Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
After spending two-thirds of his life in Japan, pastoring a church in the United States is a big change for Steve Fleenor, the new pastor at the Church of Christ at 18th and Long.
Fleenor, 60, succeeded his son-in-law, Alan Handman, recently after Handman became pastor at Westside Christian in Eugene. Handman’s wife, Debbie, continues to teach English at Sweet Home High School.
Fleenor’s parents were missionaries to Japan following World War II, he said. “Those were the years of development as a young adult,” he said. “Almost all of my life was in Japan.”
Including his retirement, he has spent around 20 years in the United States, he said. His wife, Carol, is an American who taught at SHHS one year and now teaches AP English and college English through Chemeketa Community College at Cascade High School. He met her while attending Northwest Christian College, from which his father also graduated, in Eugene. He graduated from there in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in theology. He earned a master’s degree in Asian studies from the University of Oregon in 1979.
With no seminary, he went directly back to Japan and served as a missionary there.
“I was deeply committed to my Japanese experience,” he said. “I believed in the missionary purpose.”
He knew that at a young age, he said. “I suppose you might say I was more comfortable there.
“I had a lot of friends that were there that were not yet Christians.”
Fleenor eventually pastored the church his father started there in the mid-1970s, and then he turned it over to Japanese leadership and left Japan 10 years ago.
“My Japanese pastors actually guide me now,” he said. He still corresponds with them using the Internet, and he still translates for Japanese missionaries.
And they also still connect through prayer, he said.
Fleenor came to Sweet Home after Handman asked him to come and be an elder two years ago, he said. “I fell in love with these people, a small, caring community – much like I experienced in Japan.”
Fleenor filled in for Handman, he said, and when the church asked him to be its new pastor, it was a natural fit.
As a pastor, “I think the most important thing is to love people,” he said. “I think Christ is our example how to reach out to people.”
He finds listening to people to find out what they are all about is important, he said. His goal is to find out about the needs in his church and the community.
Preaching is secondary, he said, and “you need to teach what the Bible teaches … make it accessible, interesting and maybe answer their questions about it.”
He also wants to find out “how I could help in their lives.”
Helping people is what the Book of James is all about, Fleenor said. James, the author of that book, wouldn’t tell people to “be fed;” he would do something about it and feed someone who was hungry.
“I don’t think there’s any question that’s what Jesus is all about,” he said. He performed miracles in the lives of those around Him and imparted truth into their hearts so they could change.
He has seen those hearts change, he said. He referred to one of Japan’s most brilliant scientists, a man who believed in the physical world. Dr. Seiichi Sato “realized there was a whole unseen reality that was greater than the seen reality.”
He said one of Sato’s favorite scriptures was II Cor. 4:18: “While we look not at the things which are seen but at things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
The passage refers to the deteriorating physical world, Fleenor said, but “in God, inner nature is renewed day by day.”
Fleenor would add to that II Cor.s 5:4 “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.”
“We are longing for the heavenly garments,” Fleenor said. Life now is a ghostly life that will move into full glory later.
“For a scientist to come to this kind of faith was very thrilling to see,” Fleenor said.
Fleenor has two daughters, including Debbie Handman and Rebekah McBeth, a middle school teacher. His sons are Peter Fleenor of Redmond, a loan officer at a bank, and Matthew, a college student who is working at Sears in electronics.
Sunday School at the church starts at 9:30 a.m. on Sundays. Worship service is at 10:45 a.m. A Thursday night prayer meeting begins at 7 p.m.