Wake Forest Magazine June 2003 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

to help people through the power of speech the way a surgeon
helps people through the power of his hands.”
It was during a revival service held on campus in the spring
of 1953 that Christman learned that God had in mind a different
way for him to help people through the power of speech.
During one of the sermons, Christman says he felt a clear, nonverbal
message from God that he needed to go to seminary. “I
had never thought about ministry before that week,” Christman
says. “But with Wake Forest’s coming move to Winston-Salem
and the sale of the old campus to Southeastern Seminary, it
seemed like it would be no big deal to go.”
It was quite a surprise, though, to Christman and to his new
wife, Jean, who had already quit her teaching job anticipating a
new job in law for her husband. “It seemed like kind of a
bizarre decision for me to make, so I still acted like I was going
to follow through with law. I still took the summer bar course
and went for two job interviews. Those were two of the worst
days of my life. It took the nonverbal message from God and
those two bad days to send me to seminary.”
One night in 1954, during Christman’s first year of seminary,
he was sitting in his pajamas studying Greek when the
chaplain came by to offer him a job as part-time BSU director.
“Evidently there had been some controversy, and the director
stood up on the courage of her conviction and she lost her job.
The chaplain offered me the job of part-time BSU director but
what he really wanted was a choir director for Sunday night,”
Christman says with a laugh. “So my first job came as a result
of a woman who had the courage of her conviction and lost her
job. It was a start on this gift trail that has been my life.”
Ed Wilson (left) and Ed Christman, Magnolia Room ‘waiters’, in 1961.
“Grace is gifts that you don’t
deserve. My life has been a series
of these kinds of events. I’m not
a saint; I’m a person, but I have
been given more than I deserve.”
When Wake Forest moved to Winston-Salem in 1956,
Christman had not finished seminary but was offered a chance
to come to the new campus as Baptist campus minister, which
he accepted. But in 1959, he decided to finish seminary. “I
left Wake Forest—and I don’t say this in the negative sense—
shaking the dust off my shoes with no expectation of returning,”
he says. “There’s no such thing as a two-year leave of
absence.”
But again Wake Forest was to lure Christman back. After
finishing Southeastern, he headed off to do graduate work at
Union Seminary in New York. “It was 1961, I had no job and
I was finishing in May,” Christman recalls. “I leave class one
day and see L.H. Hollingsworth, the new chaplain at Wake
Forest. Hollingsworth drove Bones McKinney to New York for
a game at Madison Square Garden—Bones didn’t like to fly—
and he came to see me. He offered me the job of Baptist campus
minister.”
The person who had succeeded Christman in that job when
he left to finish seminary had quit after a conflict with the pastor
of the Wake Forest Baptist Church. So
Christman returned in 1961 as the Baptist
campus minister, which evolved
into the job of assistant chaplain.
In 1969, Christman became Wake Forest’s
chaplain, a job he has held ever since.
“I never even had a resume. God’s grace
gives you gifts you don’t deserve. Having been
given gifts like this, you shouldn’t look the
gift-God in the mouth,” Christman says. “The
more I think about my life, I am beset by the
word grace. Grace is gifts that you don’t
deserve. My life has been a series of these
kinds of events. I’m not a saint; I’m a person,
but I have been given more than I deserve.”
Christman counts his wife, Jean, and his
daughters, Carolyn and Kim, as three of those
grace-filled gifts. Christman met
Jean as an undergraduate in the campus cafeteria,
where he was amused at her hapless effort
to fill in for the missing cafeteria worker who
J une 2003 15