Essay by Pastor Dr. Dale Woods, former 1/2-time assistant pastor to Reed Street Church, Alexandria Virginia; and former adjunct faculty to Wesleyan Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C.

Summer 2010

This piece is as per the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The request was to record my memories or contemporaneous written observations to do with my time at the Reed Street Church in the early 1980s, particularly my memories of my friend and colleague, who we all simply referred to as Pastor Tim. As well, the FBI asked me to focus on any memories or contemporaneous written observations to do with a particular Reed Street Church family, The Jennings.

I have read Pastor Tim's detailed account of his dealings with The Jennings, the one that included his claim that he'd met and talked with Paige Jennings in 1996 in Vancouver, Canada. Given all I have accumulated through the years, that was a surprise. Between then and his death we had discussed the Jennings many times. Never that. That meeting with Paige, as well as some other things in that account, was never talked about between us.

Further, the FBI asked me to extend my comments on all this to the time when Tim, his wife Alice, and their two daughters lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, beginning in 1984. They were there for ten years, as Tim had taken a position with The World Council of Churches. By then I had myself moved on from Reed Street Church, eventually teaching full time at Wesleyan Theological Seminary. By 1988 I was doing my own private research (once they'd been exposed) into The Jennings' time in Falls Church.

It grew into an obsession. I was told I had the largest, most extant collection of info into 'The Illegals' outside of government.

THE BEGINNING FOR ME AND TIM

After Tim's return in 1994, I renewed contact with him and his family. Indeed, I delivered the eulogy at his, my friend's funeral in 1996. Tim's passing hit me hard, as we had known each other since seminary. A child of God, called home way too soon. He and I had remained friends during his first South American mission in Ecuador in the late '70s. Now misplaced and probably lost, I followed with excitement the letters we exchanged back then, where he described (at length!) his second conversion - a conversion to "a Gospel of the poor", inspired by the martyred Jesuit priest Father Rutilio Grande Garcia.

However, I return to matters that the FBI have requested I focus upon. It seems that my obsession played a minor role in the 'outing' of similar 'illegals' by the FBI this year, in 2010. How about that!

To begin - in 1979 I unwisely accepted a full time position as Senior Pastor to Reed Street Church in Alexandra, Virginia. The 'unwise' part was because of Wesleyan Theological Seminary. At the time of my hiring, the board of the church had also hired a full time youth pastor, Zach, as well as had left unfilled their 1/2-time Assistant Pastor's position. Immediately subsequent to that, I received an invitation to become a 1/2-time adjunct faculty at the nearby Wesleyan Theological Seminary in Washington DC, specializing in Early Church History. (At DePaul University in Chicago I had studied under John Dominic Crossan, where I was his teaching assistant and where I'd eventually received a Ph.D.)

I then approached the board of Reed Street Church to consider downgrading me to the 1/2-time assistant Pastor's position. They were not happy to be thrown under the hiring process bus. But they agreed to my request on the condition that I recruit someone "who you can work with" as the Senior Pastor. Reed Street had had pastoral conflict in the 1970s which they did not want to repeat. At the time I knew that Tim had just returned from Ecuador, and was looking for a full-time pastorate. I knew he'd be a good fit with that church - and our subsequent five years together proved that out.

To jump ahead in the timeline, one day in 1984 the Dean of Wesleyan inquired with me about Pastor Tim. Out of the blue. He said he had been similarly surprised by being approached by the World Council of Churches in Geneva about Tim, to do with a bureaucratic position with the Buenos Aires WCC. I'd known of Tim's passion for South American liberation struggles, as well as the mixed success he'd had with East Africa famine missions. But to be honest, this inquiry from the Dean at Wesleyan was a complete surprise.

Tim and I spent many an afternoon over coffee hashing over this unexpected opportunity. He once told me that it had been me who had convinced him to go back to South America - effectively uprooting his new family. His daughter Claire-Louise had just been born. I had told him that soon I was resigning from Reed Street myself, to take a full-time contract at Wesleyan, so it may have been a good time for both of us to leave. But he said it had been me who had convinced him, when I said, "Look, what have you got to lose?" Besides, he had a good track record at Reed Street Church, so if the position in Argentina did not work out he could have had his pick of progressive churches back in the United States.

But this is not that.

TIM AND THE JENNINGS

I was at arm's length from it, but it is fair to say that Pastor Tim's last 30 months at Reed Street Church was dominated by one family. Not 'time wise', because Tim was diligent and passionate about his larger job description. He was intensely active in the East Africa Famine relief program, the local food pantry, as well as anti-nuclear work in the eastern United States. Critically, he always delivered 'the goods' on a Sunday morning. No one ever regretted going to services when he was preaching.

I speak personally when I say that his core work in the pastorate in the congregation never suffered. If it had it would have been me forced to pick up on it, so I'd have been the first to notice. In the five years we were colleagues there, not once did Reed Street have the staff conflicts that had dominated that place's narrative in the 1970s.

But it is also true that his 'pastoral mind' was unduly focussed on one family.

So, back to what the FBI asked for. In March of 1982 The Jennings became a known quantity at Reed Street Church, first through their daughter, Paige's, activity in Zach's youth group. Whereas the rest of the family had not been even remotely 'religious', by January 1983 Paige was baptised into full communion with our church.

From this distance, it is hard to pinpoint exact points on a timeline that specific things happened. The way Tim and I divvied up responsibilities meant that The Jennings were in his domain, and part of the responsibility for Paige rested with Zach. Key for me was the way our church secretary, Jackie, monitored things from behind the scenes. Secretaries at churches are sometimes at the centre of an 'information wheel' where staff like me, Tim, and Zach are out on the rim. Jackie's unofficial job was to manage the flow of information along the appropriate spokes. I know that I, myself, benefited many times from Jackie's spontaneous and quiet interventions which steered me in the right direction.

Be all that as it may, I was also managing another 1/2-time position at Wesleyan. The Seminary had its own dramas! When it came to marking and teaching, 20-hours a week at times got inflated to twice that. Even though I was half-time, I also had a full share of students assigned as their faculty advisor. That's just the way academics goes.

In March of 1982, it was the first time I had noticed that new family in church, The Jennings. Being half-time, I was not always present at the church service, but I was that day. They stood out for a very stark reason. Mr. Jennings, particularly, seemed unduly fixated on Pastor Tim at the front of the church. Certainly that alone would not stand out, as Pastor Tim - an accomplished preacher - tended to hold a congregation's attention. But it was Mr. Jennings's expressions which caused me concern.

It caused me so much concern that, as Pastor Tim notes in his account, I called him that Sunday afternoon to inquire as to what the "stare" had been about. Tim assured me at the time that he had had no idea. He, himself, had not noticed anything menacing coming from Mr. Jennings. I had.

It was weeks later that Tim confided something else, something that seemed to confirm my suspicions/fears about Mr. Jennings particularly. Even though Tim's words were not as extant as in his own account, he did relate the visit that Mr. Jennings paid him one night, alone in the church office. I'll let Tim's own account of that episode stand on its own.

Suffice it to say, though, that the way Tim and I divvied up pastoral duties at Reed Street, I was to both not notice nor hear much about that family as the 30 months wore on. Things 'settled down'. I was not aware, for instance, that when Tim had briefly gone missing in Ethiopia, that Alice had in essence threatened The Jennings with exposure - exposure of some dreaded secret that I did not understand at the time.

I'd heard from Tim all the fall-out from their anti-nuclear action in Pennsylvania, the one where Zach had mobilized the youth group - more importantly, had fully briefed the kids' parents on what the demonstration entailed. Once some parents heard that Pastor Tim planned to be arrested, they had opportunity to withdraw their child's participation.

But for the purposes of this piece, Tim did confide in me some of the pastoral issues he'd uncovered with the kids in the youth group - usually Zach's domain. Tim often used the long bus rides to have one-on-one convos with the people in his flock.

One was a huge concern about Paige Jennings. Many kids in Zach's group had had family issues. The biggest surprise for me, though, was that Tim was very adroit at navigating those delicate waters, especially those where the church started to stray into issues of parental autonomy. Tim, himself, was usually very measured and thoughtful, even when dealing with hostile parents.

Yet my observation was that between Tim and The Jennings, it was something else. It certainly dominated his mind. It may be the wrong word to use, but it seemed to be something 'dangerous'. It was only later, much later, that I was able to put any of that into some sort of context, as bizarre as that context turned out to be.

Reading Tim's own account - an account previously unknown to me - the change in Tim's own demeanour in March 1983 begins to make sense. At the time, Tim would only talk in generalities. It turned out that 'generalities' were all he had - and that was about to change. During our Monday coffee times, meant to orient us to the coming week, Tim was usually precise and articulate. Starting that March, I perceived Tim to have been 'knocked off of his moorings', which is the way I put it to him at the time.

Of course, these days I know what had transpired. Paige had revealed that the core of her parental problems was that her mother and father, both of them, had been deep cover Soviet spies since the 1960s.

It's bizarre to type those words, even these days. An otherwise married, middle-class suburban couple by day, operated by night to spy on America. Was such a thing even possible today, in 2010? (Read the news this year about 'illegals'!)

If Tim had revealed that to me at the time, I am sure I would not have believed him. I'd have laughed. Tim also mentioned that he and Alice had once been at The Jennings for dinner when the Jennings' neighbour, an FBI agent (who himself worked in counterintelligence!), joined them at the table. I distinctly remember Tim recounting that event to me, but I had not known anything about the real story. However, I made note that his own recounting seemed to trouble him for a reason at the time unknown to me.

Then in the late summer, early fall of 1984 both Tim and I left Reed Street Church. Zach and Jackie remained. All of the pastoral issues both Tim and I had been embedded in quickly subsided as a new pastoral team were hired and we moved on. As the colleague-ethics of the day demanded, I simply stayed away from Reed Street. I fended off the occasional request that I return there for some pastoral service, asking the person, "to contact the new pastor directly". It was hard but necessary to make that kind of severe pastoral break.

On that score Tim was lucky - he was in Argentina! But I've not got to the good part yet!

Read on…..

(to be continued….)