Close friends have learned not to use the words ‘War Eagle’ within hearing range of Marvin as he Roll Tides about as strongly as any non-Alabama born University of Alabama alum is allowed to.

A news release arrived in my inbox last night with a shock.  My good friend, Marvin Padgett is retiring, or so the release says.  I don’t believe it for a minute; thus the quotes in the headline

First, read the PR stuff and then I’ll tell you the rest (well, almost all the rest) of the story:

Phillipsburg, NJ—Marvin Padgett will retire in August as P&R Publishing’s Vice President-Editorial after seven years with the organization.

The current president of Great Commission Publications’ board of trustees, Padgett has worked in the book-related business since 1982, when he became the manager of the bookstore at L’Abri in Huémoz, Switzerland.

From 1983-96, Padgett owned and managed the Logos Bookstore of Nashville, Tennessee. An avid reader, he later worked as editorial vice president at Crossway Books from 1997-2005, where he was a member of the ESV Translation Oversight Committee.

Padgett has served as a board member of Covenant College (1995-03), Good News Publishers (1988-98) and Great Commission Publications (1991-present). From 1996-97, he worked as the PCA campus ministry coordinator in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 2010, Padgett co-edited Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R) with David Hall. He is a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and continues to speak at L’Abri conferences across the US.

P&R Publishing would like to thank Marvin for the books he brought to fruition, the authors he brought to the list, and for his overall spiritual leadership.

 Now, for the juicy stuff!

While it is true Marvin is a teaching elder in the PCA, that’s a relatively new thing.  For many years he served as a Ruling Elder for 14 years at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville during the late Cortez Cooper’s tenure as pastor.  His ordination came during his tenure as the RUM Campus Ministry position.

In addition to his work on the Great Commission Publications Board, Marvin also served three terms on the PCA’s Permanent Committee on Christian Education (It is that board that elects members to serve at GCP).  The writer’s tenures on both of those boards over the past 20 years brought us together as friends.

He is married to the former Jean Nichols of Nashville, where Marvin also grew up.  They met when they were ages 7 and 8 and their moms became friends.  They have three grown children:  Steven, who works in the golf and country club industry; Heather (who is married to PCA Teaching Elder and Glasgow, Scotland native Ewan Kennedy) and Timothy, a Covenant seminary grad currently working on his PhD at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.  Marvin and Jean have 9 grandchildren: Campbell, Caitlin, Stevie, and Charlotte in Jackson, TN; Calvin, Cooper (named for Cortez), and Canon in Atlanta, and Tim and Emmalee are parents of Liam and Declan who live in the north Chicago suburbs.

Close friends have learned not to use the words ‘War Eagle’ within hearing range of Marvin as he Roll Tides about as strongly as any non-Alabama born University of Alabama alum is allowed to.

After earning a degree in Aerospace Engineering at ‘Bama, Marvin entered the Air Force and served as an instructor for Air Force pilots in Colorado and Mississippi.   He and Jean were married in Chandler, AZ while he was on active duty.  After a year of grad school (where he first heard about the Reformed Faith and Francis Schaeffer at David Lipscomb University in Nashville), Marvin took a job as Budget Director and Labor Negotiator at a suburban Nashville school district and worked there from 1972 to 1981.  They attended First Presbyterian in Nashville while Cortez Cooper was Senior Pastor and followed him in 1981 when he planted Christ Presbyterian (PCA) in Nashville.

Marvin and Jean had visited L’Abri several times (briefly in 1975 and then for the winter of 1979).  But in May of 1982 they headed back with all three children in tow and remained there for a year, living in the home between the Schaeffer’s and Udo Middelmann and his family.  When one has dinner with Marvin and Jean (as your writer seeks to do annually at the PCA General Assembly) one hears many ‘inside stories’ (all of them great) about the Schaeffer family.

(It’s a shame he did not go to Vanderbilt; he and I would have been classmates.  But I try to be nice and not ask him the reasons!)

One additional item worth sharing.  Marvin remains an avid reader, and each morning he reads the online versions of the Nashville Tennessean and the Wall Street Journal.  If you happen to see any of their stories that appear on The Aquila Report you can be pretty sure it’s because Marvin tipped me off!  Perhaps he can become the first official writer for the magazine!!