CONCORD MONITOR: Huckabee charmed his congregations

I thought this was a great article that really does show where the present 'Former Governor' Mike Huckabee came from and his road from the pastorate to politics.

LINK TO THE ARTICLE

Excerpt:

Everybody knew Mike Huckabee," said Dewayne Tanton, director of the Harmony Baptist Association, an organization of area churches. "He meant a whole lot to Pine Bluff while he was here."

Television was a big reason why. In both Pine Bluff and Texarkana, where Huckabee went to preach in 1986, he hosted a show called Positive Alternatives. In Pine Bluff, it was a 30-minute weekly spot that focused on community events. It aired on the church's station, Channel 65, "The Channel with a Heart."

Huckabee was comfortable on camera and made others feel the same.

"He made you feel better about yourself," Tanton said. "On the show, he interviewed different churches. Any pastor could come on . . . and talk about upcoming programs. If it was the Christmas musical, he'd ask what musical you were doing, who wrote it, how many are in the choir."

But the show wasn't all religious. It also covered the local Little League, and it featured cancer telethons and events at the mayor's office. Huckabee believed that being a good Christian meant more than just going to Bible study, congregants said. It meant taking your kids to ball games and the county fair.

That message was so important to Huckabee that when Beech Street First Baptist Church in Texarkana asked him to pastor there, he insisted on starting another television station.

"When he got here, he just made it happen," said Burns Barr, the station's director. "There was no obstacle he couldn't overcome. If you told him, 'We can't do this; we need $100,000,' he'd come up with $100,000."

Eventually, the people of Texarkana, a city of less than 30,000, embraced Huckabee as their own.

"There were people all over town who referred to him and thought of him as their pastor, but they'd never set foot in the church proper," said Harris, who lived there at the time. "But if they had a death in the family or if their son went to jail, they'd call Mike because he was the only preacher they knew."