Five generations deep in ministry

A preacher once complained to a fellow preacher that despite his pleading prayers and efforts at modeling godliness, neither of his sons became preachers.

“Then there’s Wilson Welch,” the man marveled, “mean as a snake and his son is in the ministry and his daughter and son-in-law are foreign missionaries. I just don’t understand it.”

That old anecdote has provided more than one laugh around Welch family gatherings. It’s also a source of pride, the good kind.

But you’d have to know Wilson Welch.

The family ministry bug, which pre-dates Welch, keeps perpetuating itself to this day. Go figure. Wilson, at 83, is pastor at Ironton Baptist Church in the tiny community of Ironton, near Jacksonville.

“I went out to Ironton to preach for two weeks. That was nine years ago this past October,” Wilson Welch said with a half grin. “My two weeks haven’t run out yet.”

Wilson Welch’s giftedness includes his ability to relate to everyday working folk, “because that’s what he was,” said his son-in-law, Johnny Hailes, pastor of Park Street Baptist Church in Greenville.

Bivocational most of his ministry, he supported a family doing so many things that “if I told you all of it you wouldn’t have enough paper to write it on,” Welch said. The oil field was a source of income for many of those years.

He would often work a graveyard shift in the oil field. It wasn’t uncommon for him to leave late Saturday night for work and get home bone tired and just in time to clean up, don his Sunday best and arrive at church in time to preach. From all over Texas and New Mexico, to Kansas when it was uncharted territory for Southern Baptists, the Welch family answered the call, with the support and organization of Wilson’s late wife, Merle, and the kids in tow.

As he got older he sold life and health insurance.

“Oilfield work gave him a rough exterior, but his heart has always been tender, especially to those without Jesus as their savior,” Johnny Hailes said.

Ruth Ann Hailes, Wilson Welch’s daughter and Johnny’s wife, said her dad might have been misjudged at times, but his influence was bolstered by the fact that “he was the same at home as he was at church. He lived what he preached.”

Welch’s father, Olen, was a Southern Baptist preacher, as was his father-in-law, Luther Hood. And the ministry bug kept spreading.

Wilson’s son, Lee, is director of missions at Dogwood Trails Baptist Area in Jacksonville and pastored previously. There’s daughter Ruth Ann and preacher son-in-law Johnny. The couple’s son Adam Hailes is in his first year as an International Mission Board missionary with his family in Madagascar, working with an unreached people group. Before heading overseas, Adam pastored Ridgecrest Baptist in Commerce and served on church staffs in Fort Worth and Mount Pleasant. Not all of the Welch kids went into full-time ministry. Mark, the younger son, is a banker, and Ruth Ann’s younger sister, Debbie, lives in Tyler.

The first great-grandchild to join the ministry ranks is David Thorman, student minister under his grandfather at Park Street Baptist in Greenville. And other great-grandchildren, some too young to be bothered, might well hear the same call.

Wilson Welch said he felt called to preach early on, but in his teens “the devil told me I was trying to be like my daddy.” He tried to shake off God’s leading, but at age 19 while serving in the Army Air Corps at First Baptist Church of Anchorage, Alaska, he surrendered for good. That was 1948, and he’s been preaching ever since.

Wilson Welch said seeing his father’s dedication to pastor churches through thick and thin made a lasting impression on him. As for his family’s legacy of ministry service, it’s harder to pinpoint a reason, he said.

“For me, it was seeing my dad’s ministry and dedication, when in my ministry I’ve run across several preachers who after two or three troubled churches, they threw in the towel,” Wilson Welch said. “Of course, when the devil started showing me all the things my dad had gone through, there was a three- or four-year period where I decided God hadn’t called me.”

In fact, he said he wasn’t even sure he was saved. Things began to sort themselves out after that revival service in Alaska, when he sought out prayer for clarity regarding his salvation and his calling. Out of the Army Air Corps not long after that, “God carried back to White Flat, Texas,” Wilson recalled.

“‘You’re out of my will,’” Wilson said, recalling his impression of God’s message to him. “‘You are to do what I told you to do.’ That’s when I was definite about what God had for me to do. And I was fortunate enough that he blessed me with a perfect wife.”

Marie Welch, known as “Merle” to family and friends, played the piano, “which helped a lot,” Lee Welch said of his mother. “She was a sweet, sweet lady.”

A bivocational pastor with a piano-playing wife was a valuable combination in the far outposts where the family served, Lee Welch said.

“She was a Proverbs 31 woman,” he added. “She had a very quiet demeanor about her and was a service-oriented person.”

The couple celebrated their 50th year in ministry and their 50th wedding anniversary in the same year, 1998. Merle died in 2010 after battling Alzheimer’s.

Ruth Ann, the couple’s daughter, said her mother knew she was dying.

“‘I’m going to Heaven,’” she would say. “She would lay there and sing ‘Come on down, Lord.’ We know where she is and we are going see her again. She was a good pastor’s wife, bless her heart. She could pack in her sleep. Get ready to go to another place. Could turn any parsonage into a home, and she had some interesting ones.”

Like the church in Sedgwick, Kan., a few miles north of Wichita, where the Welches moved in 1959. The small church had a modest parsonage but no space for Sunday School. So Merle Welch, a woman with the gift of organization, Lee Welch said, would have the family up early on Sundays to make sure the parsonage could transition seamlessly into Sunday School space.

At Maljamar Baptist Church in Maljamar, N.M., the membership of oilfield workers and their families would change every eight or 10 months, Wilson Welch recalled. The ministry involved a few months’ investment into a group of souls, only to see them move away to their next work assignment.

Adam Hailes said his grandfather had a great balance of humor and bluntness, and his grandmother “kept him out of trouble.”

“Ministry gets ugly at times,” Adam Hailes said, “but he was always willing to be obedient to the Lord.”
Watching his grandfather care for his ailing grandmother as she deteriorated with Alzheimer’s “has been one of the great privileges of my life,” he said. “I pray that I will be able to love my wife Suzie that much one day.”

His grandfather also set an example as a soul winner and preacher. He recalled being in Wilson’s pickup truck late at night in the church parking lot as his grandfather led a couple to Christ.

“Most of all, he has always been willing to let the Word of God speak its truth clearly. I think that is one thing that he has set as a standard for all of us.”

It’s appropriate that ministry organizations often recognize the fruit of renowned pastors and leaders, Johnny Hailes remarked.

“But there are a lot of men like Wilson who have had a great influence on people’s lives in a way that only God has kept a record of.”