Methodist church leader braving new waters
By: Matt Chiappardi
HIGHTSTOWN "I jumped into the river and swam alongside the crocodiles," said the former pastor of Hightstown’s First United Methodist Church, the Rev. Neill Tolboom.
During that vacation experience last year, the Rev. Tolboom recounts that he was the only passenger on a rowboat ride down one of Costa Rica’s rivers who was brave enough to leap into waters infested with a number of 500-pound man-eating reptiles.
It is a tale befitting of a man who boldly took his congregation from a place that once had nowhere to meet, to the place it is today. After six years as the church’s pastor, the Rev. Tolboom has just begun the next chapter in his spiritual career as pastor for the Morristown United Methodist Church.
The Rev. Tolboom, 53, calls himself a man who appreciates challenge and excitement. The Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, native spent nine years as a Wall Street investment banker for TD Waterhouse before becoming a minister. That bravado and tolerance for stress may have helped when he arrived in Hightstown as pastor in 2001. He inherited a church that had been forced in 1999 to vacate its building when the roof supports were in danger of imminent collapse and the building was declared unfit for human occupancy. The number of worshipers was relatively slim then, he says.
Six years later he says, "the church has made tremendous strides." That includes securing nearly $2.5 million, he said, from various sources to rebuild the church that has stood in Hightstown since 1898.
One way he did that was an ambitious plan the Rev. Tolboom nicknamed NUTS, short for "need to step up." The origin of the perhaps aptly named mission came from members of the church community who balked at his ambitious plan, calling it, and him, "nuts."
But with his trademark for humor intact, the Rev. Tolboom turned the criticism into his fundraising theme. There even came a point where he was preaching his sermons next to 6-foot tall cardboard peanuts. Thus, his grace in the face of crisis allowed him and his church to weather the storm.
"I’m the kind of person who will play the computer game at the highest level first," he said. "I’ll fail 47 times to finally succeed on the 48th."
It didn’t take 48 years for the church to enter a state of "stability," as he describes it. It only took six.
Now, the Rev. Tolboom has arrived at Morristown United Methodist, a congregation he says is suffering from the same type of crises he first inherited in Hightstown.
"I’m much better at building things," he said. "When things are going well, I get bored."
Replacing him here will be the Rev. Walter Mander, former pastor of St. Paul’s Methodist Church in Thorofare the past seven years. The Rev. Mander, 52, doesn’t have a similar unorthodox style and he realizes that he has a difficult act to follow. Admittedly not as loose with humor as the church’s former pastor, the Rev. Mander’s strength, he says, lies in making the church "relevant to the culture around us."
He will sometimes turn his sermons to what he calls, "taboo subjects," including abortion and capital punishment.
Those discussions, the Rev. Mander says, took place in Thorofare at his direction every winter to mixed results, and it’s a tradition he hopes to continue in Hightstown. However, going forward in Hightstown will require some listening and observing and learning about the community, he says.
"I plan to listen and figure out what their gifts and talents are, and see what their spiritual needs are," he said.
Beyond his spiritual endeavors, Mr. Mander cites his greatest success while in South Jersey as developing 75 housing units for low-income senior citizens in conjunction with the Catholic Diocese of Camden.
The Rev. Tolboom has similar thoughts and theories when determining success, because, in his opinion, the church is not only responsible for itself but also for the neighborhood.
To meet that responsibility, one of the Hightstown church’s most successful ministries was a scholarship program called Methodist Madness. Children as young as 9 and as old as 17 spent their Monday and Thursday afternoons in the church parking lot playing basketball, and some went on to be awarded scholarships to Mercer County Community College.
The program was an attempt, as the Rev. Tolboom puts it, to, "make (Hightstown) a better place for kids." Parents also joined the fun and brought deck chairs to watch the impromptu hoops in what the pastor calls a "giant community barbecue."
Looking ahead, the Rev. Tolboom says he does not know exactly what to expect when he gets to Morristown. He says the congregation is "cut from a more academic cloth," and he wonders if a preacher of his style will be accepted.
"They’re good people," he said, but he wonders "whether or not they’ll get the word of God," from him, referring to his boisterous and sometimes irreverent style. Such hesitancy is uncharacteristic from the man who leapt into a river containing some of the world’s deadliest predators. But it only serves to highlight what is of supreme importance to him.
"I am God’s cheerleader," he said. "I provide the spiritual element and (the congregation) run(s) with it."
It’s no doubt that such a big responsibility could cause even the bravest of men to tread the next step with fear.
Being a pastor, "exhausts you," he said, "but you recharge and do it again."