Students step behind the pulpit to lead worship

"Pastors are not set above, they're set apart."

That is a favorite quote of senior Jimmy Cooper. He has spent the past seven months as associate pastor of First United Methodist Church of Kirksville and senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church, which is just outside Greentop, Mo.

Cooper is not the only Truman student who has experience as the senior pastor of a local church. Junior Brian Baker spent nine months as the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Clarence, Mo. Cooper was surprised to hear that he is not the only full-time student to have taken on such a large responsibility.

"You mean there are other people who are crazy enough to do this?" he asked with a laugh.

Cooper said he is required to put in 10 hours of work a week at each church, but most weeks it is a much larger time commitment.

As senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist, he delivers the sermon and leads worship on Sunday mornings. After his 9 a.m. service at Trinity, he races over to First United Methodist where he does the opening greeting and welcome at the second service on Sunday mornings. He also leads the youth ministry and teaches confirmation classes during the week there. His other duties at Trinity include hospital and in-home visits to church members.

He said Trinity is very accepting of him even though he is a college student. The church has 50 members and many of them are much older than he is.

"They almost see part of their calling as a church is to bring people along, and they take pride in that," Cooper said. "They know that they're just as much teaching me as I'm teaching them."

Cooper said his first Sunday at both churches he was a little nervous, but deciding what to preach has never been too big of a problem because Trinity follows the Revised Common Lectionary, which suggests scripture readings for each week in the year. He also is not afraid to admit that he sometimes steals other preachers' ideas.

"If I'm worshipping and I'm not preaching, I always have a pen," he said.

Cooper said sometimes when other students find out he is a preacher they are surprised, but his friends who knew him before he started probably don't see much of a change in him.

"I'm not a person who's walking around campus in a suit and tie or even with a Bible stapled to my hand or anything like that," Cooper said.

Baker said he has experienced some antagonism toward his message from University students, but most of his peers are accepting of his being a preacher. He has acquired some nicknames, though.

"People in Missouri Hall call me Big Baptist Bob," Baker said. "At Campus Crusade they call me Rev."

Baker said that being a preacher does mean he is held accountable for his actions in public, but he actually welcomes it because he thinks it keeps him in line.

"People on the outside expect Christians to be perfect people, and they expect ministers to be superhuman," Baker said.

Senior Erin Beppler, Cooper's fiancée, said every once in a while people are a little touchy around them because Jimmy is a preacher.

"People are like, 'Oh, well, we didn't invite you to happy hour because we didn't think you'd want to go,'" Beppler said. "We don't party ... but we're normal people with normal lives."

Being a preacher requires a large amount of time and dedication. Cooper said sometimes it is very hard to find time for his schoolwork, and some weeks he is forced to put it on the back burner.

Beppler said that Cooper's church commitments sometimes keep them from spending as much time together as they would like, and sometimes he does have to stand her up.

"You can't get upset because he's usually got a good reason," she said.

Baker had a similar problem when he was the senior pastor of a church. He began preaching in April 2002, and he said that in the beginning it wasn't too big of a time commitment.

"In the summer it wasn't so bad, but once school got going I didn't have much time for me anymore," Baker said. "I literally wasn't getting any homework done, and my grades showed it ... it kind of got out of hand."

Baker said that while he was senior pastor at First Baptist, he also tried to remain very active at Truman. He is involved with the College Republicans, Academic Competition Organization, Jazz Ensemble and Campus Crusade for Christ.

John Berry, Baker's roommate, said he found it unusual for any undergraduate to be taking on such large responsibilities.

"My opinion is that he was taking on a little more than he should at the time, and he does [think so] too," Berry said.

Despite all the obstacles, Baker said he misses being a senior pastor and is itching to do it again someday. He knows that for now his job is to complete school, however. 

"Once you're a pastor, you're always a pastor," Baker said. "I'm just a pastor without a church right now, and I'm very happy with that."

Cooper plans to attend seminary in the fall at Garrett Evangelical Seminary, which is on the campus of Northwestern University. Baker hopes to teach high school history for a few years after graduating from Truman, and then go on to seminary to receive his master's in divinity.