Pastor Tom, a retired colonel, soldiers on at city’s oldest church
Forgive Jana Hall if she didn’t cheer when her husband asked her to move — for the 19th time — to Pittsburgh.
Three weeks after high school graduation — she was a flag carrier, he was student council president — Tom entered the Air Force Academy in Colorado. He married Jana after his graduation from the academy. Thirty years and 18 moves later, after assignments in a halfdozen states, Washington, D.C., and Brussels, Belgium, he retired as a colonel.
Finally, Jana thought, he’ll settle into a cushy, well-paid executive job somewhere in the South.
Nope. Her 53-year-old husband wanted to enroll in Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and become a Presbyterian minister. Really? The guy she had to drag to church, the one who was always too busy to volunteer?
“It’s proof that God has a sense of humor,” Tom says. “If I can be a minster, anyone can.”
If you think that’s funny, you’ll love this: Fresh from seminary, he was named pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, top brass of the city’s clerical old guard. Its first leader, Charles Beatty, was chaplain to British Gen. John Forbes when the latter chased the French from Fort Duquesne in 1758.
This early 1900s church in Downtown, just across Sixth Avenue from the Duquesne Club, is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, with Tiffany stained-glass windows, sandstone walls, a dark oak ceiling, three balconies and immense arched doors framing dual pulpits.
Tom found the church both awesome and intimidating, with portraits of past pastors seeming to stare down at him when he took over in February 2009.
“It was hard for the first few years. I wondered, ‘What the heck am I doing here?’” he says.
Tom doesn’t wonder anymore. At age 68, he is First Presbyterian’s senior pastor, fighting to make this church relevant and soldiering through a pandemic that has him preaching live on Facebook to a vast, empty church.
He spoke Sunday morning about the apostle Peter’s interaction with Cornelius, a Godfearing Roman soldier (Acts 10: 27-48), from one of the two ornate stone pulpits he had ogled as a new seminarian in Pittsburgh.
“God doesn’t play favorites,” Tom preached Sunday. “The divisions between us make us lose hope, but God never lost hope. He didn’t cancel us. He sent his son and redeemed us.”
Tom attacked divisions again in one of his “Daily Boosts from Pastor Tom,” posted online days after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. He rejected the idea that racism is America’s original sin, saying that us-versus-them divisions go back much, much further. Tom said conservatives don’t understand structural racism, liberals mistakenly think social programs can solve it and minorities too often fall into the same fingerpointing and hatred that oppresses them.
“Jesus knew what was wrong with us, right down into the center of our fallen hearts, and he died for us anyway,” Tom said.
As a seminarian, Tom says, his Christianity was upended by “The Two Prodigal Sons,” a sermon by the Rev. Tim Keller. The Presbyterian theologian insists that both sons are lost in this parable, not just the younger one who spends his inheritance and returns to beg his father’s forgiveness. The obedient, resentful older brother was also lost, trapped by his self-righteousness and expectation of reward for his good behavior, the New York City pastor said.
“I was the older brother who stayed home and did his duty,” Tom says. “But the father runs to both of his sons. That’s what Christian faith is about. It’s about being overwhelmed by the wonder that God runs to us all.”
Today, Tom says he sees many unhappy “older brothers” who tsk-tsk others for being selfish, resentful sinners without acknowledging their own brokenness. Some who regularly attend church are now forced to watch services on small screens, like at First Presbyterian.
For the safety of older church members, Tom and the elders choose not to hold in-person services even though that is allowed. They tried it for a few weeks, with everyone wearing masks, and straps or ropes blocking rows of pews to keep worshippers socially distant. It was a little eerie, Tom says. The masks hid people’s reactions during his sermons.
They were probably frowning, as I did, when they recognized their own inner prodigal son or daughter, and smiling at the gentle humor of this Scotch-drinking, Corvette-loving minister whose two sons, Sean and Patrick, are also pastors. Sean was a seminarian in Pittsburgh for two years with his father.
“He’s a lot smarter than me,” Tom says. “He helped me a lot.”
And Jana, the agreeable wife who accepted every move and career change as a new adventure? She’s content with their 19th move, living in Franklin Park with the boy voted most likely to succeed at Paul G. Blazer High School in Ashland, Ky.
From their first day in Pittsburgh, the Halls say, they have never felt like “them,” someone from another place who doesn’t belong.
“Some people never pull you in,” Tom says. “Pittsburghers pull you in.”