A MINISTRY OF MAGIC: CHARLES TINSLEY Ask

any fan of fantasy stories and they’ll tell you that magic makes things out of nothing. It conjures out of thin air; it achieves the impossible. It leaves people befuddled, awed at its capabilities.

For Charles Tinsley, pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church in Barbourville, Ky., it’s the most apt descriptor of what he and his church accomplish day in and day out.

A predominantly Black church in an overwhelmingly white geographic region, facing the same economic headwinds by which that region has come to be defined, grappling for relevancy and membership in a rapidly secularizing country, hasn’t merely survived. It has thrived. And with a robust youth program, the envy of many a CBF church, to boot.

“People know when you love them. Kids know when you love them. It’s just magic,” Tinsley said. “And our ministry, I guess people think we just got a youth church, but they say, ‘Man, y’all don’t care about nothing.’ But we do, we care about everything.”

Tinsley knows this love deeply, not merely because he professes it and serves as a minister of it, but because it was what compelled him to the pastorate in the first place. He did not set out to be a pastor; indeed, had it been solely up to him, he would still be enjoying his retirement from coal mining. Hailing from Harlan County, Ky., a place ravaged by economic disinvestment by mining companies, there would have been virtually no other careers from which he could have chosen.

Of course, the spellbinding Spirit had something else to say. In 1998, following 12 years of service as a deacon in his home church— about one hour away from Barbourville—Tinsley underwent a true conversion experience.

“I never will forget that day. We were having altar prayer, and my sister was sick; and I just went to the altar,” Tinsley said. “And I was praying, and my pastor asked me, ‘Why did I come?’ And I didn’t even mention nothing about my sister, and I didn’t realize I had said it; but I said, ‘The reason I came up here is God has called me to preach.’”

And preach he did. One Sunday, he delivered his very first sermon not just as a pastor, but his first sermon ever. The next Sunday, the congregation of St. Paul asked him to serve in an interim capacity. Now, after nearly 25 years, it’s safe to say Tinsley secured the job permanently.

While the calling came rather easily, the decision to stay with St. Paul required a bit more deliberation. The small size of the congregation, at the time a “family church,” in Tinsley’s words, posed an issue. While its spiritual health was (and remains) robust, the health of its building was cause for alarm. “The building was in ruins, I’m telling you, it needed so much work done on it. I just didn’t know,” he said. “I said, ‘Lord, I don’t know how we going to get this done. It’s just so much that needs to be done.’ I’m trying to witness and try to invite people to church, and I lived so far away.” At the time, and until 2021, Tinsley lived about 1.5 hours away with his wife, Sherry, making the trip up to Barbourville from Harlan County two or three days a week. It was a traversable distance, but far from convenient. It certainly didn’t make repairing the building any easier. This proved especially troublesome in the Appalachian winters.

“One Wednesday night we was going to have Bible study, but apparently didn’t nobody show up,” Tinsley said. “Me and my wife had traveled about a hour-and-a-half and it just started pouring down, raining.” Tinsley recollects the mud squishing under the church door, a casualty of the building’s faulty water system. He feared that with a particularly heavy snow, the roof would collapse, and with it, his newfound ministry.

His anxieties proved unfounded, as word of the church’s struggles quickly spread. Days later, a group of elders from a church in Oklahoma showed up at their door.

“One of the members in the church was part of a group called Oklahoma Builders, and he had rallied his people,” Tinsley said. “I think it was about 12 retired people, elderly men; and they brought mobile homes and they camped outside and they came and put a roof on this church.”

They built a roof and established a relationship that endures to this day, nearly 20 years later. It would prove not to be the last. In 2018, Elmer Parlier, a white Episcopalian who, at the time was 70 years old, decided to put some legs on his church’s commitment to racial justice. He traveled 20 miles to Barbourville, opened the doors to the predominantly Black St. Paul Baptist Church, walked inside and sat down. “I walked into this church and sat right here, and I thought,

‘If they reject me, they will, and if they don’t, they won’t,’” Parlier said. “They took me in like family. Never been so blessed with the warmth that they gave to me.”

Since that day, he has attended St. Paul about once a month, forging a relationship with Pastor Tinsley, the congregation and, as fortune would have it, the continually beleaguered building.

With his experience in affordable housing, handyman know-how, and connections to local organizations, Parlier proved to be yet another invaluable blessing in St. Paul’s magical lineage. In turn, the church has blessed him right back.

“Pastor Tinsley, although I attend here only about once a month, has essentially become my pastor. Having been raised in the Baptist church, I really relate to that style of worship and that style of preaching. It’s been a blessing to me,” Parlier said.

Through him, Tinsley met Scarlette Jasper, CBF field personnel serving with Together for Hope. The organization’s primary objective is to mitigate generational poverty in Southern and south-central Kentucky, a goal achieved through partnerships just like the one it enjoys with St. Paul. At the time of their meeting, the church was enduring a bat infestation in its rafters. For Jasper, a pernicious problem turned into the perfect project. By pooling CBF’s finances, mobilizing a youth group from St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville and employing the full heft of Together for Hope’s resources, the church emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic with a brand-new floor, a refurbished draining system and the appropriate number of bats.

“They did a tremendous amount of work that week,” Jasper said.

“And then we had some fellowship time and real relationship-building time and bonding. That’s the CBF involvement—mission teams and financial support towards the project.”

In true CBF fashion, Jasper, Parlier and Together for Hope do not intend to drop in and drop out, fixing a few surface problems while leaving the deep, human need for connection unaddressed.

Whether in Kentucky or Southeast Asia, CBF is not just about projects; it’s about presence—a sentiment with which Tinsley clearly agrees. “Ms. Scarlette and Mr. Elmer is going to be friends for life. It’s a partnership for life, because every time I get a chance, I don’t forget where your blessings come from,” he said. “It’s through them that I’ll never forget. I know we can’t repay them, but I don’t think they expect us to. I think it’s just being thankful, and it’s through God’s blessings.”

Other problems persist—the church’s lack of financial resources, for one, a symptom of both the surrounding area’s poverty and of the country’s deeply entrenched systemic racism. Yet, St. Paul practices its ministry, quite literally, from a more solid foundation. And on that foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Tinsley, who have no children together, can count as their own the children of Barbourville. And, if the veritable traffic jam of bicycles that clusters at St. Paul’s door every week is evidence of anything, it’s that this love is reaching the right places. “It’s just those innocent kids and we just try to do everything we can to help them. And like I say, it’s unreal. You have to just almost see it. I can’t describe it sometimes, the love that we have for our young people.”

That which can’t be described—yet another feature of magic.