James Walter Tyler

1. 1/27/1928 Boston, Massachusetts USA

 

Spouse/Family

Wife: Billie Mae (nee Russell), b. 4/20/1926 Atlanta, Georgia USA; m. 6/14/1953

Children: Desire Lois (1955); Mark Daniel (1956); Timothy Melanthon (1959);

Melita Etta (1960); David Aaron (1962)

 

Dates of Service Field Call Assignment

1981-1990 Nigeria Urban Ministry (Church-Building)

 

Biographical Summary

Born in Boston, Rev. James (Jim) Tyler attended Boston Technical High School, graduating in 1946.  He spent the school year 1947-48 at Northeastern University, studying Aeronautical Engineering, but in 1949 he felt called to serve in the ministry.  He had met Billie Russell when he joined an interracial choir in which she sang.  Billie was studying voice at the Boston Conservatory of Music, but she, like Jim, had always felt a strong call to serve as a missionary in Africa.  Therefore, when Jim told her he was going to enroll in Bible college, she decided to begin her studies there as well.  They enrolled together at Providence Barrington Bible College in Providence, Rhode Island, where they studied ministry, music and Christian education.  Jim and Billie attended Providence from 1949-53, and in 1953 they were married.  When they graduated they sought a call to be missionaries to Africa, but upon applying they learned that there were no mission agencies at the time that would accept black missionaries to work in Africa, and they were forced to give up their dream.

 

In 1954, Jim and Billie were able to get jobs through the National Council of Churches, as chaplains to migrant workers who had come from Florida to work in Clinton, New York.  After about a year, in 1955, they were called to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, by the Presbyterian church as “home missionaries.”  This was still during the time of segregation, and they were asked to begin an African-American Presbyterian church in a segregated area.  The congregation was begun in a YMCA in the city.  Jim and Billie worked at this church for three years, Jim as pastor and Billie as a Sunday School and catechism teacher.  Because they had not graduated from a Presbyterian seminary, however, they could not be ordained into rostered ministry, and so their work as home missionaries was halted after three years.  During their time with the Presbyterian church, their daughter Desire and son Mark were born, Desire in 1955 and Mark in 1956.

 

As the Tylers’ work with the Presbyterian church came to an end, they observed a Lutheran church that was being built in the black section of Fort Lauderdale.  Jim and Billie talked with the pastor, John Rumsey, and decided to join the congregation.  Then in 1958, through the work of Pastor Rusmey, they qualified for a scholarship to Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Springfield, Illinois.  After one year, however, their son Timothy was born, and their need to care for their growing family plus the fact that the scholarship was only for school expenses meant that Jim had to drop out from seminary and go back to work to pay for rent, food, and other necessities.  He worked as a janitor for a Lutheran church, with laundry service in a hotel, and in an auto repair shop and a gas station.  Meanwhile, the Tylers’ fourth child, daughter Melita, was born in 1960.

 

After some time, Dr. J.A.O. Preus, then a Greek teacher at the seminary, came by the Lutheran congregation where Jim was working.  Seeing Jim shoveling snow outside the church building, Dr. Preus asked him how things were going – thinking Jim was still a student at the seminary.  Jim explained that he had had to drop out for financial reasons, and Dr. Preus offered to find a way for Jim and Billie to return to ministry.  In 1962, the Tylers were sent to New Orleans, where Jim and Billie worked on establishing a black church in a changing neighborhood.  In that same year the Tylers’ youngest child, son David, was born.  The congregation, Berea Lutheran Church, officially opened its doors on September 18, 1962.  Jim served for seven years as the pastor of this congregation and was colloquized into ministry with the LCMS in 1968.  Unfortunately, the congregation was never able to integrate – there was some hope that black and white people could worship together, but it did not happen.

 

In 1970, the Tylers left New Orleans after being called to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Good Shepherd Lutheran Church – the very church that had sent them to seminary more than a decade before.  During their time in Fort Lauderdale, Jim and Billie also served in the state mental hospital as volunteer chaplains, and Jim served as a part-time staff chaplain at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.  He was also a member of the Broward Community Relations board.

 

The Tylers accepted a call to Bakersfield, California, in 1978.  They were again asked to minister at a black church in a changing neighborhood, in a church building a white congregation had left.  Although the LCMS had thought the congregation would be a black congregation, many Asian immigrants arrived in the area as refugees sponsored by Lutheran congregations and organizations during the time the Tylers were in Bakersfield.  The Tylers reached out to help new immigrants find jobs; taught English; and worked with immigrants to assist them in becoming part of the community.  As a result, the church grew not as a black congregation but as an Asian ministry.

 

In 1981, the Tylers’ dream of mission service was finally realized when the LCMS called them to mission work in Nigeria.  The Lutheran Church of Nigeria (LCN) had told the denomination not to send any more missionaries unless those missionaries were black, and Jim’s name was suggested for the call by the black pastors serving in LCMS.   The request from the LCN fit together providentially with the Tylers’ own sense of call to mission, and they were the first black missionaries to go to Africa.  They suffered a setback when during the preliminary physical exam, Billie was found to have breast cancer and had to undergo treatment.  Initially, the LCMS revoked the Tylers’ call to mission work because of her illness, but three doctors who examined Billie wrote a letter to the Board for Mission Services assuring theme that no chemotherapy was necessary and there was no threat of the cancer recurring.  With this assurance, in November 1981, Jim and Billie departed for Nigeria.  Their children were already grown up and did not accompany them.  To prepare for their eventual return, Jim and Billie did put a down payment on a house in Bakersfield, and their sons Mark and David lived there and took care of the house.

 

Upon arrival in Nigeria, Jim writes, “the temperature seemed to be 110 degrees and as humid as a steam bath.  We were met by men of the Lagos Lutheran Church.”  After settling in, the Tylers traveled to the headquarters of the LCN in Obot Idim, greeted the president of the LCN and traveled with him for some weeks to several cities and villages.  They also visited Jonathan Ekong, founder of the LCN, who was near death and already in the hospital at the time.  Jim writes, “He was overjoyed to see Billie and myself, the first black missionaries to his country.  Having blessed us, he said, now I can die in peace.”

 

Jim and Billie were asked by the Nigerian church to establish churches and help congregations build church buildings in and around the city of Port Harcourt.  Most people in the city spoke English, so the Tylers did not undergo any language training prior to or during their ministry.  This was also important because they were working with people of several different tribes and language groups.  Although it was sometimes frustrating to have to use interpreters to communicate with people in more remote villages, if they had learned one tribal language it may have appeared that they were favoring one group over another, and they wanted to avoid that possibility.  In Port Harcourt, the Efik group was the main ethnic group represented in the LCN, and people of different language and ethnic groups did not work together.  The Tylers’ first task was to foster mutual respect between Lutherans of different groups and to encourage them to work together.

 

There was already a congregation and church building established in Port Harcourt by the Lutheran Church of Nigeria (LCN).  However, the church building was very crowded, and people from rural areas had to travel many miles into the city to attend church.  Jim and Billie pursued possibilities for establishing church buildings in villages of the region so that the people who lived in those villages could attend church in their own places.  They encouraged the congregation in Port Harcourt to work on establishing satellite churches in outlying areas.  The response to this in the city congregation was not entirely positive, but it turned out that as new churches were established, both the satellites and the city congregation grew.

 

Although part of the Tylers’ work included building church buildings, the LCMS policy for the mission field did not include building churches.  So the Tylers worked on their own and with the cooperation of the people of the villages to build and supply churches.  Workers from villages did all the tasks of building, and in one area the congregation members themselves designed the church building based on observation and study of the design of already-built churches.  During the time of building this particular church, Jim became ill and was diagnosed with colon cancer, which necessitated the Tylers’ return to the United States for his treatment.  Although the doctors in Nigeria had not been certain he would even survive the trip home, he underwent an operation in California which was successful in removing the cancer.  Six months later Jim and Billie returned to Nigeria, and although they had to bargain again and pay a large sum for the land on which the church was to be built, they were able to continue the work of building.  Finally, the establishment of the church was celebrated with a joint worship service, with four language groups coming together for a service in English.

 

In addition to overseeing the work of building churches, the Tylers helped supply books, hymnals, choir robes and other worship materials.  Jim and Billie asked the churches to do their services in English, so that anyone from any tribal group or language could participate.  Sometimes special music or hymns would be in the tribal language of the area.  While Jim was largely occupied working in the city, with church-building and doing some pastoral duties, Billie worked mostly in the villages, with women’s groups and teaching English as well as Sunday School and catechism classes.  By 1990, the Tylers had established four new churches and seen two church buildings completed.

 

In addition to this work with church groups, Jim was involved with the Theological Education by Extension (TEE) program established to train church leaders.  The LCN did have a seminary, and church members who wanted to be pastors could train there, but many lay leaders were trained through TEE.  The Tylers also produced Christian radio and television programs in English, and Billie worked with puppets on a television program to evangelize for the church.

 

In 1990, after ministering in Nigeria for over nine years, the Tylers left the field and returned to the United States for their retirement.  They settled in Bakersfield, California.  Their retirement was an active one, however, as they spent about two years on home service duty, speaking to congregations and other church groups about their experiences in foreign mission.  Jim also worked as a consultant for LCMS World Mission for a year after their return.  They felt they needed to stay out of congregational work for a time, particularly given the cultural changes in the U.S. and in the church that had occurred during their time abroad.  In 1995, however, Jim began to work for Bethany Lutheran Church in Bakersfield and continues to serve as its pastor up to the present day.

 

Nota Bene

 

Phase 2 Information

 

Biggest missiological issue faced?

It took Jim and Billie some time after they arrived on the mission field to realize that different groups who made up the Lutheran Church of Nigeria weren’t working together well.  The church had a significant problem with tribal actions and ways of thinking, and it took a lot of effort to encourage people of different tribal groups to work together – or at least not to exclude each other in their work and worship.  Part of the issue for Jim and Billie, as new missionaries, was that they needed time and experience to understand the problems.  It also took some time just to be able to recognize different groups by their dress or facial markings so that they could communicate well and show support for all groups.  These difficulties did grow easier with the passage of time.

 

Most significant contribution during missionary service?

The Tylers were able to contribute to the mission in Nigeria through their work of building churches and bringing people to worship together.  It was important that they encourage people living in villages to build churches in their villages so that they did not have to rely on a faraway church for their worship of God.  This gave people a sense of ownership of their congregations.

 

Connection to today’s mission?

Since returning to the U.S., the Tylers have supported several students at the seminary in Nigeria, and they have also sent volumes of Bible commentary as gifts to the graduating classes of the seminary for several years.

 

It is because of the Tylers’ work in Nigeria that certain villages and groups have independent church buildings in which they can worship and from which they can grow the church.  When they returned for a visit to Nigeria after retirement from that field, they found that three new churches had been constructed by the people of the LCN and that, with the blessing of the Spirit, the work was continuing to grow.

 

Lessons Learned

• In their time on the field, the Tylers saw too many missionaries working on things that could have been done by nationals.  For instance, there were quite a few missionaries teaching in the seminary, and it seemed that Nigerian professors could have been trained and hired at lower cost, which would also have developed leadership within the national church.
• One issue that needs continual work is the difficulty in communication between missionaries on the field and policy-makers in the U.S. – both groups should focus on communicating well and trying to best serve the national church and its members.
• Probably the most important lesson the Tylers took from their mission work is this: if you plan to do the work (whatever specific work it is), just do the work.  You may not always get much help, but nothing is impossible with faith and determination.
• They learned that the people of the national church were open to the teachings of the Gospel and were willing to do the work necessary to build up the church.

 

Best Practices 

• It’s important for missionaries to work with the people, whether it’s in the physical work of building churches or other work such as evangelizing or training.  It helps the mission if the people you’re working with know that you're there to help – not to be the boss, but to work side by side with them.

 

Phase 3 Information

 

Inspiration for entering foreign missions?

Jim was attending services in a Baptist church when he felt a call to foreign mission.  He attended a service at which he heard a missionary from South America speak of the work he was doing.  That experience really laid it on his heart that he should go and do some kind of work in Africa.  Both Jim and Billie always felt they would do mission work, and both wanted to go to Africa, but at first they didn't quite know how to do it.  However, when the door opened for them, they eagerly accepted the call.  As Billie stated in a December 1981 issue of the Reporter, “We finally decided to say, okay Lord, we’ll do what you want us to do.  We’ve always come out on top, no matter what we’ve gone through; we have the faith to just keep following.”

 

Quotation by/about or brief story:

• Although the Tylers faced many challenges during their work in Nigeria, one of the more difficult obstacles they encountered occurred while they were living in Springfield.  While working at the gas station, Jim was returning home one night at 10:00 p.m. and was stopped by police for riding a motor scooter without lights or a proper license for that type of vehicle.  Although these were driving offenses, he was put in jail overnight and was not allowed any phone calls.  Billie, worried, called the hospitals and the police station but could not gain any information.  In the morning Jim was allowed to make a phone call and called the president of the seminary.  The president came right away and told the judge at Jim’s hearing that Jim was a student, asking the judge not to give Jim a permanent police record.  The judge agreed that if Jim would produce his driver’s license, get a license for the scooter and put lights on it, then he would drop the charges.

 

• Jim and Billie’s first few days in their new home in Nigeria were filled with some uncertainty, as the watchman for the house next to theirs was killed on the third day after they moved in.  The president of the LCN was very concerned for the Tylers because of this incident, but they decided to stay where they were and continue their ministry.  They did repair the fence around their compound and were also given a dog as a safety precaution.  Fortunately, although they had to be careful, they were able to continue their ministry in relative safety.