Kelly Chatman

Learn. Read and learn and have a love for learning because you never know how you’re going to use what you’ve learned. Now if you fall in love with learning, you’ll always have opportunities to learn.

Kelly Chatman

My name is Kelly Chatman. I’m a pastor so people call me Pastor Kelly Chatman. People at my church called me Pastor Kelly.

I was born in Jackson, Tennessee, that’s in the Southern United States way back in 1951. That makes me 60 years old. I was born in a family where I grew up and we had twelve brothers and sisters.

My parents moved from Tennessee when I was four years old to Detroit, Michigan. In Detroit, my father had two jobs. He was a mailman who delivered mail and he worked at the baseball stadium called Tiger Stadium. So he worked two jobs.

When I was in 7th grade, a big thing happened in my life. My large family, we didn’t go to church, but was sitting in class and one of my new classmates was a boy named Willy Woods. Willy Woods was describing how pretty the girls were in his Sunday school and that got my attention.

So I went to visit Willy’s church to see how pretty the girls were and ah…that’s how I started going to church, kinda by Willy’s church. And then I started going to a different school and then when I graduated from school, I went to college, so I went from Detroit all the way to Minnesota. And I didn’t even know where Minnesota was.

I went to a college called Concordia University in St. Paul. Then when I graduated from there I went to seminary, which is like graduate school. Then I moved to Washington, D. C. Do you know where Washington is?

At Washington, D. C., I lived there and I worked there for ten years. And then from Washington, D. C. I moved to Portland, Oregon. I remember when I was like your age and the teacher told us to like read the book and it was—right in the book—it talked about mountains and oceans and stuff and I closed the book and I said, I’m not gonna read that stuff ‘cause, I said, I’m never gonna see that stuff.

And then how when I became an adult, all of a sudden there I was living in Portland, Oregon where there was mountains and there was the ocean and all these things that I didn’t really pay attention to when I was in school because I thought that I would never see those things.

So, you never know what you’re gonna have opportunity to do and I wished I would have studied harder about those places because when I lived in Portland, it was just beautiful. I would go fishing and go out into the ocean and we would catch salmon—they were like this big—and we would go and there would be hot springs up where we would go in the mountains. The water would be boiling hot and that would be where Native American Indian people lived. I could have learned all those things if I’d paid more attention when I was in school.

Also, when I’d be driving in Portland, I’d just be like going through an every-regular day and all of a sudden, I’d look up and I’d see like a mountain with snow on top of them and beautiful things I never thought that I would see.

So I lived in Portland, Oregon for ten years and then I moved back to Minnesota and ah…and then I lived in Minnesota for a couple years and then I moved to Chicago where I worked in Chicago for five years.

So I have traveled to every state in the United States. I’ve traveled to Africa; I’ve traveled to Sweden, Denmark, Norway, um…Switzerland, Germany, um…where else have I traveled to? Tanzania, Nigeria, and I’m really looking forward to going to Asia.

This last year my wife and I went to Israel and Jordan, um and so we’ve been able to travel quite a bit and see how big the world is. And again, what I’ve…what I’ve really wished that I had…that somebody had really given me confidence that when I was your age, that I might someday see those things. Because if I imagined that I would see those things, I would have really read more history so that I would be prepared to go and see those things and say, “Oh, I read about that when I was a child.”

When I grew up, my best friend was a boy named Jimmy Anderson. Jimmy lived a block away. One of the things that I learned was I was like afraid. There was a bully who would come up to me all the time and he scared me.

One time, he even came up to me and he took my baseball glove and I didn’t do anything because I was afraid of him. And then my best friend, Jimmy, and I, we had something called safety patrol where we would go and help other kids from our school cross the street.

One day I was standing with my friend Jimmy and that bully came up and he pushed my friend Jimmy and all of a sudden I jumped up to that bully and I stood up to him and I said, You better get out of here. And then I realized that I was afraid for myself, but when that bully picked on my best friend, I wasn’t afraid of him anymore.

And what I learned was sometimes I have more power and less fear when I love somebody else, when I care about somebody else. And so that taught me about love as a really powerful force that we have and sometimes what we won’t do for ourselves, we’ll do for other people because there’s a love that we have in us for people that we care about.

So, for me, that also brings to mind when I was a child there was a man named Martin Luther King and um…I didn’t know what a pastor was ‘cause I didn’t go to a church when I was really young, but when I watched television, I would see Martin Luther King on television and I would see him marching with all kinds of people and I would see him standing up against things that were really bad.

And so when I think about what a pastor does, I thought about Martin Luther King and I thought…and I saw that Martin Luther King was somebody who knew and understood love and he stood up against things that were really powerful and wrong, but he did that because he loved other people.

It didn’t matter what the color people were; it didn’t matter what their background was, he loved people. And because he loved people, he changed the world. And I think about that, too is something that all of us have in us is that power. It doesn’t matter what your religion is. It doesn’t matter what your background is, if we can connect with that love for other people—and you don’t even have to be an adult, you don’t have to be a pastor, you don’t have to be a teacher—as a student, you can connect with that love for other people, for your classmates, for your community and you can make a tremendous difference in the way that you show other people how to live their lives.

Now, um…in my life, I have ah…I’ve been a teacher; I’ve been a chaplain; but now I’m a pastor. I love being a pastor ‘cause it brings wonderful people into my life like Gemarté who comes to Redeemer for our after school program. And I get to see what a great drummer he is, what a great reader, what a great musician he is. And I love it when a few weeks ago we were in a meeting and Gemarté was at the table and he kept using Hmong language and he was kind of showing his pride for his school by the words that he’s learned here at his school.

That kind of reminded me of Martin Luther King, too, about love bringing us up and opening us up to other opportunities. So when I…I would like to say to you a little bit about what a pastor does. ‘Cause when a pastor gets to do is welcome people.

I get to welcome people into my church. I get to welcome people into my community. I get to do really wonderful things like doing people’s weddings. So, students that I used to teach, when they get older, I’ve done their weddings and I’ve been really fortunate, I’ve done wedding and I did a wedding at a castle in Germany. I did a wedding at a place called Cabo San Lucus in Mexico. I did a wedding at an island in Hawaii.

So you never know what opportunities we get to see the whole world. And so when we’re studying now, like you’re studying in school, you don’t know when you get to be 30, 40, 50, 60 years old what kind of opportunities you’re gonna have to see like this whole beautiful world that we have.

Also, when I was younger, people didn’t travel like we do today. You are…travel…when I said neighborhood when I grew up, that was that little neighborhood I had in Detroit. But now, the whole world is a neighborhood.

When you turn on television or you get on the internet, the whole world is…you’re really connected to that world through spacebook, no Facebook and tweeter and twitter and all that stuff. You guys are so connected to so much more opportunities to you to see and be a part of God’s great big world.

Even here at your school, how you live that coming from different neighborhoods and different families and different communities.

I am married. My wife and I don’t have any children of our own. My wife is a vice president and dean for diversity at Concordia University in St. Paul. We live in Maplewood, Minnesota, close to my wife’s job. I’m running out of things to say.