South Alabama pastor breaks out of retirement with interim position

One month of retirement was enough for Alabama pastor Gene Gainous. Following his doctor’s advice early this year, the 77 year old quit preaching and took to his easy chair but that didn’t last long. “I can’t tell you how miserable I was,” he said. 
  
After that brief retirement, he began filling pulpits wherever he was called and recently became interim pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Cottonwood, in Columbia Baptist Association. 
  
After 38 years in ministry, serving churches in Alabama and Louisiana, Gainous and his wife, Joyce, are looking forward to many more years of service. 
  
Gainous surrendered to the call to preach in 1967, having been a Christian for only a few months. He began to sense God’s call on his life but couldn’t identify exactly what God was asking him to do. At the time, he was married with three children and working as a salesman. One afternoon, he visited a friend — a bivocational pastor who also worked for a large department store — to ask for advice and prayer. His friend surprised him by asking him to kneel and pray right where they were — in the department-store aisle in front of the washing machines. 
  
Several people gathered around the men to hear the prayer, and Gainous said when he got up, he knew what God was calling him to do. 
  
In that moment, he went from being a salesman for a milk and ice-cream company to being God’s salesman. “From that day to this very day, I’ve never doubted my call to the ministry one time,” he said.
  
His gift for evangelism bloomed soon after his conversion when he accepted the challenge of teaching a Sunday School class of 11- and 12-year-old boys.  
  
He soon determined that only one boy in the class was not a professing Christian, so he visited that boy and his mother, who both made professions of faith. 
  
Gainous said he was extremely nervous about talking with them, but he knew God was leading him to do it. “I quoted John 3:16 and told them what Jesus had done for me. I didn’t know the plan of salvation very well, but I knew the Man of salvation.”
  
Since that time, Gainous’ nervousness has disappeared. Over the years, he has led hundreds of people to faith in Christ. 
  
Although he loves to preach at revivals and has seen many people respond to invitations at the end of a revival service, he believes one-to-one evangelism is most effective.
  
Gainous has led people to Christ in hospitals, nursing homes, prisons and even on elevators in public buildings, and he advises every Christian to be prepared to share Jesus. 
  
“I give my testimony first. Then I ask permission to share with them about how to be saved,” he said. 
  
Gainous explained that before he had the Romans Road plan of salvation memorized, he would use a marked New Testament. 
  
“On the front page of my Bible, I would put ‘645,’ and that would be the page for Romans 3:23,” he said. “On that page, I’d have another number, leading all the way to Romans 10:13. Then I would ask them if there is any reason why they would not be willing to ask the Lord to come into their hearts right now.”
  
Along with evangelism, Gainous said he enjoys two other aspects of ministry — preaching and leading churches through building programs. Most of the churches Gainous has served have been involved in building programs, and he’s pleased to say that debts on those buildings were paid in record time. 
  
He said with a laugh that members of Calvary Baptist, his current church, want to build a foyer on the front of their sanctuary so God must have placed him in yet another church with a building plan.
  
Gainous doesn’t have any set plans for the future. He enjoys his daily devotional time and Bible study, visiting church members and witnessing wherever he goes. 
  
And at the end of his life, “I hope and pray that when I’m breathing my last breath, there’s somebody in that room that I can tell about Jesus,” Gainous said.