‘It was chosen for me.’ Beloved pastor at 1 of Coast’s oldest Black churches is retiring

On Saturday afternoon, Gulfport police and fire trucks cleared the way as dozens of cars rolled down College Street toward First Missionary Baptist Church of Handsboro.

A group of the church’s young members marched in front, holding a banner reading “The Man, the Myth, the Legend.” Behind them, Pastor Seymour Venson Adolph, Jr. waved from a maroon Corvette.

After 31 years leading one of the Coast’s most historic churches, Adolph is retiring and moving back to Houston to be closer to his family. During his final weeks at the helm of First Missionary Baptist Handsboro, members of the congregation are saying goodbye and reflecting on what his leadership has given the church.

“Every time he’s speaking, he’s teaching,” said Purvis McBride, Jr., vice chair of the deacons’ ministry.

In 1990, Adolph was working at a church in Port Arthur, Texas and applying for pastoral jobs. One day, he was driving home to Texas from visiting a church in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

“On my way home, the Lord told me to ask my uncle where he had been the previous week,” Adolph said in an interview.

The next morning, he called his uncle and learned he had been preaching at First Missionary Baptist Church in Gulfport, Mississippi. His uncle told him they were looking for a pastor. Adolph had never been to Gulfport before. When he visited, he was surprised to find it was nothing like what he had heard about Mississippi.

“I applied, and the rest is history,” he said. “I actually felt like it was chosen for me.”

Adolph took the helm of a church that dates to the early 1860s, when the first members began worshiping together in a log cabin near Bayou Bernard. By 1877, First Missionary had moved to its current location on Pass Road. The congregation has survived multiple hurricanes and two fires that destroyed their building.

First Missionary is likely the second-oldest Black church in Harrison County, after First Missionary Baptist Church in Biloxi, which opened in 1846.

“First Missionary was rather easy to lead because it was already headed in the direction I would have wanted to go in,” Adolph said.

A teaching ministry, a service ministry

Adolph has emphasized Christian education at First Missionary. He created an in-house certification program for Sunday School and other teachers, and then led the church to participate in the national Sunday School Publishing Board Institute, which has certified more than 50 teachers at First Missionary.

Larry Stewart, chairman of the deacons’ ministry and a church member since 1989, said Adolph encouraged rigorous reflection on all aspects of the church’s teachings.

“When you say you are a Baptist, why are you a Baptist?” Stewart said.

Adolph also sought to develop ways for congregation members to use their professional skills to help others. He referenced the fifth chapter of the Book of Luke, in which Jesus uses Peter’s boat to teach the word of God to crowds of people standing on the shores of the Lake of Gennesaret.

The church launched a health ministry and a group of educators called Education Matters.

“We’ve just sought to make sure that our church had more to offer to our community than just service on Sunday morning,” Adolph said.

Under Adolph’s leadership, church membership has grown from 300 or 400 to more than 800 people.

A focus on youth outreach

Traycee Scott-Williams was one of several church members at the parade who first joined First Missionary because her kids had gotten involved with the church.

When her children were young, “Church was like the place to go,” Scott-Williams said.

Adolph would take young church members out to Pizza Hut and teach them how to tie ties.

Alyshia Rodgers, 25, has been a member of First Missionary her entire life. Her family counts at least four generations at the church. Adolph, she said, excelled at connecting with young people. It helps, she said, that “He looks like a giant teddy bar, like Santa without a beard.”

During a difficult period shortly before her graduation from college, she could count on Adolph for support.

“I called him and he called me back and he prayed with me ‘til I was OK,” she said. “It’s that comfort, that familiarity, that humbleness.”

Challenges of the pandemic

Adolph planned to retire in 2020, but he didn’t want to leave his congregation without a leader during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In some ways, he said, First Missionary was well prepared to adapt to virtual worship. Years back, the collapse of retail stores and the rise of Amazon had convinced him that most aspects of life could and would go online. The church started to evolve into one that “could exist both for persons in the building, as well as people who would watch online.”

Now, every service is streamed on Zoom and Facebook. Church members share greetings and encouragement through Facebook comments.

On most Sundays, attendance inside the church is capped at 50 people. Others sit in their cars in the parking lot to listen to Adolph’s sermon on the radio.

As the pandemic wore on, Adolph realized that if he waited for it to end before moving back to be with his family in Texas, he might not make it there. In August, he told his congregation he would leave at he end of the year. He’s looking forward to being close to his two children and four grandchildren.

Saying goodbye to a beloved pastor

Yolanda Wallace, chair person of the Pastor’s Aide Committee, has helped plan his goodbye celebrations. In addition to Saturday’s parade, the church will host a game of golf on Dec. 11 and a trip to see the Pelicans play the Milwaukee Bucks on Dec. 17. Adolph will deliver his final sermon as pastor on Sunday, Dec. 19.

Supervisor Kent Jones and former Gulfport Mayor George Schloegel were among those gathered for Saturday’s parade. Jones said he’d wanted to be pay tribute to Adolph’s contributions to Gulfport over his decades of service.

Adolph stood outside the church as cars passed by, decorated with black and gold streamers, in honor of his favorite football team, the Saints. Church members got out of their cars to give hugs and goodbye cards.

Wallace said it was a bittersweet moment for the First Missionary community: Bitter because they hate to see their pastor go, but sweet because they’re glad he will get to enjoy his retirement.

“I’ve told First Missionary there are three ways a Baptist pastor can leave,” Adolph said. “You can vote him out, you can roll him out, or he can walk away. And my question has consistently been, which one of those would you choose? While I still have a reasonable force of health and strength and life, I would like to spend some time with my family.”

Over the years, Stewart said, church members have heard Adolph react to their achievements with a single awe-struck word: “Wow.”

Reflecting on Saturday’s parade, he thought about all the preachers’ funeral processions he had participated in, and how so many of his colleagues never got to see that fanfare. He felt blessed.

“Just wow,” he said.