BY BRYAN SABELLA
Staff Writer
MIGUEL JUAREZ staff The Rev. James F. Thomas, recipient of the Sir Jack Hayward Award, stands outside Metuchen’s First Presbyterian Church March 17.
In just under four years, the Rev. James F. Thomas, interim associate pastor at Metuchen’s First Presbyterian Church, has made an indelible impact on the community.
In addition to overseeing the congregation and the church school, he is president of the Metuchen-Edison Interfaith Clergy Association, as well as the founder of the Immigration Policy Task Force, which aims to assist the local Indonesian Christian population as it grapples with the scrutiny of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau (formerly the INS) and the ramifications of the Homeland Security and Patriot acts.
He’s also pursuing his doctorate in the field of mission, ecumenism and history of religion at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Somewhere along the way, he manages to find time for his wife Glory (a Ph.D. in religion herself) and his three children.
This year, Thomas was selected by the Metuchen-Edison YMCA to receive the Sir Jack Hayward Award, which was presented March 20 at the Metuchen-Edison-Woodbridge YMCA Sweetheart Ball at the Metuchen Golf and Country Club.
Established five years ago, and named after the founder of the Grand Bahamas branch, the award is presented annually by the International Committee of the YMCA to honor community service.
"We designed it to recognize someone who thinks globally and acts locally," says William Lovett of the Metuchen-Edison YMCA. "Rev. Thomas is a good man. I was real thrilled [he was selected]."
Thomas came to the Presbyterian Church after arriving at a personal crossroads. In college, he earned an anthropology degree, and by 1986, he’d been out of school for a few years and was working on the West Coast.
"I was either going to make this my career, which would probably have meant going back to school and getting my master’s, or I was going to listen to this voice in my head — what we in the church refer to as ‘a call,’ " he says over coffee in his office one mid-March morning. "I gave it some time to listen for that voice."
The voice was persistent, and soon Thomas got in touch with the Global Missions Unit of the Presbyterian Church, headquartered in New York City, eager to begin following his call.
"I’d been reading some stuff on Japanese Buddhism, so I asked for a place in the Far East," he says.
Thomas ended up in Thailand, a missionary with the country’s Church of Christ.
"I was in Thailand for eight years in two separate stretches," he said. "The first was as a volunteer, the second as an ordained minister."
During his first stint he taught English. During his second, from 1992 to 1996, he worked closely with the church office for AIDS/HIV ministries.
In those days, Thomas says, the church played a particularly vital role. "At that time of the HIV epidemic, it was a time of fear, intolerance and ostracism. Communities and families were falling apart. A compassionate response had to involve education as well as treatment," Thomas said, adding, "Public hospitals weren’t well funded."
But as global awareness of the AIDS crisis increased, the situation began to improve, he said.
"A lot of national and international money came in," he said.
After his second stint in Thailand, Thomas returned stateside and served the Presbyterian Church in Westfield for a time before being referred to Metuchen by the Presbytery of Elizabeth, a referral for which he says he is "eternally grateful."
One of the hallmarks of his time in Metuchen has been his influential work with the Metuchen-Edison Interfaith Clergy Association. Thomas helped spearhead a drive to expand the organization’s membership base.
"It was basically just a Christian and Jewish organization," he said. It has since grown to include members of nearby Muslim and Hindu communities.
The Interfaith Clergy Association "got stepped up after the events of September 11, 2001. We really made a concerted effort to bring in people of other faiths."
Last month, Thomas says, the association held a meeting at a local hospital.
"It was fun to watch the employees sort of knit their eyebrows together as we embraced one another," he laughs.
"It’s a collegial feeling. It’s too bad we had to have 9/11 to sort of throw us into each other’s arms."
In addition to his interfaith work, Thomas is also involved with academic organizations like the Council for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Society of Buddhist-Christian Studies.
Thomas says his broad-based and expansive approach to the study of religion has been invaluable.
"One of the things I get from [being involved in the various organizations] is to keep the dialogue between Christians and Buddhists and Christians and Hindus and Christians and Muslims, and so forth, open. It gets us a lot further if we get together.
"My Christian faith has not been weakened but only strengthened by my readings of Buddhism and other things," Thomas said. "There is truth and wisdom and knowledge to be found in all of these traditions."