Inside Story

Priceless

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Valuing Souls in the Inner City


By Dean Ridings

Penn Pendleton grew up understanding the value of a dollar. More recently he’s come to grasp the value of a soul.

“I grew up over by the University of Richmond, two blocks from where Third Presbyterian is now,” says Penn, who along with his wife, Lynn, lives amid trees and colonial homes in an affluent Richmond, Virginia, suburb. Third Presbyterian is his church home. As a kid he played football where the sanctuary now stands.

“My family had a very strong work ethic,” recalls Penn. At 12 he got a paper route. At 15 he became a bag boy. By 18 he was a bank management trainee. Life just fell into place.

“I went to University of Richmond, was president of my college fraternity, then went to work for a Wall Street investment firm in New York for a couple years.”

But for Penn, he says, it was “all about me.” That was about to change.

In 1974, Penn returned to Richmond for a weekend and ran into a man who had been his largest customer at the bank—an insurance agent named Bill Andrews. Bill said, “I’d like to have someone who can start up a pension division in my insurance agency,” and he offered Penn the job. Penn liked something about Bill, about the way he lived and did business. So he said yes and moved back home.

As they worked together, Bill kept talking about a “personal relationship with Jesus” and that Penn needed one.

“To get him off my back,” says Penn, “I went to church with him one day.” Soon after, the pastor dropped by Penn’s home and went through a booklet titled the Four Spiritual Laws, and “I prayed to receive Christ that night.”

Another significant change in Penn’s perspective came when the church hired a new single adults minister named Guy Holloway. As Penn got to know and trust Pastor Guy, “I told him that I was nowhere spiritually, that I was a Christian but the Bible just confused me.”

For the next three years Guy met Penn every Friday morning at 6:30 until whenever to talk through the Scripture passage he had Penn chewing on throughout the week. Penn says a huge life lesson he learned during those days is to ask “Is it worth my life?” before making a commitment.

Along the way, Guy led Penn through The Navigators’ 2:7 Series of discipleship materials. So affected by the training was Penn that he has used this seasoned series to disciple group after group of men and women ever since.

Through the years Penn has grown in spiritual maturity as well as financial means, and he invests heavily in many causes, including serving as a Navigator board member and advocate of The Navigators’ Church Discipleship Ministry. These days Penn is finding even greater opportunities to grow and serve through support of an inner-city ministry called Church Hill Activities & Tutoring (CHAT).

CHAT is Percy Strickland’s brainchild. Penn met Percy at Third Presbyterian and caught the vision as Percy spoke of his work among the down and out of Church Hill. Up until about the mid-twentieth century Church Hill was home to Richmond’s “movers and shakers.” Then the affluent and their churches—including Third Presbyterian—moved en masse to the suburbs and the non-affluent moved in.

Penn was impressed to learn that Percy and his young bride, Angie, had moved to Church Hill to reflect Jesus’ love by sitting on their front porch and befriending anyone who stopped to talk. When he heard that two dozen kids accepted Percy’s invitation to tutor them, Penn and others from Third Presbyterian joined with razor-sharp believers at University of Richmond to commute or actually move to Church Hill. More than simply sending dollars, Penn had to see for himself what was going on. That was three years ago; he hasn’t left.

Today Penn tutors and spends time with CHAT kids, co-leads a young men’s Bible study, and is about to lead a 2:7 Series discipleship group with the “20-somethings” involved in the program.

Penn is appreciated by all at CHAT. Yes, he puts his money where his mouth is. What’s more, he demonstrates that living and discipling among these “priceless” young people just about every day of the week is most definitely “worth my life.”