Rev. R.D. Streeter will retire after 42 years of preaching

When Rev. Richard Dean Streeter — or R.D., as everyone calls him — came to Colfax almost seven years ago, the community was struggling through job loss and natural disaster.

“Maytag had jumped ship and went somewhere else,” Streeter said. “Monroe Table Company, if you’ll excuse the pun, they folded. The flood of 2010 was terrible. You can still see the high water mark on the building on the Monroe Table Company.”

Although Colfax’s United Methodist Church remained a bastion of solid brick and stained glass, the congregation suffered.

“The previous pastor committed suicide, and then they sent a rookie, and she couldn’t handle it,” Streeter explained.

The parsonage sat empty since the previous pastor commuted from Des Moines. Drawn blinds shuttered the building, and people certainly weren’t stopping by for an afternoon glass of lemonade or a cup of tea.

Streeter and his wife, Dee, were just starting to enjoy his retirement from Staves Memorial United Methodist Church in Des Moines when the phone rang. It was the Iowa area bishop asking if they would consider taking on the position in Colfax. Streeter accepted the two year appointment. Now, after almost seven years at Colfax United Methodist, during which the congregation celebrated it’s 100th anniversary, Streeter is ready for retirement.

“I’m not doing the job that I should be doing. So we decided— we probably should have decided this las year, but” Streeter’s voice trailed off into the brightly lit living room of the parsonage. “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, that’s what we’d have for Christmas. So this is the year.”

“He wasn’t ready to give up the ministry yet,” Dee smiled. “That’s part of it.”

Like the bishop’s unanticipated phone call that brought the couple to Colfax, unforeseen circumstances tossed Streeter and Dee into roles as the minister and his wife. If you ask him if he wanted to become a minister, he’ll tell you that he didn’t.

“But it was a thing that God had laid before us. We talked about it, and we prayed about it, and doors started to open.”

In the 1970s, Streeter worked as a manager at Firestone Tire. He and Dee already had two young children, but he was committed to serving his local Methodist church as a lay leader. He was helping the congregation weather a pastor’s divorce that nearly split the church, and one Sunday, he found himself in the pulpit. After he delivered the scheduled Sunday message, a man stopped him. The man told him that God had spoken to him and wanted him to let Streeter know that he should become a pastor.

“I immediately smelled his breath and was checking his veins to make sure he wasn’t on something or drinking,” Streeter said.

Maybe the man with a message from God had a point: When Streeter and Dee started pursuing the possibility of the ministry, the wings of fate swooped them up and started them on the course that defined the balance of their adult lives. The couple quickly sold their house and their furniture. They traded a Coupe de Ville with supple leather interior for a hum-drum station wagon. Friends helped them finance textbooks for classes at St Paul’s School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. Between the end of seminary and Streeter’s first appointment, friends helped the young family find interim housing so that the family of four didn’t have to crowd into a hotel room for a few weeks.

In June of 1977, Streeter took up his first post in Southern Iowa. Before coming to Colfax, Streeter served six different appointments throughout southern and central Iowa.

Since coming to Colfax, Streeter has started an annual coat collection that accrues almost 500 coats each winter, and he has continued the Harvest Home dinner that the church has hosted for the community for decades. Every other year, he walks a group of youngsters through the confirmation process, and he takes youth groups to Des Moines to introduce them to Methodist outreach programs.

The crowning glory of his tenure at Colfax United Methodist, however, is the jewel tone stained glass light beneath the dome. In 1954, the church voted to drop the ceiling and cover the light to increase heat efficiency. $4,000 would cover the cost of restoring the ceiling and the glass to its former glory. Streeter secured a single donation in that amount to fund the project.

“The Bible says (in a loose translation of James 4:2), ‘ you have not because you ask not,’ and I’ve never been shy about asking,” said Streeter. “We get things done. The people in the church are just fabulous.”

When he looks at the faces sitting on the burnt orange velveteen cushions in the sanctuary as he delivers his last homily on June 23, 2019, he knows he will miss the people, who he describes as “just about the most wonderful folks you’ll ever find,” the most.

“I’m not going to be a ghost, all right? I’m going to be here when things are happening in Colfax, like when we have the Mineral Springs Days, when we have the Harvest Home dinner,” Streeter said. “I’ll be here for those functions and malfunctions, and we’ll have a good time.”

In the meantime, you can find him every Sunday morning at the United Methodist Church. Dee will tell you, however, that any time you want to hear him preach, you need only to knock on the parsonage door.

Contact Phoebe Marie Brannock at 641-792-3121 Ext. 6547 or pbrannock@newtondailynews.com