PERSONALITIES: Pastor, 81, retires four times, takes up church leadership yet again

Aug. 13—VERNON — Though he has announced his retirement four times, the Rev. Richard J. Pagano has not been able to turn down the call to serve the church. On July 1, he took up the pastorship of Vernon United Methodist Church — his 59th year as a minister — and said he would continue to answer the call to the ministry as long as he can keep going.

"This is the fourth time I retired," Pagano said. "The first time I retired, I retired in 2006 and it was wonderful. All summer, played golf, did gardening, and then came winter. I said, 'Now, what do I do?' About three months later, they called and said, 'Would I go to East Windsor for a year?" I said, 'Yes.'"

The United Methodist Church has itinerant ministers, he said, with the pastors often moved from church to church.

The Rev. Richard J. Pagano

KNOWN FOR: Pastor of Vernon United Methodist Church since July 1.

HOMETOWN: Stafford. Grew up in East Providence, R.I.

CAREER: In his 59th year as a minister. Has served in eight churches across New England.

Pagano said he ended up staying in East Windsor for 10 years, retiring again in 2015 before serving as pastor in Ludlow, Massachusetts, for two years, retiring, going, back to East Windsor for a year, retiring again, and then coming to Vernon.

"I'm looking forward to the ministry here," he said. "This is a great church, great people, very compassionate, loving people."

One of the activities the church does, he said, is hold a Wednesday morning driveway prayer program from 6 to 9 a.m. where people stay in their car and have someone pray for them.

His early years

A native of East Providence, Rhode Island, Pagano played baseball and football and went swimming at the local high school when he was younger.

"That was a fun time," he said. "I really feel bad about kids today. They really do not have the kind of youth time that we used to have. We just had a lot of fun and a lot of good times, and a lot was provided in those days for us, free of charge.

"Today, young people are more fixed to the computer and cell phone, so they don't really communicate with each other on a face-to-face basis. We're in a different world."

Pagano said he got the calling to be a minister when he was a junior in high school.

"I read a book called 'A Man called Peter,' by Peter Marshall," he said.

The book is about a poor Scottish immigrant who became chaplain of the U.S. Senate.

His pastorship

Pagano studied at East Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts, and then attended Boston University School of Theology.

While in college and seminary, he worked through several mentorship programs before his first appointment in North Redding, Massachusetts.

"I went to North Redding and built North Redding Church," he said. "They bought an old chicken farm. At the beginning, we restored some of the chicken coops and made them Sunday school rooms. In 1968, we built that church for $64,000. We built a sanctuary, but it was multipurpose. We used chairs. That way we could break it down and use it for suppers and stuff like that."

Over the decades, Pagano served in eight churches across New England, finishing in Stafford in 2006, — the first time he retired —where he still lives.

"I feel real blessed," he said. "I've been blessed with health. I have my aches and pains, but I can still think and talk."

The church is the hope of the nation

Part of what drives him to continue, he said, is his belief that the church is the hope of the United States.

"The church is this country's hope," he said, "because the church is the one place that says, 'We love people,' and it doesn't matter what color you are, what you're involved in socially. We love because God loves you and we want to help you to make your life all that it can be. That's what we preach here.

"We're living in a time when people are saying, 'If you don't agree with me, then you're my enemy.' How can we exist like that? How are we ever going to get along if we can't be open to each other's thoughts and feelings and ideas and dialogue about them?"

His message of hope, though, does not involve being politically involved, but socially involved with the community.

"What my message to the wider community is, we want to be personal to you," he said. "If you have a need, we are here to help you in that need. If you go to the hospital and you want me to come and pray with you, I don't care if you're a member here and I don't care if you never come to the church, yet, if you have a need to be prayed for before we go to surgery, call me. If you have an elderly person living in your home and you want somebody to visit, call us.

"We want to show that the important thing is that we care about people, where they are, who they are. We don't care whether they come here to worship or not. We want to be there for them. It's the big key of the Christian church, to be personal in a very impersonal world."

Pagano said he feels evangelism has taken a back seat to social outreach and wants to develop the church's Sunday school programs to better educate people about their faith at a young age.

"You start from the nursery and that's where we're going to go," he said. "I don't believe it's an either/or, it's a both/and. If you're going to involve yourself in social issues, you better have some people to do that and they better all not have white hair. If the church is going to be the hope, we need to have people coming behind us."

He said that the increased political involvement of the fundamentalist American Council of Christian Churches is "bad news."

"The last thing that you want to create in a church is a division based on politics," he said. "If we want to talk about getting into the Gospel and you say this about this passage, fine. Politics? I don't think so. That's going nowhere with you. You're going to lose. It's a way of creating division that's unnecessary, and it's a way of creating a possibility of losing people. If in fact, you are saying that the Gospel teaches us to love people, I don't care what your politics are. I care about your needs, your life, your issues. I want you to know that we here to support you, pray with you."

Being out of retirement yet again, Pagano said he is here until God calls him home.

"I'm not planning on doing anything else beyond here," he said. "I'm 81 years old. How many more years God will give me? I don't know, but when he's through with me, he'll take me home."

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