Longtime pastor at First Assembly of God retires

PLATTSBURGH — The Rev. Michael and Elizabeth San Soucie filled cardboard boxes with what he had gathered in 54 years as the pastor at the First Assembly of God in Plattsburgh. Two weeks later, it’s still a process.

He was 31 when he arrived, and at 85, he’s calling it. San Soucie preached his last message July 7 at the church located at 164 Prospect Ave. in Plattsburgh.

“I prayed about it, and I said, ‘Lord what am I going to say?’” he said.

“So, I had been flipping around in the Scripture looking for something. I came upon the letters that Jesus writes to the seven churches. There were two of the seven churches he found no fault with. He found no fault with the Church of Smyrna and the Church of Philadelphia.”

This set San Soucie to reminisce about his roommate, Jack Weinbrenner, in Bible college in Pennsylvania.

“He was an older gentleman, probably about 10 years older,” Michael said.

“Been through the Navy. Never had married. He did later on. Of course, I’m a first year student and everything. He was pastoring a local church 15 miles away. I’m thinking how does this all tie in? The church was called the Church of the Open Door. It’s in the Book of Revelations, Chapter 2. I’m there a couple of months, and he says to me, ‘How about you pray about this and see if it’s God will or what, I would like you to come and be my youth pastor. I prayed about it, but I didn’t feel any check in my spirit. I got there, and then the second year he made me assistant pastor. Then he made me an associate pastor as the years went by.”

San Soucie remained at the church until his graduation and was going to stay there.

“When I put those two things together, I thought let me look a little deeper into this,” he said.

“I preached a message on the Church of the Open Door. It kind of gave me that perfect introduction to tie things together with the past and the present and so on.”

SEVENTH SON

Born the seventh child of William and Corina San Soucie of Schenectady, his surname is of French origins and means “without a care.”

William was a World War I veteran who served on a naval destroyer and was also a musician in the Navy Band. His mother was a Bombardier, and her mother was a Trombley from Redford. William was a union carpenter and ran a small family farm, part of the Campbell estate.

In a creek on the farm, Michael almost drowned twice. At age 4, he was rescued by his uncle Charles Goodrum. Four years later, his brother, Norman, plucked him from the flooding creek. Apparently, it wasn’t his time. God had plans.

FINDING GOD

When he was 12, San Soucie traipsed his way back from the swamps to his family farm. While walking in a farmer’s field, he heard the peal of bells ringing from the 18th century cobblestone Dutch Reformed Church.

“I stopped and I looked up and I said, “God, I don’t know if you’re real or not because I don’t know anybody that knows you,’” he said.

“The reason why I said that I knew a lot of religious people, but it confused me because I thought religious people would be good people. I’m seeing them do things that I wouldn’t even think of doing. We had a little gang, and the head guy went to the cobblestone church. I was the kid that you locked your doors if you saw me coming up the street because you didn’t want your kids influenced by me. It was because of where we lived and all of that sort of thing.”

While in his late teens, Michael was trying to sort his life. After graduating from Mount Pleasant High School, he was set on an aircraft career. He learned the electrical trade from Joe Bezio, a contractor. Strong and healthy, he loved to work and help people. For three weeks, San Soucie worked as a lumberjack, until he figured there was no future in it.

At 19, he dated a very religious young woman, who invited him to a First Assembly of God Church, which was under construction. On March 25, 1959, a Sunday night about 9 o’clock, he went forward and received Christ into his heart and life. He advises young people to do the same to direct their lives.

“The first thing is to seek God seriously,” he said.

“Find out from God because the Bible shows us that God has a will for everyone one of us. We can miss that, but if you’ll seek God, God will show you what to do. Look at what God did in my life. My gosh, I’m the last guy on planet Earth that anybody ever thought, well even myself, I had nothing. From the time I got up off my knees when I invited Jesus to come into my life, I didn’t even know what I was saying or doing. I just knew I had to do this. This was the right thing. I’m repeating words after the pastor. I’m not saying them, but my heart was there. That’s the main thing because that’s real. Other people come different ways, you know what I mean. Everybody is different how they find that true spirit of the Lord working in their lives and so the Holy Spirit.”

ON THE ROAD

After the Church of the Open Door, the San Soucies went to Oswego, Alaska, and returned to Schenectady.

“I got a job and lived on the farm with my folks,” he said.

“My girls were small then. We were waiting to see where the Lord was going to direct us. It was at the end of 1969. I took a job as an electrician to support the family. This one day I was alone working and the owner, Ed Keeler, of the company came. I’m getting frustrated because I hadn’t heard anything in a couple of months or anything like that.”

San Soucie was hanging switch gear when Keeler approached him and said, “We’ve been talking about you in our board meetings. We’ll like to offer you a foreman’s position, but I know you have a different situation.”

“I said I would think about it,” he said.

“Of course, I was going to pray about it, too. When he left the room, I looked up and said, ‘Father, I need to hear from you because I have to tell him something. I have to support the family.’”

Once home, Elizabeth told him he had received a call from a pastor in Olean in western New York.

“They just finished building a brand new church, up and growing, great church,” he said.

“He heard about us. He thinks we’re supposed to come there. I’m thinking I prayed in the morning, God if you don’t show me what to do I’m going to take this job.”

The location of the job was ideal as it was close to Elizabeth’s parents.

“Not only that, my former pastor from Schenectady, who had just finished building a new church in Wellsville,” he said.

“Because I was going to preach for Ronald Kleinstuber, my pastor from Schenectady. I came to know the Lord under his ministry. They came from Ontario and started a church in Oswego. That was our first church.”

Since San Soucie had to pass through Olean to get to his engagement, he thought how in the world could this not be God?

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

“I said wow. I go there and preach for them. I’m up there, and I have nothing in here (points at his chest) of the Spirit. I preached okay and everything like that. It wasn’t any lack of that aspect, but I had no witness that this was God. That God was anywhere. I knew they were going to vote us in, which they ended up doing that after we got home.”

‘THIS IS NOT OF GOD’

Three-foot snow drifts greeted San Soucie upon his return to Schenectady. The church board voted, and he received a telephone call.

“I told them, I don’t know,” he said.

“I said call me back because I had no time to pray. I always had to wait on the Lord. Sometimes, I get an answer quick. Sometimes not.”

In a state of terrible confusion, San Soucie sought clarity as he plowed snow.

“Seven thirty at night, I get off the tractor,” he said.

“I am angry. Tired. They called me back, and I said, ‘Yeah, I guess so.’”

For three nights San Soucie couldn’t sleep, but he managed to work each day.

“God would not let me sleep,” he said.

“I remember I threw back the covers, and I said, ‘This is not of God. I’m going to call those people and tell them to get someone else.’ And, I went to sleep. I crashed.”

The church graciously accepted his decision.

Not long afterward, Paul Buckwalter called him.

“The guy in our headquarters,” he said.

“He called on a Saturday night. One of his jobs was to supply pastors for churches that needed it. He said I was in my living room praying about a church in Plattsburgh. Thinking of closing it. He says, ‘Go up there, look it over. Preach for them. Pray about it. See what you think. Is this God or not?’ Then he said, ‘It’s not like you’re going up there for the rest of your life.’

“When he said that, I heard my angel, “Oh, yes you are.’ To confirm that, I get this. (slap) A flat hand in the chest. I couldn’t see the hand, but I heard it and I felt it. It was God’s way of saying, no, you’re not crazy. This is me. I’m knocking at your door.”

NORTH TO PLATTSBURGH

In February 1970, San Soucie drove north to Plattsburgh.

“My wife wouldn’t even come,” he said.

“I stayed at Howard Johnson’s in fact. By the time we got out of church, we had six inches of snow. I had to be work the next morning. When I went down the Northway, I counted 50 cars, from Volkswagen bugs to Cadillacs off the road.”

San Soucie was driving a 1957 Cadillac himself, a $100 car, which eventually brought his family to the North Country church established in 1955 by a couple from his Bible school.

“The first year and a half or so, it was just getting what we had together,” he said.

“It was growing. It was coming along. We came through the charismatic movement. The Holy Spirit, God moving in the world. The whole world had great visitation of God. It affected the Catholic Church. It affected all these churches. People began to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and the Gospel was being preached all over the place and stuff like this.”

During the church’s height, the congregation numbered 300.

“Now any more, it’s scarce,” he said.

“We’ll see what God’s going to do.”

During his tenure, the church campus expanded as did its outreach.

“We’ve seen hundreds of people give their lives to Christ over the years,” he said.

“Hundreds. Hundreds. Hundreds. You look at the church today, and you say really? Yeah, but they don’t stay in Plattsburgh. They’re gone.”

San Soucie loved Plattsburgh from day one to the present that includes his grandson, John Osborn, who is a church pastor.

“I miss the military people,” he said.

“They brought culture. They brought education. They brought finances. Talent. Skills. It brought a lot of people who had experience with the Lord. We need everyone. Not everybody is going to be a civil engineer or a doctor or something like that. It was just amazing. It was nice to have all these people all around the country because when we went on vacation we could hit this one and this one there. I had built this old bus there into a motor home, so we could go anywhere we want.”

His legacy is the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who crossed the threshold of the First Assembly of God.

“Some of them, obviously, stayed to help us,” he said.

“They became part of the church.”