He has a way that’s mighty sweet
I will lay my burdens down at his feet
He takes the load, he knows the road
He has a way that’s mighty sweet.
By Susan Shinn
www.salisburypost.com
In 2007, complications from two strokes and a brain tumor made speech difficult for the Rev. David Houston.He decided it was time to step down from the pulpit at Mount Zion Baptist Church Boyden Quarter, where he’d preached for 50 years.
But the decision was hard.
“I just felt at home in the pulpit,” Houston says.
Additionally, he’d pastored St. Matthew’s Baptist Church in Rockwell for 47 years.
“I’ve got back some strength,” says Houston, 75. “I just considered it would be better for me to step aside and let these young people do it. I wasn’t tired, but I wasn’t able.”
Those young people include two of Houston’s children, Darrell, 52, and Alice Perry, 45, who are assistant pastors at Mount Zion.Houston has three other children with wife Mary, 73: Reggie, 53, Michael, 44, and Cynthia, 49.
“He’s definitely been an example all through the years,” Darrell Houston says. “He’s a Christian man. He not only told me how to be saved, he showed me how to be saved.”
In the Baptist church, Perry explains, pastors can keep their assignments for as long as they choose. “We never had any reason to look for anybody else.”
Mount Zion is the Houstons’ home church.
Houston grew up in the community, and knew he wanted to be a pastor early on.
“I just always wanted to be a minister,” Houston says. “It just panned out that way.”
The Houstons married in 1954.
“We lived down in Salisbury and he lived up here,” Mary Houston says. “We had a cotton field we worked. We had a lot of cotton. My mother had cotton and they had cotton before we got married.”
Mary Houston says that two things attracted her to her husband.
“The looks,” she says firmly. “And he was a nice person.”
Their children grew up on Old Plank Road.
Houston preached at Mount Zion the second and fourth Sunday of every month, then went to Rockwell the first and third Sundays.
Mount Zion was organized in 1853. The Houstons believe it was built on land that was once a slave quarter, hence the Boyden Quarter name. Its current sanctuary was built in 1942.
Houston’s office at Mount Zion is modest, with a desk, a phone, a sofa and a few chairs. He shared it with a part-time secretary.
“We didn’t feel the need to expand,” Darrell Houston says, “as long as we had enough room to praise the Lord.”
Beautiful new stained-glass windows were added several years ago.
Perry and her brother have developed their own preaching style over the years, but have no doubt been influenced by their father.
“He preached every Sunday like it was his last sermon,” Perry says. “He always gave 100 percent. He always said that if he didn’t make it back the next week, he gave God his best.”
Houston’s shortest sermon was about 10 minutes, and the his longest sermon was two hours.
He always told his congregations, “The one you’ll get today is in between.”
Houston grew up with Leander Ellis, chairman of the deacon board.
“He was a good speaker,” Ellis says. He was just good all the way around. He done a good job.”
As a parent, Darrell Houston says, his father was pretty strict.
He recalls the old joke about children being “drugged.”
“We was drug to church,” he says. “It wasn’t an option.”
“Growing up, that’s all we knew,” Perry says. “We went to Sunday school, we went to Sunday service, we went to Sunday evening service.”
During his long career in the ministry, Houston also worked full-time as a supervisor at a furniture company, which, over the years was Carter Brothers, Family Tree and Dolly Madison.
“He stayed busy all the time,” Darrell Houston says. “Plus he did a lot of revivals, weeks at a time.”
“I wasn’t sick until the last year,” Houston notes.
“He could do anything a young man could do until three years ago,” his son says.
Darrell Houston recalls picking up cardboard boxes in the evenings at the furniture company as a 9-year-old.
“It’d be so cold,” he says. “We’d load up that truck and carry it down to East Spencer to be recycled.”
Although preaching was definitely his forte, Houston says he doesn’t have any preferences about the role he served in for decades.
“I just like being a pastor. I just think I was cut out for it,” he says.
Performing funerals and visiting the sick all came easy for him.
“I could do it without any hesitation or reservation,” he says. “It was all enjoyable.”
Houston is “delighted” that two of his children are following in his footsteps.
“A lot of ground has been covered,” he says. “I’d still like to do 20 more years.”
Recently named pastor emeritus by both his congregations, Houston continues to attend worship.
“I enjoy it, but at the same time, it seems like I ought to be up there,” he says, gesturing to the pulpit.