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| December 2009 |
| Billie Silvey |
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| Not Your Typical Preacher |
| He wasn’t your typical preacher, but Michio Nagai made the greatest impact on me of any person who has ministered to a local church of which I’ve been a part—and that includes some well-known and widely respected names in Texas and on both coasts.
Nisei, second generation Japanese, he grew up in Los Angeles, where his father sold produce to markets back before everything had been paved over. When the second World War broke out, he and his family joined other Japanese Americans at Santa Anita Racetrack for internment. War with Japan aroused irrational fears of Japanese-Americans among many Americans. People you’d grown up with were suddenly looked upon with suspicion. Michio and his family were sent to a camp in Colorado, losing their business, their home and their possessions, virtually overnight. He was released to attend Abilene Christian College in Texas, where he majored in Greek and excelled as a gymnast. Returning to California, he studied Hebrew at Hebrew Union College and married a soft-spoken beauty from Santa Rosa, Lorraine. The young couple ended up at Pepperdine where Michio taught in the Religion Department and Lorraine worked in the library. They had two sons. That’s where I met them. Michio was one of the first to welcome us when we placed membership at the Vermont Avenue Church of Christ, where he was an elder. Later, I took his class in Romans and Galatians at Pepperdine. I still remember the class when he explained Paul’s logic. Drawing a straight line on the board, he said that Western logic proceeds in a straight line from point to point. Then he drew a spiral, explaining that Eastern logic spirals around as it narrows to a point. It was one of those pivotal experiences that opens a door to reality. Suddenly, I understood something about, not just the Bible, but cross-cultural relations in my new and diverse home city. We lived just blocks apart for the next 12 years, and even after we moved, we drove back to worship at Vermont Avenue. Michio loved children, and he adopted ours when they were young. Even though we didn’t realize it at the time, he adopted us, too. In 1974, he went from being our elder to being our minister, and his sermons were always challenging, fresh and loving. His kind heart and soft-spoken manner belied the strength of both his mind and his convictions. I’ll never forget one sermon he preached on the Fourth of July. He talked about his experience as a Japanese-American in World War II—something he seldom did. Speaking in his typically calm, dispassionate voice, he described the anger he felt at the country of his birth. Angry at America and at God, he discovered that, whatever America might do, God wouldn’t let him go. He never raised his voice, which must have seemed strange to a mostly African-American congregation that had been weaned on fire and brimstone. But most of us appreciated the depth of his teaching, as well as his easy smile and tender heart. Ever open to opportunities to do good, he not only opened the church building for religious release time for a nearby school for children with learning disabilities. He was there every week when the teachers showed up with their entire student body in tow, helping those of us who taught to meet the challenges that inevitably accompanied them. He taught the weekly Ladies Bible Class and started a program of visits to sites in the area that many in the church had never seen. He started our annual Film Fest, which coupled movies on a Christian theme with carefully constructed study guides for us and visiting congregations. An avid photographer, he produced a visual record of our events—down to the decorations and teaching materials we produced for our classrooms. He was a true artist, as was Lorraine, who kept the church building supplied with stunning weekly flower arrangements in both the full American and the simple Japanese style. When Michio finally retired to LaVerne, some 30 miles away, the Vermont Avenue church fell apart—both spiritually and physically. We came to realize just how much he’d done to hold us together, and how much he’d been the grownup when we were too ready to become childish over old hurts. He was purposeful as opposed to reacting, too big for petty divisions. We also came to see how much time he’d spent picking up trash around the building, trimming lawns and bushes and keeping the building in repair. I still have friends from that time at Vermont Avenue, and we still talk with nostalgic wonder about Michio Nagai. He might not have been your typical preacher, but he was a man who brought peace and unity and God’s Spirit to a place and time of tension and divisiveness. |
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