BOALSBURG — Although the Rev. Dr. Thomas Blair has been serving St. John’s United Church of Christ for a year, a ceremony on Nov. 13 officially installed him as the permanent minister and teacher.
Representatives from the southern branch of the Penn Central Conference of the UCC led the ceremony.
Blair shared his educational background and a list of the churches he has served. He grew up in Stroudsburg, in the heart of the Poconos.
“In some ways, I’ve returned home to the ridges and valleys of home,” said Blair. “I have found that here in Happy Valley, people are much more friendly than 125 miles away. When my younger brother and sister-in-law visited a few weeks ago, they were amazed that people who don’t know each other just waved to each other while strolling through Boalsburg.
“This is such a friendly place,” he continued, noting that friendly gestures don’t happen often on Main Street in Stroudsburg. “There is also no place like Meyer Dairy left in the Poconos.”
Blair graduated from Lafayette College in Easton in 1979 with a bachelor of arts in history and education. He spent time in Scotland in 1981 at New College, University of Edinburgh, as a non-degree student. By 1983, he had received a Master of Divinity Degree with a concentration in church history from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. He received his Doctor of Ministry, Christian Education and Family Ministries in Decatur, Georgia, in 1995.
Blair said he has never slowed in his quest for education. His continuing education listings are filled with seminars, teaching workshops and retreats.
“I am a student of the work I love,” he said. “My continuing education is always focused on honing my skills in preaching and pastoral ministry.”
As to his leadership style, Blair said, “Pastoral leadership is authoritative, but not authoritarian. Leadership is all about vision, dedication, communication and cooperation.”
He pointed to a comment from author Don Miller: “As I look at humanity, I can only describe the human personality as designed for relationship with something from which it has been separated.”
If you multiply that person by person, millions by millions, 1,000 generations long, there you have the situation of our world, said Blair in his writings.
“Christian reconciliation, the realization that God in Christ has become human and in so doing unconditionally accepts us and helps to put us right with what is wrong with us, is my basic theological starting point,” said Blair.
Blair gained experience in his early years as he taught history and coached track at The Canterbury School of Florida, St. Petersburg, from 1984 to 1986. Next, from 1986 to 1987, he taught history and religion at the Webb School of Knoxville, Tennessee, and coached football and track. In Charlotte, North Carolina, from 1987 to 1989, he taught history and was the football and track coach at the Charlotte Latin School. He served from 1989 to 1990 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia, where he taught theology and ethics, was a football and track coach and served as chaplain. All this teaching experience would serve him well as he went on to become a minister.
Having served at least four other churches, the Rev. Dr. Blair came to Boalsburg UCC from Second Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, where he was senior pastor from 2004 through 2021.
