Photo of Dr. James H. Thompson (Pastor "Jimmy")Dr. James H. “Jimmy” Thompson, my childhood pastor and the founder of Faith Temple Church in Taylors, S.C., celebrated his eightieth birthday on July 8, 2008.
Jimmy grew up on his father’s dairy farm, across from Double Springs Baptist Church, north of Greer, S.C. His father Lawrence and mother Esther Rosella Wood Thompson raised five children (listed in birth order): Jimmy, Nell, Betty, Tommy and Judy.
Ms. Nell wrote recently, “One of my earliest memories was sitting with him (Jimmy) at Double Springs Church. I think we were five or six years old. He went up to put his birthday offering in, and I went with him. It was not my birthday, but wherever he went, I thought I was supposed to go, too.
“We used to pick cotton and sing ‘Jesus Saves.’ Neither Jimmy nor I were blessed with a talent to sing; we just made a joyful sound, and it echoed in the valley.”
She and Jimmy rode together when both were day students at Furman University.
“Before he married Joanne, I used to go with him through the countryside to pick up children for Sunday school when he pastored Gum Springs,” Nell says. “We filled his car full of children (no seatbelts then). This was Jimmy’s little bus.”
My Uncle Fred Crain, 83, attended Mountain View School with Jimmy.
“He was in the eighth grade; I was in the eleventh,” Fred says. “He was nice, clean-cut, polite, every hair in place. He was smart and studied. He later drove the Double Springs school bus part of the time and, I believe, managed the candy store at school.”
Fred says that, as far as he knows, Jimmy was one of the few Mountain View students who went on to college in the 1930s and ’40s. “About the only place they could go was to Holmes Bible College,” Fred says. “They could go there ‘on faith’ (and pay whatever they could).”
Some folk called the Rev. James H. Thompson simply “Preacher Thompson” or “Jimmy” when I benefited from his pastoral preaching during the 1950s and ’60s.
My parents, sister and many of our extended family attended Gum Springs Pentecostal Holiness Church in the Blue Ridge area of Greenville, S.C., when Pastor Jimmy, a Holmes Bible College and Furman University graduate, accepted the pastorate of that church in the mid-1950s.
Jimmy became a pilot, and the story goes that after he began dating Joanne Upton, he flew over her mother’s house and yelled down to Joanne who was watching his plane, “I’ll see you tonight at 7:00!” They married on April 22, 1955.
Jimmy envisioned the Full-Gospel message reaching beyond denominational lines. On Sunday, December 16, 1956, he preached to over 200 people gathered in an old building on the Ben Paris farm in the Blue Ridge area. That day, the group donated $7,000 in gifts and pledges to create an interdenominational church, which became Faith Temple Church of Taylors, S.C.
Jimmy founded Faith Printing Company. I worked there, mostly part-time, for over seven years and financed my college education. I’m grateful for that opportunity.
Jimmy founded WGGS-TV in Greenville, S.C., and he, Joanne and their sons, Gene, Dante and Dwayne, along with grandson Shane, a staff of workers and many loyal financial contributors, are still sending out the Gospel.
During Faith Temple’s early days, Jimmy often took the church’s young people to a park in Greer to play softball, and he organized yearly 2-day trips to Camp Arrowhead (for boys) near Tuxedo, N.C. Most of us who attended that camp were mill-workers’ sons who’d never seen a real camp. Jimmy played ball and swam and ate with us. He cared about us rag-tag boys.
I learned much from Pastor Jimmy’s Gospel preaching and from how he interacted with people. Some folk I knew years ago may have thought Jimmy was too nice to people, that he too often gave people the “benefit of the doubt,” that if he made a mistake in dealing with folk, he tended to err on the “kindness side.” I liked – and still like – that trait in him. Years ago, I thought of Pastor Jimmy when I found this poem written by an unknown author: “I have wept in the night / For the shortness of sight / That to somebody’s need / Made me blind; / But I never have yet / Felt a tinge of regret / For being a little too kind.”
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