I learned to love history in my freshman Western Civilization class in college. Since then, it’s seemed important to me to appreciate those who came before us. When I pastored The Donelson Fellowship, we wrote a history of the church, published it in leaflet form and on our website, and had a heritage wall. I’m no longer there, but I still appreciate my predecessors, and have occasionally devoted blogs to their story.
Next in line is Rolla Smith, TDF’s first fulltime pastor.
Rolla was born into a pastor’s home in 1920 and grew up on a Missouri farm during the Great Depression. He finished the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse. When Rolla was 14, his dad bought him a Model T Ford so he could drive himself eight miles to high school. He graduated from high school in 1939, and his classes gave him the credentials to teach. So he began teaching in a rural school. He and Agnes were married in 1941. They moved to a farm where they milked twenty dairy cows until Rolla prepared to enter the army to fight in World War II. But the doctor disqualified because of his history of migraine headaches. So he and Agnes bought a house and he got a job in a hardware store.
Though Rolla had grown up in a preacher’s home and was baptized as a young teenager, he had never actually received Christ as his Savior. I have a copy of his handwritten testimony in which he said he was embarrassed about what others would think if they knew he was not truly a believer, so he continued going to church and living a life of pretense.
One evening, he and Agnes went to the Sunday night service where a visiting pastor from California preached. Several people stood and gave their testimony. Rolla said, “I stood to share my true spiritual condition and went to the altar for prayer but was not saved.” The church asked the visiting preacher to conduct a week of meetings, and on Thursday night Rolla prayed “a rather lengthy prayer with wonderful freedom.” As he later said, “The burden lifted and I was a new creation in Christ, all praise to Him.”
Rolla begin to feel God calling him into the ministry, so he and Agnes moved to Nashville to attend Free Will Baptist Bible College, which was then a two-year school. Afterward, the Smiths moved back to Missouri, where Rolla pastored churches until 1959, while also serving on the Free Will Baptist Board of Foreign Missions. He became the agency’s director in 1960, and served for two years.
In 1962, Rolla left the Foreign Missions Department to become the first fulltime pastor of The Donelson Fellowship. At that time, many churches provided housing for their pastors, and so work immediately began on a personage next to the church property (this became the house my family enjoyed from 1980 to 1990). The parsonage was dedicated on April 1, 1962, with Dr. L. C. Johnson giving a dedicatory message. The two Smith daughters provided music—Beth sang “Bless This House,” accompanied on the piano by Linda.
When Rolla began his work, church attendance was in the 30s. Soon it grew, but the church was still meeting in the basement of a proposed building. With great trust in the Lord, the congregation voted to build a sanctuary—the current chapel—which was dedicated on Sunday afternoon, March 24, 1963. Many of the older members told me of the stress and strain of those days, going into debt, selling church bonds, and watching every penny, and praying earnestly for the work to prosper. It was worth it. Over the next five years, 135 new members were added.
Rev. and Mrs. Smith resigned in January, 1967, when he accepted the call to pastor a church in Georgia. Their daughter, Linda, married a North Carolina pastor but passed away from kidney disease. Their other daughter, Beth, married Vernon Whaley, and he was serving as Minister of Music when I came to TDF in 1980. One of the joys of my life has been serving alongside Vernon in various ways over the years: He and Beth are among my dearest friends.
Brother Smith returned to Nashville in 1975 to direct the denomination’s Foreign Mission Agency a second time. He and Agnes were members of The Donelson Fellowship when I assumed the pastorate there. They left shortly afterward to assist in East Nashville Free Will Baptist Church, where their presence was badly needed. Both Rolla and Agnes were sterling servants of the Lord, and everyone in the church loved them dearly.
One other personal note. My parents sometimes came down to visit the church, and he had known the Smiths because of denominational interactions. For some reason, my dad always called him “Roola.” I corrected him a couple of times, but it was always “Roola.”
When Agnes passed away, Rolla married Helen Ketteman and their happy marriage of 23 years was a blessing to all who knew them. Rolla’s lifetime of service for the Lord helped lay the foundations for International Missions; he faithfully served as pastor and worked hard in whatever church he found himself. He combined sharp business skills with a heart for ministry. He passed away on March 15, 2013, at the age of 92.
Because of Rolla Smith, I had a house for my family and a sanctuary for my sermons. He literally lifted the church out of the basement and set it on the road of a successful long-term ministry. I owe him a great debt of gratitude.
We all do.