{"id":11218,"date":"2021-03-09T15:35:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T20:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/?p=11218"},"modified":"2025-01-10T11:53:01","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T16:53:01","slug":"reeses-pieces-of-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/resources\/news\/reeses-pieces-of-wisdom\/","title":{"rendered":"\ub9ac\uc2a4\uc758 \uc9c0\ud61c\ub85c\uc6b4 \uc870\uc5b8"},"content":{"rendered":"

At age 97 and with 71 years of ministry under his belt, the Rev. Dr. Jim Reese had a story or two to tell the Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty during a Facebook Live event<\/a> hosted last week by the Presbyterian Foundation<\/a> and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary<\/a>, Reese\u2019s seminary alma mater (Class of 1949).<\/p>\n

Hinson-Hasty, senior director for Theological Funds Development for the Committee on Theological Education, noted that Reese was on the National Mall on Aug. 28, 1963 when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech. \u201cThat seems like a metaphor for your life and your ministry,\u201d Hinson-Hasty told Reese. \u201cYou have helped bring about dreams that are theologically grounded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reese said one of the ministry secrets he\u2019s discovered is finding \u201csomething in my life that will enable [people] to do better in their life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He offered this example:<\/p>\n

While serving his first call in Wilcox County, Alabama \u2014 at the time the 18th<\/sup> poorest county in the nation \u2014 Reese was minister to, among many others, a group of about 30 young baseball players who were in the habit of knocking on his door at 4 o\u2019clock every afternoon to say, \u201cReverend, let\u2019s go down and practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reese would drive them to the diamond in the back of a school truck and then lead the practice, even though baseball hadn\u2019t been his sport growing up.<\/p>\n

One day the dean of the school the players attended asked Reese to estimate what it would cost to purchase a uniform for each player. \u201cI don\u2019t know, but I\u2019ll find out,\u201d Reese told her. He did the research and quoted her a price, and she had a check issued. The next day, Reese and two players drove more than two hours north to Birmingham, where they purchased 36 new uniforms in three sizes, distributing them to each player upon their return.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo see the joy on their faces when they put on those uniforms!\u201d Reese told Hinson-Hasty. \u201cIt was the most wonderful feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reese said another joy of ministry for him was \u201chelping groups become alive, whether they\u2019re baseball players or a session trying to figure out how we are going to get around a particular issue that\u2019s demeaning to us as African Americans. It\u2019s people who really light me up, and I stay with a group as long as they feel I can be of service and help to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHelping people come alive,\u201d replied Hinson-Hasty. \u201cThat feels like a definition of what ministry is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a little like moderating a session, Reese told him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are a facilitator,\u201d he said. \u201cThe more people that you help, the better your ministry is going to be. If you think you\u2019re going to do it all yourself, that\u2019s exactly what you\u2019ll end up doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us are richer because of each other,\u201d Reese said. \u201cAll of us are poorer without each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reese also spoke of his time working as an educational consultant with the former Synod of Catawba, which was an African American synod of about 125 churches based in North Carolina. After helping develop some new Sunday school curriculum, Reese determined he wanted to use people who taught, for example, second grade to teach other teachers how to teach second-graders using the new curriculum. \u201cThey taught it with experience,\u201d he said, calling it one of the accomplishments he feels \u201cgood and joyful about\u201d over his many years of ministry. \u201cThere\u2019s no one better to teach you how to teach second-graders than some who teaches second-graders,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During his 24 years working for the Presbyterian Foundation \u2014 he retired in December 2019 at the age of 95 as the Minister of Specialized Interpretation \u2014 one of his \u201ctrue joys\u201d was \u201cto bring to the whole church the gifts that other racial groups had to give to the church. These gifts are many and continuous. If I had a word to charge us, I\u2019d say look forward to having relations across racial lines, because God has given all of us an opportunity \u2026 this is the gift of God to each of us, and this is the gift we can pass on to the people we know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Reese said he continues to learn even in his retirement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much knowledge as you can get will not hurt you,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople see [preachers] standing in front of them and they expect you to know more about what you\u2019re about to say than they do. It\u2019s tragic if you don\u2019t know more than the people you\u2019re teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I always looked for,\u201d he said, \u201cwas how much more can I learn about what I know. It made me a good student.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rev. Dr. Jim Reese, one of the PC(USA)\u2019s foremost educators, shares some of what he\u2019s learned during seven decades of ministry<\/p>","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":8650,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11218"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47526,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11218\/revisions\/47526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}