By Ray Waddle
It might have been simpler for the Rev. Keith King ’20 S.T.M. if he’d received a divine calling in a more straightforward fashion—as a young adult, say, setting him on an unwavering congregational course. Instead, his path took him to Georgetown University Law School, then through the severities of U.S. Marine training, then a term as a Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer and a career as an assistant U.S. Attorney, before he became senior pastor of Christian Tabernacle Baptist Church in Hamden, Conn.
But he wouldn’t change a thing. God was with him through 10 eventful years of discernment, he says, even during the ardors of Marine life in a California desert. Especially there.
“God is an efficient God who uses all your experience to make you who he wants you to become for the ultimate task,” King said. “That was a pivotal moment there in the barracks out in the desert. I felt the presence of God in a tangible way for the first time in my life, and I heard God say, ‘I’m here.’ He put me in that space where I could clearly hear him. I wept for two hours.”
The mysteries of calling
For 20 years now, King has been senior pastor at busy Christian Tabernacle. Across his vocational arc, he has had mentors at key moments, and these days he is a mentor to others who have followed their own unusual paths to ministry. At YDS his name is honored in the Margaret Bamiduro and Rev. Keith A. King Scholarship, which was established by the Rev. Ademuyiwa Bamiduro ’13 M.Div., a protégé of King’s and a former assistant U.S. Attorney himself. Established in 2014, the scholarship aids students especially from the Baptist tradition. The fund honors Bamiduro’s mother as well as mentor King.
King’s story underscores the mysteries of calling, its many angles of timing and circumstance. He grew up in Saginaw, Mich., one of seven children in a churchgoing Baptist family, but he had no interest in becoming a pastor. He wanted to practice law. In college, still going to church, he started noticing something strange. Time and again, long after worship services ended, he’d find himself vividly pondering the sermon he’d heard, receiving new insights about it in a kind of internal monologue. A “sermon after the sermon,” as he called it, would unspool in his mind.
“I was in my 20s, and all this was going on in my head, and I didn’t know what to make of it,” he recalled. “I didn’t come from generations of preachers like some people do, so this experience was very odd to me. Sometimes it was three in the morning. I was receiving these insights, but I didn’t know why.”
He couldn’t brush it aside. A friend recommended he write down what he was hearing. He started going to a campus Bible study too. His faith grew. He could see the relevance of scriptures to his everyday life. He came to understand these interior experiences as the “still small voice” of God, as described in 1 Kings 19.
“When the Holy Spirit speaks, the message is simple but still a revelation. It provided clarity, as if the Holy Spirit was continuing the sermon.”
Providential moments
He moved on to law school as planned. At Georgetown, he attended Peace Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and met the Rev. Arie L. Mangrum. It was a fateful moment.
“For the first time I met a Christian who appeared to be living an abundant life—not necessarily in a material sense but a life filled with joy and laughter. I had seen pastors of integrity but not really filled with joy. He became a mentor.”
He befriended a law-school contemporary, Orlando Richmond, an ordained minister who was planning to become a JAG officer in the Marine Corps. With law degree in hand, King was eager to try cases, and a military setting appealed to him. So they both went to Marine Officer Candidate School in nearby Virginia. All prospective Marine Corps JAG officers must endure what other Marines go through: basic infantry training. King was sent to the base at Twentynine Palms, Calif., as a 1st Lieutenant. By chance or providence, JAG Officer Richmond was assigned there too. The first Gulf War was underway, having started in 1990 a few months before. They were likely to be sent to Iraq.
“You’re a Marine first no matter what your particular role is,” King said. “The training was very challenging. You learn how far you can push yourself mentally and spiritually. A lot of times my body was beat down and I thought I couldn’t go any further, and then they’d wake you up at 3 a.m. to take part in simulated war exercises for 10 days carrying a 50-lb pack. It was like an out-of-body experience. I’d pray, ‘God, is this really happening?’ But I got through it. I don’t think half the class graduated.”
It was at Twentynine Palms that he had the epiphany of divine reassurance, and he, Richmond, and other Marines soon started a tiny Baptist service in a garage. It grew to some 300 people.
“God was definitely in it,” King said. “This wasn’t my plan, but I decided on ministry.”
Still, he figured he’d be a lawyer the rest of his life and serve congregations only in an auxiliary or lay role. The Gulf War ended in 1991 before King had finished training, and so he began his four-year stint as a JAG officer according to schedule.
A few years later, he and his wife had moved to Hamden—he was now an assistant U.S. Attorney in New Haven—and they started attending Christian Tabernacle. The pull of ministry would not relent. He became a youth minister there, even as he continued his federal prosecutor work. Vocational clarity sharpened further: He entered Andover Newton Theological School, graduating in 2001. In 2004, he became Christian Tabernacle’s senior pastor. He remained on staff in the U.S. Attorney’s Office as well.
“I didn’t want to be a burden to the church, so I was bi-vocational for 10 years, working seven days a week. The mindset was to put the least amount of strain on the church.”
His legal and military years have been invaluable to him as a pastor, he said. Preaching to a congregation is not unlike facing a jury, he said. And the intense camaraderie at a Marine Corps base in the desert of California defined the way he organized church services there. An initiative he started at Christian Tabernacle, called “We Are One Ministry,” is modeled on that.
“We divide the church into 12 groups—it’s all about building strong smaller groups within the church,” he said. “The model is we share each other’s joys, carry each other’s burdens, stay connected. You can enjoy the journey if you have a loving community. That’s what I saw in Twentynine Palms.”
‘You can sing off-key’
He has also given a lot of time to issues of youth spirituality, speaking at the Yale Youth Ministry Institute at YDS and serving on the institute’s board. His own experience tells him religious values learned at home are central to a lifetime’s faith foundation.
“We know of research that shows how a faith that’s transmitted in the home provides a moral compass that will comfort and keep a young person strong years later. If homes don’t make spiritual formation a priority, it won’t happen. When I was growing up, we all were made to go to church and be involved. It’s not that way anymore. Churches need to strengthen families and convince them that faith still matters.”
Active church involvement is a vital partner in the work of moral foundation and self-confidence, he said.
“I love the Black church because you can sing off-key and people will still clap for you and call you the greatest in the world. Teaching biblical principles, we give people opportunities to speak and lead.”
Congregations, he said, also have a duty to provide reliable information about media literacy and citizenship in the face of privileged resistance against minorities’ efforts to achieve equal opportunity and dignity.
“There’s so much garbage out there in social media. We’re in a time of deliberate deceit. It’s all about fear—it seems fear is more powerful even than love. And so people are operating in a narrative with no facts. As others have said, we can debate about the facts but you don’t get to make up your own ‘facts.’ Parents aren’t putting limitations on phones and media. You have to teach parents the dangers of it. Church can be a place that provides accurate information. We have to figure out a way to put positive content out there.”
His time at YDS deepened his sense of the purview of Christian faith and practice. He pursued themes of personal interest ranging from the ethics of imago dei to the politics of incarceration to the therapeutic dynamics of family narratives. He especially mentioned professors Willie Jennings, Clifton Granby, Mary Moschella, and Greg Mobley as conversation partners in matters of theology, history, and pastoral care.
“You don’t want to come to church and hear about politics every Sunday, but I think it is appropriate to talk about injustice, food insecurity, homelessness, mental health, and wealth disparities. For a Christian to say they’re pro-life and not care about universal health care, mass incarceration, educational inequities, poverty, or racism—this makes no sense to me.”
One reason King eventually left the U.S. Attorney’s Office was he realized “we can’t prosecute ourselves out of these human problems.”
“As the saying goes, ‘At the heart of every problem is the problem of the heart.’ America and the world have a heart problem, and I believe the only force that can change the heart is God, and I believe that happens through the gospel. Where I land is: How do we value all of humanity? I think the key is to see the image of God in us all: loving neighbor, valuing the humanity in everyone regardless of color, creed, or class. Somehow that has to be the message of the entire church. Yet I do wonder if there are now some segments of the church that think so poorly of other parts of humanity that they don’t believe everyone has this value.”
Divine presence and human diversity
His experiences in the armed forces and as a prosecutor deepened his respect for the sheer variety of people’s lives and circumstances. He recommends that young ministers-in-training expose themselves to the unvarnished realism of that human diversity as good preparation for full-time ministry.
“I don’t advocate going directly into ministry. It’s helpful to have real-life experience. In the Marine Corps, outside of ministry, I got a sense of how people are living and what they are really struggling with. It helped me see that I really have to take Jesus’ teaching seriously about loving people. I believe we can learn to be more patient with one another and have civil discourse.”
He urged seminarians to learn how to minister from a seasoned pastor who can help them define and wrestle with their own emerging theology.
“You must stand for something,” he said, “or you stand for nothing.”
King acknowledges the challenges of nurturing healthy congregations in a culture of attention deficit and political bitterness. But the will of God—the flow of divine insight—continues to preside and unfold, he says.
“Yes, we’re operating in a mine field these days. But God still has a plan. I truly believe that. To believe things happen outside his permissive will would mean God is not God, and I resist that. I started ministry thinking I had all the answers, but there’s room for growth and doubt and mystery. I believe in progressive revelation. We’re always getting new insight. I’m determined to love everyone even when they’re making choices that are inconsistent with my own. And that’s given me a lot of peace.”
