ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
Rex Petty has been a fixture in the Liberal community and Faith Tabernacle Church for multiple decades now, and soon, he will be retiring and leaving the community.
As Petty tells it, his 40-year journey has kept him on his toes, especially at the beginning.
“I was the associate pastor at Faith Tabernacle Church in 1984, and the pastor at that time was Happy Hopper. He started the church back in 1973 and when I started there, he had been here 13 years,” Petty said. “They’d hired me for one year, and then he decided he was going to leave and resign and go play his music. He was a musician pastor and played the 12-string guitar, and he was a good player. That opened it up at the church for a new pastor and the board appointed me as the interim pastor since I was the associate pastor. Eventually, they were taking résumés for a new pastor at the church, and I decided I would ask the deacon board if they might accept my résumé, because they were going to narrow it down to all of the résumés to four finalists, and the congregation would vote. The board decided they would give me an opportunity to be one of the four, and they brought the other three in on different Sundays, and they got to speak, and the people could meet them and get to know them a little bit.”
Feb. 2, 1986 was when Petty was officially voted into the position, and he considers this year a very important milestone.
“I just celebrated the 40th year of my pastorate here. And I could be mistaken, but I think that’s the longest tenure of any pastor in Liberal that’s ever been here,” Petty said, “An interesting thing is, my grandfather used to be the superintendent here in Liberal, and his name was N.B. Mahuron, and he’s got a park named after him. He used to be at the football field before they built Redskin Field, and he was a superintendent here for over 30 years, from the 1920s to the 1950s, and he has the longest tenure in history of superintendent. I never guessed I would make it 40 years would be here in the same church. It’s very unusual for a pastor to pastor that many years in the same place – you’ve got to have a special relationship between the pastor and the congregation, congregation and the pastor to make that work and happen for that long.”
In all that time, Petty said there are definitely some changes he has noticed.
“Today, people’s attention spans are much shorter, and it seems like we’re much more hurried people than we used to be,” Petty said. “It also seems like there are more distractions than any time in history of all of history that we know. We have computers, we have cell phones, we have everything at our fingertips. It used to be if you do in a research paper, you’d have to go to the library and do whatever research you needed to among the stacks, and now you can get on the Internet, look up whatever you need and look it up quickly. All of that makes it a little more challenging to reach people, to get their attention, to encourage them to come to church, to worship God and do those things. People are also going in all different directions because they have work and children to raise and their children’s activities and all of those responsibilities. So I find it’s more challenging today compared to when I first started to encourage people to keep the high priority of going to church and worshiping God.”
Petty said he has indeed enjoyed his time being part of the Liberal community.
“Being a part of the community and trying to be active in different parts of it has been great,” Petty said. “I’m a big sports fan, so I like to go to ball games and I like to go to the different events that are going on in the community as well as the more spiritual and religious meetings. I’ve remained involved in the Liberal Ministerial Alliance, and I’ve been in charge of the Liberal High School Baccalaureate service for several years, which I really enjoy. I look at where I can be involved, not only pastoring the church but also throughout the community, because Liberal has been such a big part of my life. Gospel means good news, so we try to try to spread good news in all avenues possible. We’ve done that even with Christian movies that come to town. I remember when ‘Passion of the Christ’ came and we were involved in people, encouraging people to go see that movie, and it was only a few years ago when ‘Beautifully Broken’ was released and that ended up doing really, really well. It’s really hard to pick just one thing I’ve loved about living in Liberal because there have been a lot of different things.”
Reaching 40 years in his career is definitely an accomplishment Petty said he is proud of.
“I was only 26 years old when I began – in fact, some people had told me they thought I was a little too young to be the pastor,” Petty recalled with a chuckle. “The other candidates were probably in their 40s and 50s, so I was really young and then, and I’d never pastored a church before, so that was really amazing to have that opportunity. You have to get started at a pretty young age to make it 40 years in one place, so it’s been a good feeling to be able to do it because you build relationships and friendships through those years with the people and with the community. You also get doors opened because your congregation gets to know you, and you get to know them, and building those friendships is really important because you can’t do that as much if you’re serving in a church for only a few years, which I know some other churches do. It’s been great to build those friendships and get to know people for the long term.”
Petty said it was somewhat recently when thoughts of retiring had started entering his mind.
“I knew my 40-year mark was coming up, and that’s a really big milestone. Also, none of our children live here anymore – one of our sons, Ryan used to be the basketball coach here, and another son, Reid, was our state representative, for a while, and now he works for U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran. Another son, Ryan, is the head basketball coach in Augusta, and we Reece is the head football coach at Rose Hill. And then our daughter, Ramey, is in Michigan. My parents have passed away, and my brother and his wife and their family moved probably about 15 years ago to Tennessee, so there’s none of our family left here anymore. And so that’s when we talked about moving, and all of those factors definitely played a role.”
With retirement looming, Petty said there is indeed some excitement.
“We can spend some more time with our grandchildren, that’s one big thing we want to do. We also definitely want to do some traveling, that’s something we haven’t been able to do a lot of,” Petty said. “With pastoring, you have a lot of responsibility because you have one big family in the church – there are weddings, funerals, people having surgery, and people you need to go visit and pray for. There are just a lot of responsibilities you have, and it’s a great opportunity to fulfill those needs, but I feel like it’s time for me to slow down at least a little. I think it’ll be nice to be able to relax a little bit and travel and be with family, and then from there, I plan to try to get involved in a church somewhere and be involved in ministry. I definitely won’t ever just retire and just quit doing that after doing this as long as I have.”
However, Petty admitted, there will be some bittersweetness involved as well.
“I have a lot of friends here, and I know a lot of people, and again, that only happens if you’re here at one place for a long time,” Petty said. “I’ve gotten to know so many people and share highs and lows with them and prayed with them, and since Liberal is such a great place to have worked and lived, I definitely will miss that.”
Overall, Petty said, there has been a lot to love about Liberal.
“I have enjoyed my time here in Liberal – I love the people and love the community,” Petty said. “I went to Olney, England two years ago for Pancake Day to speak at their Shriving Service, and John Newton pastored there, and there were so many similarities between the people of Olney and Liberal. They’re very friendly, very welcoming, and very hospitable, Liberal might not have a lot of scenery compared to other places, but the beauty of Liberal is in the people. The people of Liberal are very generous, kind, good people, and there’s a Bible verse from Proverbs that reflects that. That’s been something that I’ve really enjoyed about the community is the generosity, the giving, and the kindness of the people. Maybe we don’t have the highest mountains or a lot of the lakes and streams and all that beauty other places have, but we have the people. And that’s been the most wonderful thing about Liberal.”
