Nonagenerian GU alumnus publishes fifth book

Published: April 08, 2022

At age 96, Greenville University alumnus Rev. Donald N. Bastian, a graduate of the class of 1953, has just published his fifth book, From Kitchen Chair to Pulpit: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry (BPS Books, 2021).

Bastian devotes a chapter to his student years at then Greenville College, including a prank engineered by his campaign manager, the late Professor Emeritus James A. Reinhard, to help Bastian get elected student body president.

The book also covers Bastian’s 13-yearpastorateat the Greenville Free Methodist Church, years that saw growth in the church and of his children, Greenville graduates Carolyn(1971), Donald Gregory (1973), and Robert (1974).

His tenure at the church in Greenville began in 1961 and ended in 1974 when he was elected a bishop of the Free Methodist denomination, with a special assignment to help the Canadian arm of the church reach full general conference status, which occurred in 1990. Bastian retired in 1993 upon the conclusion of the second sitting of the conference and, until recent years, maintained a busy retirement of speaking at churches and writing.

Bastian preached his first sermons in 1930 as a five-year-old standing on a kitchen chair following morning service in the little Free Methodist church in his hometown of Estevan, Saskatchewan. But following his conversion as a 16-year-old in that same church, he would go on to become a well-known and much-loved preacher in the pulpits of three local churches and internationally as a bishop.

Now he looks back on a life that richly blended:

• Family life— growing up in the home of Lancashire immigrants; meeting the love of his life, Kathleen Swallow, while a student at Lorne Park College in Port Credit, Ontario; and welcoming four children into the world.

• Faith — his growing understanding of following God as a teenager; his early experiences as a singing evangelist, which began with hitchhiking across the Canadian prairies; and his growing realization that there was no higher calling than to pastor God’s people.

• And ministry — from a student pastorate in Lexington, Kentucky, while a student at Asbury Theological Seminary to pastorates in New Westminster, British Columbia, and Greenville, Illinois, that were marked by growth in numbers and spiritual maturity, and 19 years as a bishop in the United States in Canada.

By turns touching, revealing, and entertaining, From Kitchen Chair to Pulpit is a rare look at just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be.

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Rev. Donald N. and Kathleen G. Bastian are namesakes of Greenville University's Bastian School of Theology, Philosophy, and Ministry