When Don Chasteen was a seminarian, he learned from an older pastor “how to walk slowly through the crowd.”
South Carolina pastors who have served with Chasteen describe him as an encourager.The teacher was Fred Wolfe, who was pastor of Woodlawn Church in Decatur, Ga., where Chasteen spent the summer of 1970 “dogging his trail – watching him and allowing him to mentor me.”
“He let everybody know they were somebody,” Chasteen said.
Wolfe’s lesson, in part, was about honoring the value of every person he met, and Chasteen took it to heart, embracing it as a core tenet of his calling.
Now 65, Chasteen long ago ceased being the young minister-in-training and has become, himself, the seasoned veteran. His lifelong ministry of encouragement and walking slowly through the crowd has motivated others to answer – and trust – the voice of God calling them to service.
“Through the years, I’ve seen Don take numbers of young ministerial students under his wing and share out of the overflow of his life,” said Mike Moody, who served on a Tennessee church staff with Chasteen while studying at Carson-Newman College. “He has been a Barnabas to many.”
Moody, now pastor of First Church, Honea Path, and former president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, said no minister has impacted his life more than Chasteen. “He has been to me a mentor, model, tutor, encourager and, most of all, a friend and brother in Christ.”
Fred Stone, another former SCBC president and pastor of First Church, Pickens, served with Chasteen at East Pickens Church after graduating from Southwestern Seminary. “He taught me a lot about life and ministry,” Stone said. “I am especially grateful for how he both taught and demonstrated the importance of loving people and developing relationships. He also modeled putting family before ministry responsibilities.”
Carl Martin, pastor of Crosspoint Church, Bluffton, served for five years as an associate on staff with Chasteen at Ridgecrest Church in Durham, N.C. “There’s not a finer family man, preacher of God’s word, overall pastor and trainer of young men in the ministry,” he said. “It is a privilege for me to watch him live his life authentically.”
Another of Chasteen’s former church staffers, Ken Lewis, is founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in Clemson. He served with Chasteen in the mid-1980s at East Pickens Church and calls him “one of the most balanced pastors I know as far as loving his flock, preaching the word, leading his staff and exalting Christ.”
“He modeled for me what it means to be a pastor and a husband and a dad – all in one,” Lewis said.
Growing up, literally, in the shadow of Tabernacle Church, Pelzer (Chasteen’s family lived beside the church in a small frame house that would later give way to the church’s gymnasium), Chasteen doesn’t know exactly when God planted the seed that would sprout into a calling to vocational ministry, but church was always central to his life. His father was “rotating on and off” as a deacon, and his mom taught Sunday school. His dad entrusted him with the church key in order to let people in at all hours of the day. On Wednesdays, the custodian, Eddie Royal, let young Don, a devoted RA, ring the church bell to announce the noon prayer meeting. Every night at 9:00, the Chasteens’ television set was turned off, and Don and his sister Cathy gathered with their parents for a family devotional. “The Lord was using all that,” Chasteen said, to prepare his heart.
In the spring of 1964, when he was a high school senior looking toward graduation, “God birthed – a sense of passion for being a pastor” in him. Chasteen preached his first sermon a few months later and began preparing for studies at Furman University. Almost immediately, he said, “other pastors put their arms around me and encouraged me,” men like Earl Sargent, Hovie Revis, Clarence Freeman, Bennie Ridlehoover and others.
Scarlet and Don ChasteenChasteen married his high school sweetheart, Scarlet, in 1967. He graduated from Furman in 1969 and Southwestern Seminary in 1972. His first pastorate was Bethel Church in Oakway. He later served at Chiquola Church, Honea Path; Alpha Church in Morristown, Tenn.; and East Pickens Church before being called to Ridgecrest Church in Durham, where he served as senior pastor for the past 24 years. He retired from Ridgecrest Church on Feb. 27.
Three of the Chasteen’s children are in vocational ministry, and the fourth, Allyson, 42, a high school teacher and coach at Boiling Springs (S.C.) High School, is active with her husband at First Church, North Spartanburg. Jeremy, 37, is an associate pastor at Crosspoint Church, Clemson. Jonathan, 30, is a church planter at Redemption Hill Church in Medford, Mass. His youngest daughter is also involved in full-time ministry overseas.
The Chasteens with their children and grandchildren.After they sell their home in Durham, Don and Scarlet (who recently retired as a high school math teacher) hope to move to the Spartanburg-Boiling Springs area, where Don plans to remain active in serving churches (possibly as an “intentional interim” pastor), encouraging other ministers, being involved in the ministries of their children and spending time with his grandchildren. He also wants to be closer to his mom, who lives in a nursing home not far from Pelzer. Chasteen credits his sister, who is his mother’s primary caregiver, for being “invaluable to me in ministry,” freeing him to go on international mission trips and to lead revivals and marriage enrichment retreats.
Thirty-five years ago, at Alpha Church in Morristown, Tenn., where Mike Moody, then a college student, served as an associate pastor under Chasteen, the motto was, “A church where everybody is somebody.”
“That was the goal toward which our staff worked,” said Moody. “We knew it was possible to have a church ‘where everybody is somebody’ only if Jesus Christ is Lord. Don not only taught us about the lordship of Christ, he modeled it in everyday life.”
Chasteen says he has always had a “strong desire” to be one whose life was given to discipling young Christians and mentoring young pastors.
Walking slowly through the crowd – wisdom shared, one pastor to another.