Thirty-eight years after he began his ministry at Peniel Evangelical Friends Church in Onemo, Pastor Tom Steel has retired, and with his retirement this past Sunday, the doors of the 105-year-old church closed for the last time.
Speaking in the final days of his ministry last week, Steel said that neither he nor the church had ever been through anything like what they were experiencing, and it was something that “one doesn’t relish.” But he emphasized that closing the doors to the church didn’t mean closing the doors on a deep connection with God.
“We still feel God is with us, and we’re being cared for,” he said.
Steel’s wife Jean said the couple’s commitment to God was the same no matter what their situation in life might be.
“We have the responsibility to live as Christians whether he’s in the pulpit or not,” she said, to which her husband added, “The work is not finished with closed doors; it continues with open hearts.”
Steel said the church was closing because the congregation had aged and “many have gone to be with the Lord.” A particularly devastating loss occurred recently, he said, “and when you lose people that really know the Lord, it affects everything.”
The couple said they were happy that they were able to retire “with the blessings we have” and were not leaving “under a cloud.”
“It’s more like a victory because of the 38 years we’ve served,” said Jean.
Steel said the first pastor to serve the church when it opened in 1920 was its organizer, the Rev. Wilbur C. Diggs, who, like Steel, stayed with his congregation for 38 years. The church then went through a 25-year period when four different pastors came and went, from 1958, when Diggs’s ministry ended, until 1987, when Steel’s ministry began.
“Only six pastors over 105 years,” said Steel. “It’s pretty much a record. It looks good for the church.”
Church members won’t be left without a Friends church in the county, he said. Peniel has had a close, intimate friendship and fellowship over the years with New Point Friends Church, which will continue. There is also a Friends church in Gloucester and throughout the greater region.
How it began
Steel wasn’t always a pastor. His first career was as a photographer for a newspaper in his native England, and from there, he went into advertising. It was a job he loved, a profession that made him happy.
“I enjoyed going to work every day,” he said.
But when he received the call to serve the Lord, he said, “It was a real call; it wasn’t marginal.”
“The Lord spoke to me, and it got to the point where I started preaching,” he said.
It was 1974, and the couple, who had married in 1962 and now had two children, Paul and Melanie, belonged to a small Free Church in the north of England. Steel was inspired by the dynamic female pastor who had determinedly established the church in a tough area and had built it into a large congregation. He decided to go to the annual Keswick Convention, and that was when “God spoke to me,” he said.
“The chairman said ‘let’s have a word of quiet prayer,’” said Steel, “and all I could say was, ‘I love you, Lord; I love you, Lord; I love you, Lord.’ Jean said my pulse was going haywire.”
Two years later, the two returned to Keswick again, said Steel, “and I committed everything—funds, family, life—to the Lord.”
“I still remember standing in front of my boss’s desk and saying ‘I’ve committed to the Lord’s service and I’m resigning,’” said Steel, “and he said, ‘I knew your faith had to win out.’”
The following year, he entered Lebanon Bible College in Berwick-upon-Tweed, the northernmost town in England, with Psalm 32, verse 8 as his and Jean’s watchword: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go; I will guide you with my eye.”
“He has done that from 1974 to the very present,” said Steel.
As Steel was winding up his studies and getting ready to graduate, he and Jean began looking for a place to minister. There were 10 different areas in England that needed pastors, from Northern Ireland to the coast of England to Lancashire. But the couple instead accepted a placement in the U.S., in a rural section of the triangle cities area of North Carolina. They had been urged to go there by the executive director of the Eastern Region of the Evangelical Friends Church, whom they met through a friend. They arrived in 1981, and were struck by the church members’ heavy southern accents.
“We might as well have had to sit down and learn a whole new language,” said Jean. “We had to get used to them, but they had to get used to us, as well.”
After six years, the Steels decided it was time to move on to a new ministry, and they accepted the position at Peniel. It was there that they found their home and put down roots, and leaving was not easy.
“The church became your family,” said Jean. “People take up the slack for you. You find people you feel you can go to for help and talk to.”
“We’ve had a good ministry,” said Steel. “We have loved the people, and they have loved us. Leaving is exceptionally difficult. The closing of the doors hits the heart.”
