Five years ago Ridley Usherwood’s global career track brought him to Madison, when he took a job with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to work on the Urbana Student Missions Convention. Now he’s settled even further into the community by taking a pastoral position at High Point Church. MC interviewed the Rev. Dr. Usherwood on his illustrious career and his goals in his newest assignment.
MC: You are now pastor of a local church after a varied career. How does it feel to be a pastor at this point in your career?
RU: In many ways it’s going back to one of my passions. This is the fourth church that I have pastored, the first time I’m the senior associate of a local church. I’ve been a senior pastor in all of those other experiences. It’s going back to one of the passions that I really love. I’ve seen God bless and prosper in remarkable ways the ministries that I’ve had before in local churches and again he’s doing the same. So I feel very good about it. I think it’s a wonderful transition.
One of my dreams before I retire included three things: be a local pastor again, teach a couple courses in seminary or graduate school, and travel overseas to help train pastors in developing countries. Interesting enough, all of those dreams are being fulfilled here at High Point. I’m very much involved in the local pastorate, in preaching, teaching and counseling. I’m also an adjunct faculty with Trinity International University, so I get to teach in the field of missiology. And right now I have two trips set up to the Philippines and Indonesia, to train indigenous pastors.
MC: So you’re right where you want to be.
RU: Exactly, right where God led me.
MC: Tell me about how you got here. You have an interesting history. I know you come from a Pentecostal background, so being on staff at what was once a Baptist church must be interesting. Start with how you dedicated your life to the Lord and bring us up to where you’re at now.
RU: I was born in Jamaica and grew up in England. In college I was in pre-med and thought that I would be a medical missionary. Back in eighth grade a missionary came through and talked to us about the adventures of the mission field. I have five sisters and four of them are in the medical profession. And so I thought medicine would be a great way to go. But in the middle of that, God called me to preach. I had a wonderful set of mentors who discipled me to be someone special that God could use. So in 1967 I went to Switzerland to train at a Bible College. I returned to England and pastored my first church in Peterborough England. I was all of 19 years old at that time. The Lord grew that church. In fact the church has bought one of those English cathedral type buildings and is thriving. So that gives me a great deal of joy to see that happening.
MC: What kind of church was that?
RU: That was the Church of God, which is a classical pentecostal denomination with headquarters in Cleveland, Tennessee.
From there I got a scholarship to go to Lee University, in Cleveland, Tennessee, where I graduated with a degree in Sociology and Christian education. Then I went to Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. When I graduated from there my wife and I were called to be Church of God missionaries in Germany for the next eight and a half years. It was over there that I became interested in the U.S. military and worked as a part-time auxiliary chaplain with the Army.
We came to the states on furlough and then we went back to Germany and I started PhD studies at the University of Tubingin on the history of the Middle Ages. Then we came back to the states again and I joined the U.S. Air Force as a chaplain. I had a wonderful career there. It’ll now be 27 years that I’ve been in the Air Force as a chaplain. I’ve traveled all over the country, all over the world literally. In the meantime I taught for a year at the Church of God school of theology in Cleveland, Tennessee. And then I was appointed by my church missions department to start a brand new theological college in Northampton, England. I spent about eight years there and loved it. I didn’t finish my PhD at Tubingin so I started one at the University of Birmingham in cultural theology. In 1988 I came back to the states and went to pastor a second church, Harvest Temple Church of God in Forestville, Maryland.
During that time Desert Storm came about. I was mobilized for about six months. I went to Andrews Air Force Hospital to serve as a chaplain. Following Desert Storm I was called by Lee University to develop a Department of Intercultural Studies in the School of Religion. I came to Lee in 1991 and served there until 2001 as chair of the Department of Intercultural Studies. From Lee I went on sabbatical to Chicago, where I had a great interest in studying urban theology, so I went to the Olive Branch Scho ol of Urban Studies. I had met Paula Harris and Barney Ford of InterVarsity in 1998 at a conference. I was getting to the place where I wanted to transition from academia but still work with students and I was invited to be an associate director of Urbana. When Urbana 03 was over I became InterVarsity’s National Director for Church Relations. I served in that position until August 2006.
MC: Churches change over time, going through good times and bad times. How would you describe where High Point Church is at right now?
RU: "High Point started in 1961, as a church plant from a very conservative Baptist Church in Madison. It became Middleton Baptist Church, but over the years the culture of the church changed and members wanted to reach out more. High Point Church was established when the congregation relocated and built on its present property. High Point has grown to become a multi-cultural church with very strong evangelical roots and theology. We are non-denominational and comprised of parishioners whose Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and Pentecostal/charismatic backgrounds inform their faith for "missional" endeavor. High Point has moved forward to embrace God’s plan to become a congregation growing in and reaching out in the love of God, grace of Jesus Christ and power of the Holy Spirit. We have committed ourselves to the Biblical, Early Church vision that grace should be found in all forms in the church {grace for salvation, forgiveness, thanksgiving and spiritual gifts}, and that faith must touch its world in many practical outpourings of Christian action. We are also deeply committed to High Point being a culturally, racially and ethnically diverse church which reflects the makeup of heaven.
One of my own personal dreams is that High Point will become very much of a sending church – that is the essence of what it means to be "missional." We now support 48 missionary families all over the world as well as on the campus. We want to see that grow. My own personal dream is to see High Point plant other churches overseas. We’re actually developing a partnership with a church in Poland as a sort of sister church. There’s a possiblity of us developing something in Africa, probably in Ethiopia where one of our former InterVarsity missionaries is now being trained as an SIM missionary. With Trinity Extension here, I also want to develop a full orbed college or leadership institute where bivocational pastors can get their degrees and get the education they need to do effective work in the pastorate. So I am definitely where I think God wants me to be and I’m very excited about the possibilities here.
MC: This is not the first time that a church in Madison has had bi-racial leadership, but it’s pretty rare. How do you feel about being a part of that?
RU: The vision of pastor Bill Mugford, who used to pastor a church of some 35 different nationalities in Toronto, Canada, has always been to partner with an African American or a person of color to build a church that truly represents what the body of Christ is like. I think this is a wonderful time in the church’s history. I think it’s a wonderful time for Madison. Madison has all of the grounding and preparation for a church like this. Madison is a very cosmopolitan place. There are so many international students at the university. In terms of business and commerce this is really an international city. So I think in many ways the church is going to reflect the kind of cosmopolitan, though midwestern, culture that Madison represents. Even around the church on the west side of Madison there are dozens of nationalities.
MC: You see that just going to the grocery store.
RU: Exactly. So I think we really have to be a lot more aggresive and intentional in doing this. But we’ve already started a potluck once a month called Cross Cultural Connections. We’re trying to integrate all of the internationals, folks who have been missionaries, folks who have a taste for multiethnicity and multiculturalism.
MC: That sounds exciting. Is there anything you’d like to say in conclusion?
RU: My passion for what I’m doing was greatly enhanced by the five wonderful years that I spent at InterVarsity. InterVarsity is thoroughly committed to multiethnicity, loving God’s people in all of their diversity. Of all of the parachurch groups out there, InterVarsity stands as probably the bright beacon in terms of intentionality and effort to live out the Gospel in its multiethnic and multicultural reality. So I’m very thankful for what God provided for the five years at InterVarsity. I had already done a lot of cross cultural travel and training. In the Air Force I taught multicultural diversity as a chaplain in the chaplain’s school. But I’m really thankful for what InterVarsity has meant to me in that area. And of course the flagship of InterVarsity is Urbana, where I got to meet and engage so many people from across the world, especially missionaries.
MC: Are you going to Urbana 06, next month in St. Louis?
RU: Yes. We’re offering scholarships through our missions committee. I’m hoping as many as 15 or more from High Point are going to be going to Urbana.