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Jason McClanahan starts Sunday as the new pastor of Randolph Street Baptist Church. The Putnam native once played baseball for West Virginia State before quitting sports to become a minister.

The Randolph Street Baptist Church was built in the 1920s. Its congregation has shrunk in recent decades.

September 08, 2007

A whole new ball game

  • Former athlete returns home to revitalize West Side church

    • By Alison Knezevich - Staff writer
    Photographer: Lawrence Pierce

    An old church in West Virginia is the last place Jason McClanahan thought he’d be preaching.

    As a pastor and “church planter,” McClanahan had followed this process: Find a place where population is exploding. Move there. Build a church from scratch.

    On Sunday, the former West Virginia State baseball player will lead his first service as pastor of an 83-year-old church on the city’s West Side — the Randolph Street Baptist Church.

    His return to Charleston is an unexpected homecoming for the 33-year-old Poca native and his family. He left West Virginia 10 years ago, not thinking he’d come back.

    “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Randolph Street,” he said. “That’s the sole reason we’re moving here.”

    Seven years ago, McClanahan and his wife, Ginger, started Providence Baptist Church in suburban Columbus, Ohio. They held the first service in their living room.

    The church in Columbus grew. The couple started thinking about where to plant another one.

    They considered which U.S. cities were growing. While researching the Charlotte, N.C., area on the Internet, he discovered a job posting for the pastor opening at Randolph Street. He e-mailed the church “out of curiosity,” he said.

    Randolph Street leaders were looking for someone with a “church-planting mentality” like McClanahan’s, said Lowell Wilks, a deacon. Their pastor of 23 years, Thom Smith, left in July to work at a Presbyterian church in Missouri.

    McClanahan turned out to be the perfect candidate to replace Smith, Wilks said.

    Over the years, “the church had dwindled down,” he said, “in vision, not just in numbers.”

    As Charleston’s population declined, suburban churches grew while those in the city shrank, Wilks said. When he joined the church in 1987, about 130 people attended Sunday morning services. Today, about 50 people do.

    McClanahan emphasized that he will not focus on growing the church numerically or trying to make a “new” church. He wants to give people a fresh vision of God.

    His beliefs center on the sovereignty of God, he said. He practices “expository preaching,” in which the preacher very carefully examines a particular piece of Scripture and expounds upon its meaning.

    As the new pastor at Randolph Street, McClanahan wants to serve the whole family. He and his wife, who are parents of three, will start a children’s ministry. Eventually, the church will have a teen ministry, too.

    McClanahan’s West Virginia roots are another reason the church search committee picked him, Wilks said. “He knows folks here, and he’s comfortable here,” he said.

    Those who knew him as a teen might notice some changes, though. “I’m a quite different person from when I left,” McClanahan said.

    Growing up in Putnam County, McClanahan was obsessed with sports. At Poca High School, he excelled in baseball and basketball. He went on to play baseball for West Virginia State.

    “Baseball was my life,” he recalled. “It was my dream.”

    When McClanahan was 20, he met his wife, who is from Sissonville, on a blind date. “She was very instrumental in leading me to the Lord,” he said.

    After his junior year, he quit baseball to pursue ministry full-time. Telling his coach, Cal Bailey, was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

    “I remember so vividly going to his farm,” to tell him, McClanahan said. “He was sitting on his porch.”

    McClanahan started working at Union Mission’s homeless shelter in Charleston, and attended the Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Virginia Beach, Va. Today, he is pursuing a doctorate from The Master’s Seminary, writing his dissertation on theologian and reformer John Calvin.

    He likes to point out the irony in the path that led him back home. “Six months ago, I would not have been excited about moving back to West Virginia,” he said.

    Now, he believes the move is part of a larger plan for him, his family and Randolph Street: “We just really sense that God is going to do some very neat things in the days ahead.”