Russell Vallier was 25 when he first heard the call to the ministry. “I was sitting in the church choir near a fellow by the name of Jim Lovelace, who was my Sunday school teacher at Caney Methodist Church. The pastor that day called for someone anointed of God, and someone who could help him in the ministry at the various parishes in the Caney area. Well, that still small voice — or whatever you want to call it; the voice of God — it said, ‘That’s you.’ Well, old Jim Lovelace, he kind of looked back at me at that point, too, and I knew then that it was me.
“And so, later, Jim called me up and, with no prompting, asked, ‘Well — are you interested?’ And so I answered him:
‘No.’”
THIRTY years later, however — after a career spent as the well-loved vocal music teacher at Chanute High School — Vallier is finally heeding the call that whispered his name a generation earlier. In July, he was named the new minister at Salem United Methodist Church.
“I tell you, I’d never heard of this church before I got the gig,” says Vallier. “And, right now, I’m only a quarter-time pastor there, and a lay minister. But, man, it’s been a gas so far. … There are a lot of good, committed men and women of God there. Okay,” laughs Vallier, remembering that the rural church only averages about a dozen worshippers per Sunday, “maybe not a lot. I guess I should say a few. But they’ve all been very kind to me, probably too kind. The reception overall has just been very warm.”
But the affection travels both ways. One longtime congregant, reflecting on Vallier’s few months leading “the little white church in the country,” remarked: “I always enjoyed going to church — but now I’m excited to go.”
Salem United Methodist Church — which sits beneath a bundle of shade trees, next to a soybean field, two miles west of Iola, at the dirt road intersection of 800 Street and Missouri Road — is inviting the entire community to attend their annual fall picnic at 3 p.m. Sunday.
“It’s a social, neighborhood gathering,” said Vallier. “It’s kind of Salem’s gift back to the community.”
The church encourages those who attend to bring a covered dish, salad or dessert, and a lawn chair if desired. Meat and drinks will be provided.
“Oh, man, I’ll tell you what,” announces Vallier. “Smokin’ Joe Callaway is going to be there, smoking the brisket and doing the beans. And rumor has it — now it’s just a rumor; there’s no guarantee — that he might even smoke some flathead. I know he caught some out at the river. We’ll see. He’s a pretty talented fellow and quite the outdoorsman.”
If his connections with the divine weren’t enough, Vallier has been able to talk Brass Art — a 6-piece brass band out of Chanute — into providing the day’s live entertainment. (Vallier plays “the bone” in the band, which gave him an in.)
“It should be a great day,” said Vallier.
FOR someone possessed of such natural preacherly gifts — a warm, expressive baritone; bottomless good humor and charm; an easy laugh; ready access to deeper emotion; an intelligence without pretense; and a faultless memory for verse — it’s a wonder that it’s taken Vallier this long to ascend the pulpit.
But these were never wasted gifts. For three decades, reflects Vallier, “teaching has been my ministry, and has been for me an untold blessing.”
Not to mention a near-ceaseless exercise in humility. Staring out from the dais at a little country church doesn’t intimidate a man who every day addressed classrooms vibrating with the berserk energy of adolescence. “You can’t scare me after standing in front of teenagers for so long. You’ve got to be tough to do that, got to have skin as thick as an elephant.”
Devising sermons, too, has been easier for Vallier than he might have supposed. A naturally effervescent talker anyhow, Vallier’s attitude toward preaching draws on a principle underlying his faith: “God is not boring,” insists Vallier. “It should be a sin to bore people with the gospel.”
To this end, Vallier has been borrowing on his classical musical training to reinvigorate the worship services at Salem: “Every final Sunday of the month, we do a special thing where we break down a composer of hymns. We have a kind of hymn Sunday, where we take a look at the peculiarities of their work. We did Fanny Crosby last month. We did John Newton — the composer of “Amazing Grace” — this last Sunday.
“It’s been said our Christian hymns make liars of us. You know, we do this sort of thing,” says Vallier, breaking into a traditional hymn, “‘Oh happy now am I, my soul is satisfied / I’ve got joy joy joy joy down in my heart.’ But we’re like this when we sing” — Vallier slumps his body, mimes a look of boredom, and glumly completes the verse. “So all across the land we see people who go through the motions in their songs. And in life. Now, how many of us really know what we’re singing about when we sing, or really care. We’re going through the motions. I don’t want to go through the motions in songs or in life. You know, it’s awful short down here, man.”
