own. He has never stopped studying, he said, and has taken advantage of many continuing education opportunities.
“I never paid much attention to the political problems [of the SBC],” he said. But in 2002 the problems came even to rural Springwood, when several newcomers to the membership tried to get Cook to retire so the congregation would become more firmly aligned with the conservative principles some Southern Baptists now support.
“I wasn't going to preach against certain groups like the gays,” he said. The dissenters –nearly half the congregation — left and started a new church, Faith Community Fellowship.
The loss hit hard, Cook admits. It split families, cost the group financially and left his supporters grieving. But the remaining people pulled together and started over.
The church was drawn together through the split. And Cook said he's leaving his church in good hands, though a new pastor has not been named.
When it came time to announce Cook's retirement to the church, he couldn't do it himself. His son Chris made the announcement to the congregation. Cook's entire extended family still drives over to attend the church. At last count, they have three generations there.
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— This article first appeared in Main Street Newspapers of Salem, Va.