Reverend Mister Pansler

Rev. Clarence Snyder Pansler (1915-2000)

(photo courtesy of his granddaughter, Karen Pansler Lam)

 

I want to now just give a little glimpse of my early college years and first couple of years of marriage as I remember perhaps one of the most interesting individuals we had ever met.   I want to first of all give a little historical background as to our situation at the time, as God sent this dear man to us at a time we had a very real need, and that is why I wanted to dedicate a little something here to his memory in the best way I know how to do so.

When I originally started college fresh out of high school in 1989, I originally began studies at a little Baptist college in the panhandle of Florida.  However, an interesting thing happened on June 21, 1989 - I received the Pentecostal experience, tongues and all, at a little Pentecostal Holiness church in Brunswick, GA, during a revival that particular week.  Up until that point in my life, although I was raised fairly familiar with Pentecostal religious tradition in my family, I was a bit turned off by it due to my mother's gross misrepresentation of what a Pentecostal was.  By the grace of God though, I did receive Christ as my Savior on a chilly January night in 1986, and in subsequent years I threw myself into the Baptist Church full force - I preached, taught Sunday School, served on church council, etc. all before I was 18 years old!  But, curiosity got the best of me that summer before college when, while staying with my dad and working to earn some money, I began to get curious and warm up to the idea that maybe these Pentecostals had something good to offer, which led me to the Pentecostal Holiness church where I got myself filled with the Holy Spirit.  That experience rocked my world at a really pivotal time - I was about to start college at this Southern Baptist Bible school, and here I was beginning to do things like pray in tongues!  That, of course, eventually led me out of the Baptist Church for good and I began a long tenure as part of the Foursquare Gospel denomination.   

1991 dawned later, and that proved to be a somewhat chaotic year, as by New Years Day 1992 I was on a bus headed for California to attend LIFE Bible College, which was the official Foursquare school.  Things didn't quite work out, and as 1992 dawned life was a mess - I found myself back in Dothan, AL, without a dime to my name and being lodged with one of the church members in a small apartment just south of downtown.  Barbara and I were not married yet, I had an insurmountable amount of debt, and had to do something fast, so I went to culinary school for a few months, which also paid me a small stipend.  Barb and I eventually got married on May 22 of that year, and at around the same time I was accepted into Southeastern College in Lakeland, FL, and we made the move, leaving everything we could not load in our car behind as we bunked at my mother-in-law's house that summer (a word of advice to you newly-married young people - do not under any circumstances live with your in-laws after you are first married, as it can be testy!).  Any rate, I started at Southeastern that August, but my mother-in-law lived almost two hours north in Ocala and we had to commute - that just was not going to work!  So, we had to do something fast!

 

Fortunately, we found a place in south Lakeland that was owned by a rather stuck-up retired minister named Carrier, but again, we ran into trouble - we could only stay there a week, and then were asked to move based on mud on our car.  However, it was not necessarily bad news in that one of the first things I did when I started school in Lakeland was to look up the local Foursquare Church, and come to find out one had just started there on Lemon Street.   The church, Family Praise and Worship Church, was started by a former Assembly of God minister by the name of Gene Pansler, and upon explaining our situation to him, Gene put us in touch with his grandfather who just happened to own a nice little mobile home park within walking distance of Southeastern's campus.  His grandfather, of course, was Rev. Clarence Pansler, himself a retired Pentecostal evangelist.  Now, I want to tell a little about him.

Clarence Snyder Pansler was born in Ohio in 1915, and as he related his testimony to us upon first meeting him, he apparently led a pretty wild life in the late 1920's and early 1930's as he came of age - he was involved in bootlegging liquor and some other questionable enterprises, although he told us his folks were United Brethren church members.  He had a dramatic conversion - I believe he said he actually attended one of Aimee Semple MacPherson's tent meetings back then - and responded to a call to preach.  In makeshift trailers, he crisscrossed the country with his wife and young family, finally ending up settling in Florida.  His first wife, Blanche, later passed away in 1985 and he later remarried a sweet little lady by the name of Myrtle, who remained with him until dementia finally compelled her family to place her in assisted living.  Clarence and Blanche ended up having two children, Eugene Sr. (1933-2009) and Lois (still living), and it was Eugene who provided him with a host of grandkids and later great-grandkids.   Eugene Sr. later became the Vice President of Southeastern College, a post he held for many years, and many of his own seven children ended up serving the Lord in their own way as well - Gene, as mentioned, was at one time our pastor, and another son, Karl, is a prominent local attorney, while a sister, Karen, is an attorney in her own right and also has a strong apologetics writing ministry.  In short, Clarence has given his family a very rich and spiritually vibrant heritage.

 

Dr. C. Eugene Pansler (1933-2009), Rev. Pansler's oldest son

 

 

 

 I grew to love and respect Rev. Pansler, as he was a good landlord, a great spiritual leader, and a mentor to so many.  Unfortunately, at the time we first met him, he was already in his late 70's and began to have issues with the upkeep of the mobile home park he maintained for many years - he often called his park a ministry to the students, and at one time he even had a small tabernacle there where he held services and provided some of the Ministry majors from Southeastern a place to hone their preaching skills.  When we moved there though, the tabernacle was a storage shed, and the small guest quarters in back of it was rented to us as an apartment, which at $200 monthly was a good deal for 1992!  However, in early 1993, he sold the park to a Canadian retiree named Bill Oxford, and spent the remainder of his days at a small luxury apartment near the Wal-Mart on South Florida Avenue in Lakeland.  Nonetheless, we still saw much of him in the six years we lived in the place, and his daughter Lois was our ever-present neighbor across the street.  

Rev. Pansler had his own brand of wisdom that only an old-time Pentecostal preacher could get away with dispensing.  When we first moved into the park in August 1992, for instance, we got the chance to visit a lot with Rev. Pansler and his wife Myrtle, and he dispensed a little free marriage counseling to us that to this day I still can recall well - being we were only married for a couple of months at that time, he advised us thus - "If you ever have the temptation to cheat, just remember that all donuts have the same hole!"  A little crass to some more religious ears to be sure, but true nonetheless!  I also still have in my library a copy of Smith Wigglesworth's Ever Increasing Faith, which is considered a Pentecostal spiritual classic, that Rev. Pansler gave to all young ministers as his way of saying that an unwavering faith in God is necessary to carry out one's calling.  Recently, when meeting with his grandson Karl on business, we swapped some stories about Rev. Pansler, and one of the ones Karl shared with me came from his grandfather's twilight years.  Where Rev. Pansler lived at the Imperial Apartments off of South Florida Avenue is a large shopping center that included a Wal-Mart as well as several restaurants, including interesting enough a Hooter's.   For many reading this, no explanation of what Hooter's is noted for (besides its wings, of course!) is necessary, but for some reason Rev. Pansler would go up there during an occasion and have lunch.  Karl, a little shocked that his devout Pentecostal minister granddad would even step foot in a Hooter's, asked him, "Granddad, why are you going up to Hooter's?"   His grandfather replied, "Well, the wings are good, plus Jesus loves Hooter's girls too."  The "Hooter's Girls" got to know him pretty well, and it is said that he may have possibly even got a couple of them going to church again.  There are probably a myriad of these stories about this guy which could be told along these lines, but one thing is consistent - he was a man who knew his Lord, and served Him with sincerity and consistency for many years.  And, that was the man's spiritual legacy to his family.  

Rev. Clarence Pansler passed on to his eternal reward on April 22, 2000, just past his 85th birthday.  The park he once operated as a ministry has since passed into the hands of others, and nine years after his repose his son, Dr. Eugene Pansler Sr., joined him in eternity.  Both of them represented a rare breed of minister and Christian witness that sadly lacks this day and age, and hopefully some who had the privelege of knowing Rev. Pansler personally will be faithful to carry on his legacy.  I am also still fairly close with many of his grandkids, as many of them do live in the area still, and I know they too are blessed with the great legacy their grandfather gave them too.  In a way, I also inherited a small part of that legacy, as he was a man I looked up to as well, and there are thousands of people who could probably testify to the same.  Rest Eternal, Rev. Pansler, until we see you again when the time comes.