East Texas church gives stamp of approval to 82-year-old’s ministry

Posted: 9/14/07

East Texas church gives stamp
of approval to 82-year-old’s ministry

By George Henson

Staff Writer

HALLSVILLE—First Baptist Church in Hallsville licensed one of its own to the gospel ministry earlier this year—Buck Lineberger, age 82.

It was 65 years after Lineberger initially felt God’s calling to ministry—and more than 60 years after he believed a brief, unsuccessful marriage disqualified him for service.

In 1935, he made a profession of faith in Christ during a week-long revival at the Hallsville church.

“I believed with all my heart that Christ died for my sins,” he said.

After graduating from high school in 1942, he left Hallsville to join the Navy. While on board a ship in the Pacific, he often communed with God.

“While I was in the Navy, God would reveal things to me, and I would say ‘Oh man, I could preach that,’” he recalled, but he did not tell anyone that he felt God had called him to preach.

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As he was preparing to leave the Navy at the end of World War II, his life took a turn. In California, he met a woman whom he soon married. Before long, it became apparent they were not a match, and they divorced.

“Because I had a divorce, some people looked down on me, and I kind of thought maybe God did, too,” he said.

He remarried, to his wife of many years, Tommye. Early in their married life, Lineberger said, he and his young family didn’t attend church. He recalled three men from First Baptist Church in Hallsville who visited his house and asked him to come to church with his wife and two young children.

“I told them I would be there on Sunday. I wasn’t. They were back on Monday,” he recalled with a grin.

The next Sunday, the Linebergers were in church. And on the second Sunday of October in 1955, he rededicated his life to Christ.

He quickly became involved after that, and from 1958 until 1960, he served as Brotherhood president for the association—a position that allowed him to spend most Sundays preaching in churches without a pastor.

That’s when he began thinking again maybe God had called him to preach.

“I put out a fleece and said, ‘God, if you want me to preach, give me a place to preach three Sundays in a row,” Lineberger recalled.

Shortly after the prayer, a church called, asking Lineberger to fill their pulpit while they searched for a pastor. He stayed there until his job took him away from Hallsville in 1960.

In 2001, he and his wife moved back to First Baptist Church in Hallsville.

He teaches the 10th- and 11th-grade boys’ Sunday school class and participates in a group that speaks to youth on Wednesday nights on a rotating basis,. He also chairs the senior adult council, visits homebound and hospitalized church members, and fills in when the pastor has to be absent from prayer meeting.

And he mows the yards of church members who can’t cut their own grass and repairs the lawnmowers of those who can.

He also leads devotionals at three retirement centers—one in Hallsville and two in Longview. He said he believes God has given him more than 150 devotionals, and he’s used only one of them more than once.

“I do a lot of sitting on the back porch, watching the birds around the birdfeeders, and God shows me more sitting there than anywhere else. God just keeps giving me these devotionals, and for that I’m grateful,” Lineberger said.

And after preaching 60 to 70 funerals, he can say, “I’ve preached more funerals than a lot preachers.”

Lineberger thanks God for good health—he takes no medications—and he’s not interested in slowing down.

“I love people, and I love the Lord, and as long I’m alive, I’m going to serve him somehow somewhere,” he said.

After Lineberger mentioned to Pastor David Massey and Minister of Education Monty Pierce that he once believed he had been called to ministry, it was a short road to his licensing.

“Everybody who knows Buck knows that God’s hand is on his life, and God is evident in his life. The church was just a little slow in officially recognizing that,” Pierce said.

Massey agreed. “We may have licensed him to ministry, but he was already doing it and doing it very well.”

The licensing service was a special ceremony to everyone in the congregation, Massey added.

“Usually when you license somebody, it’s a young man about to go to college or seminary, and there’s a vote, and that’s about it. But we wanted it to be a little more special than that and called him up to receive a framed certificate of his license. The whole church stood up and applauded,” Massey said.

It was even more meaningful for Lineberger, because the ceremony was held on Mother’s Day.

“My mother was a very, very godly woman, and I know my mother ran and shouted all over heaven,” he said with a tear in his eye and a smile on his face.

“After all these years, one of my greatest desires was fulfilled. I had wanted and felt God wanted me to preach, but I had that hang-up that I had been divorced.

“There were times I thought maybe God had forgotten about me, but looking back, it’s so obvious God never forgot about me for a minute.”