By Amy Moss Strong
Editor
Wednesday, July 23, 2008 |
It doesn’t take much for the Rev. Tom Hutton to get emotional. Just get him talking about the things closest to his heart: his family, his church, and his commitment to God.
So when Hutton, a quiet, somewhat shy man who grew up on a farm in North Dakota, speaks about the moment he knew he needed to take a new direction and trust God to lead him there, the tears naturally flow.
His wife, Beth, just smiles warmly.
“As you’ve probably noticed, Tom’s the sensitive one in our family,” she said.
Tom and Beth Hutton are retiring from Pacific Community Church after serving there for 30 years, with Tom as pastor and Beth filling in with the many duties a pastor’s wife undertakes, as well as helping raise the couple’s three children, Michelle, Kim and Brent.
Tom and Beth, who also grew up on a farm, met while both were in trade school. Tom was taking machine shop classes and Beth nursing classes. They married and started their family.
Tom clearly remembers when he received his calling. He was working as a delivery agent for Standard Oil and also owned a gas station and did crop spraying.
“It was tremendously vivid to me,” he said. “I was asked to share my testimony and after I did that, I was in turmoil, because I had just said what I thought I was supposed to say. So I went to talk with someone and he told me it’s one thing to make Christ your savior, and another thing to make him your Lord.”
Tom thought about that concept for awhile.
“I then knew that it needed to be more than ‘yes, Lord, I trust you,’ it needed to be life-changing and I needed to trust God in all areas of my life.”
Later, sleepless, he turned over in bed just as Beth did and both realized they were thinking the same thing.
“I knew that if I gave my rights to Him, he could take them away at any moment, so I paused,” he said. “But I decided to do it ... that was the most life-changing moment of my life.”
“We had the American dream,” Beth said. “We had a new house, a boat, a car, but none of it was satisfying, something was missing. We both came to the conclusion that we needed to give it up to the Lord.”
Tom’s life began to focus on serving God, and when the oil crisis of the 1970s forced his layoff, he and Beth prayed over what to do. That led them to school at Briarcrest Bible College in Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada.
“That choice has affected us ever since,” Beth said, adding that their daughters both live in Caronport with their families.
After Briarcrest, Tom was looking for a permanent position, and heard from a man about a nice church in Bandon, Oregon. The couple had never been west of Wyoming, but they knew right away it was the place to go.
The man said he was calling under guidance of the Holy Spirit, and his advice to Tom was to “just go there and love the people.”
So they did.
“And it’s amazing how the people loved us back,” Tom said.
“We moved away from all of our family,” Beth said. “Back then, if you grew up on a farm, you never left. But we left everyone behind and it was quite an experience and the church here became our family.”
One of Tom’s favorite Bible verses is Philippians 1:6: “I’m confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it.”
“I knew He began a good work, so even though I felt somewhat insecure and, in a sense, responsible for the spiritual well-being of all these people, I knew He would perfect it.”
Beth also took on a new role.
“I never wanted to marry a pastor, and I did not want to be a pastor’s wife, so I had a real attitude adjustment,” she said. “I thought it would be too hard. But people told me just to be myself.”
Being a pastor also was out of character for Tom, who was then painfully shy, Beth said. But it was he who helped them take on their new roles with grace.
Bandon’s Pacific Community Church has maintained a congregation of about 70 people over the past 30 years. Tom has shared the gospel with them. Prior to Tom and Beth, Pacific Community had seen five pastors in seven years come and go. But the couple was a perfect fit, according to other church members.
“It’s been encouraging to see people share and grow in faith,” he said. “Now we have a real family feel, a real care for each other that goes across age lines.”
One of the couple’s proudest accomplishments is helping build a new fellowship hall and start a Christian-based school. The school still serves children from preschool through high school.
Tom also has served as staff at Camp Fircroft every summer for the past 30 years, and the couple has hosted missionaries, including some from Briarcrest and Multnomah Bible College in Portland. They also have counseled many young couples and hope to continue that mentoring.
It is with sadness and nostalgia, but not regret that the Huttons leave Pacific Community Church.
The couple now has eight grandchildren, three of them in Bandon, and looks forward to spending more time with them. Tom, 64, and Beth, 61, know they will still serve God. They just don’t know how yet.
“This is the time and this is with the Lord,” Tom said. “It just feels right and there is an excitement about it.”
Beth, who boasts a huge flower and vegetable garden in the parsonage’s backyard, also has no regrets leaving it behind.
“People ask, ‘how can you leave your garden?’” Beth said. “Yes, I’ll miss it, but I kind of like the idea of starting out with a brand new clean slate.
“You can bloom where you’re planted, and that’s what we intend to do.”
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