Submitted to the Missoulian, but not published. Published in the Christian Journal in MIssoula, MT.
Gale Fister – Missionary, pastor, counselor, businessman, outdoorsman, husband, and great grandfather – passed away on Tuesday, February 18, 2014 at the age of 83 at Edgewood Vista. He leaves behind a legacy of love, which has touched the lives of countless thousands of people across western Montana. His life and ministry influenced and shaped early Christian culture in the Rocky Mountains; today that work carries on in places all over the world.
An open funeral will be held for him on March 22, 2014 at Missoula Alliance Church in Missoula, Montana at 11:00 a.m., where there is ample seating for anyone wishing to attend.
A Legacy of Love
My Grandfather was born in rural Pottsville, Pennsylvania; his family amongst the homesteaders who traveled across the ocean with William Penn for the promise of land. Fister (an Americanization of “Pfister”) was a full-blooded German boy, as much in temperament as the language of his early household.
When Gale was ten, his mother, Mamie Rentschler Ernst Fister, attended a local Christian revivalist meeting where both she and her children accepted the faith. His stubborn non-religious father, Graeff Tobias Fister, promised that if any of them got saved at the event, he would “unsave them faster than they got saved.” Mamie began taking her children to church regularly, despite the admonition.
Gale met the girl who would become his lifelong partner before high school. Elsie Marie Stoudt was a waitress at his parent’s restaurant, the Sugar Bowl, a literal mom-and-pop diner throughout the depression. Her sister lived adjacent to his family’s apartment, and visited to babysit often. According to the story Gale loved to tell, their relationship started one day when Gale walked outside while Elsie was holding a doll and asked her “Why don’t I get a hug?”
Gale and Elsie were married on July 18, 1948. They had their first daughter together, whom they named Carol. They loved her deeply.
Soon after, they traveled together north to Canada for Gale to finish high school, attending Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta. It was here that his intellectual and creative talents began to shine.
“The students used to call him ‘Professor’ in high school” remembers his sister Betty Jackson with a laugh, “because he could solve math equations on the board that stumped even his teacher. He was so smart - and he could fix anything.”
He was a man of extraordinary physical and mental energy, which he channeled successfully into hobbies like drawing, painting, photography and model ship building. Realizing Gale’s enormous talent, the president of the school, L.E. Maxwell, took him out fishing one day.
“Gale, you have so many interests and talents, but you need to decide where you are going with your life. If it is missions work you are going to do, then that is the direction you need to focus – not on all these other things.”
Gale took it to heart, and this became a fulcrum in his career. Forsaking his hobbies and interests, he decided to devote himself whole-heartedly to ministry.
Gale and Elsie had two sons during their time at Prairie, Jack and Tim. Gale went on to earn a post-secondary pastoral degree from Prairie Bible Institute. Then, they left as a family to become missionaries to a small logging community on Vancouver Island in Port McNeal, British Columbia.
Gale worked days as a spoon-machine operator with the other loggers of the area and ministered to them in the evenings, holding Bible studies. Don and Ferris Rust, another couple from Prairie came to work alongside them, and their cumulative success was great. At one point, the local tabloid ran a front page story Gale titled: “Local Bible Thumper Converts Logging Camp!” Bob and Ruth were born to them during this time.
Close to the year 1957, the Fisters and Rusts received a plea for help from former fellow graduates Darrel and Betty Burch. The Burches were already rural missionaries through the American Sunday School Union struggling to meet the demands of a ministry responsible for reaching 64,000 square miles of western Montana, from the border of Canada through the Rocky Mountains and parts of Idaho.
This was not an easy choice for my grandfather. His heart had been set on ministry to the coastal Indians of western Canada. Accordingly, he set out a “fleece for guidance”, like the Old Testament prophet Gideon, to see how dew collected on a rug. He soon afterwards broke his leg, which he took as his sign, since it meant he would no longer be able to support himself as a logger in Canada. In August of 1957, the Fisters moved to Montana following the Rusts.
The three families began driving the two-lane highways of Western Montana, knocking on doors, and encouraging people to attend youth groups or Bible studies. Gale and Don Rust held secular jobs, ministering evenings and weekends. Children became an early focal point of their work.
“When we came, there were no Christians at all in the small rural communities” Gale had said. “You can’t start churches where there are no Christians. You have to understand, television didn’t reach into the rural areas, and the kids were bored to tears.”
“We didn’t come with a plan to start Children’s work. But the most openness was with these bored teenagers, so that’s where we began. When we first began in St. Regis, there were 54 kids in the high school, and 47 came to youth group every week!”
Early preaching points extended throughout Haugen, DeBorgia, Saltese, St. Regis, Frenchtown, Lolo and Camas Prairie. Ministry soon expanded into Alberton, DeSmet, Trout Creek, White Pine, Tarkio and Plains and areas south and east of Missoula. Weekend ministries sometimes extended as far as Gibbonsville, Idaho.
Small groups met in one room school buildings, farm houses, bars or other open buildings. For years, Gale and Don traded two week itinerant preaching cycles over an area covering 200 miles of western Montana. Their children recall long Sunday travels, across the narrow two lane highways of Montana which extended from dark to dark.
“Dad never spoke the same sermon at any two churches, because of us children,” Gale’s youngest daughter Ruth remembers. He didn’t want us to get bored.”
As home groups grew, the need for a central church became apparent, and Lolo Community Church was incorporated in 1958. People attended from all across the western half of the state, traveling to take part in this growing Christian community.
My Grandfather had a magnetic presence. In teaching, he was candid, energetic and wise; interpersonally – gentle and understanding, yet firm; in business he was meticulous in his reputation for fairness and honesty. But despite his vivacity, Gale never considered himself preacher. He was a teacher.
In 1964, Elsie bore her last child, William. By then, Gale had earned a master’s electrician license, and in 1966 he opened Fister Electric in Missoula, Montana. He and his oldest sons began with residential and small commercial jobs in Missoula and Wyoming, then expanded into larger industrial contracts to local sawmills and pulp mills. They become the sole contractor at Smurfit-Stone Container under the oversight of his youngest son, William, until the plant closed abruptly in 2011. (Today, the Fister business continues under the ownership of his three remaining sons in Missoula.)
On February 21, 1969, the Rocky Mountain Bible Mission became incorporated under Gale’s presidency. Wallace Tucker became vice president, and Robert Lukey was secretary. Gale’s brother in law, Frank Jackson, became treasurer until 1974 when he resigned as an engineer for Mountain Bell to become the full-time executive director of the mission.
The mission continued to expand, planting churches and hosting vacation bible schools, sponsoring a radio translator for KMBI in 1980, and even branching into Native American children’s ministry (“Pathfinders”). The RMBM has since seen the creation of summer camps Utmost and Elohim and the Rocky Mountain Bible Training Center. (For a more detailed written history of the RMBM, visit rmbible.org)
As ministry demands grew, so did Gale’s involvement. He was now busy days, evenings and weekends with the work set before him, becoming the people’s man.
Late at night around the campfire, wide eyed youth from around the state sat spellbound to stories of David or Daniel or Ezekiel. His talent with stories wove magic into the stories of scriptures, making life lessons from the Old and New Testament as engaging as a home run.
Couples in marital crisis came to Gale for advice and went away with new perspectives on their lives. Hurting people in pain – physically, emotionally or spiritually –found solace and guidance in his words. Many people changed their lives forever.
His success did not come from status or accolade, but through the way he had with people, being charming, attentive and sincere. He was respected by everyone.
Part of his philosophy of ministry was to work alongside the common people as one of them. He believed the people of rural Montana would not respect a man who did not work like them, as one of them. He was no stranger to the tranches and trellises of construction and maintenance projects of the ministry, especially, wiring buildings for ministry. Snow plowing, the church’s garbage, and late night trips to families in need were part of his weekly routine. He also baptized, married and held funerals regularly.
But nothing can be said to have characterized Gale’s love for people more than his deep and intimate love for his wife, Elsie. It was a statement familiar to the people who knew him well that you had never known two people so in love.
Elsie was the cornerstone in Gale’s ministry, supporting him and working alongside him for more than half a century, taking care of many of the essential background aspects of ministry such as child care, meal preparations, and mothering their six children —a more than full-time workload of itself.
Gale was fond of wooing Elsie publically, and was not shy in any affection towards her. Elsie was “his home”, as he often said, “not the house”. She was his retreat, when the demands of ministry were great. Quiet, strong and empathetic, Elsie gave his work life; her support and stable nurturing rounded his ministry into powerful effect. It was an image of the love of Christ seen in their relationship.
Gale held firm a conviction about his faith. He believed that the Bible is the key to mankind’s salvation. Although ordained through the Evangelical Free denomination, his churches nevertheless remained non-denominational; he called them ‘community’ churches, where everything went straight back to the scriptures.
“Do we think we’re right?” Gale would ask enthusiastically from the pulpit speaking of a Christian’s beliefs, in a cadence only a man of his vitality could maintain. “Of course we think we’re right! It would be dumb if we thought we were wrong but followed it anyways.”
“But I don’t want you to believe it just because Gale told you to. Go to the scriptures. It is not good enough just to have faith. We need to be right about what we believe, and we base that on the infallibility of God’s word.”
He was hell-fire and brimstone” said a man Fister had married, yet who could not deny that Fister’s message was clearly one of love.
The redemption, Gale asserted, was that God is always just, and that justice was paid out for the sins of mankind through the redemptive actions of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, meaning our sins were paid for - atonement. We are forgiven.
It was a hard message, but full of hope, and it was a message Gale lived to his marrow. It was a message even his resistant father came to accept in later years.
Gale was no stranger to pain, suffering and his own mistakes. In 1997, his firstborn daughter Carol died painfully of adrenal cancer, leaving him with “a hurt” which he described “like blue fire,” a metaphor familiar to him from his many years in the electrical industry. He also struggled with an extempore temper all his life. He would recall from the pulpit the times he had screamed at himself in the mirror “I hate you!” following an angry outburst which had brought Elsie to tears.
At one point, his business suffered a severe undercut with a major contract, and he dedicated many years of his life to repaying that debt. His hands were calloused from a lifetime of physical labor. He also shared the grief of many who had mourned their dead and come to him suffering over the years. In 2004, his son Jack suffered a fatal heart attack.
Gale began to speak of a time when he could go to heaven to be with his beloved friends and family with a perfect new body in the presence of God. It was an event he looked forward to, through tears sometimes as he sang the old hymn “My Jesus I Love Thee” before the church.
Eventually, he settled into local ministry, becoming the weekly pastor at Lolo Community Church, and directing camps and working at Camp Utmost. He is remembered for many years of work in khaki clothes and a signature toothpick; baptizing young people in the waters of the Clearwater River, counseling young couples on life and marriage and leading his churches into unified ministry involvement everywhere.
His family remembers these years with nostalgia – giant family holiday feasts, after church get-togethers and home-spun meals where the traditions of the Pennsylvania Dutch met the hunting and fishing lifestyle of Western Montana. Gale also hunted, fished, motorcycled and rode snowmobile with a passion.
Only in his latest years did he receive a salary of any kind for his ministry. Foreseeing that the church would need to commission a future pastor, he asked the church board to begin paying him so that the congregation would “get used to paying a pastor.” Most of this he donated to missionaries.
Gale stepped down from ministry in 2005 in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. He continued to attend services for many years, until he fell on a sidewalk during a morning walk in 2008, after which he was placed into residential care. Elsie had already been in residential care for several years by then.
The wall of his bed in passing years was covered with family – pictures of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. He could have counted 15 grandchildren and 33 great grandchildren (plus some introduced family), each of whom he loved enormously. All of us loved him the same.
“All those years of ministry, it seemed like Dad belonged to everybody else,” Ruth reminisces. She was with him through his last days and at his final breath. “I had shared my earthly father with countless numbers of people throughout the years, but in the quiet of the past few nights, I am his daughter, and this is our journey.”
Fister was a man of faith. His life stands testimony to a real relationship with God, and its life changing results. His faith was not only a conviction of the mind, but a reality which encompassed his very way of being, and in the very way he lived and treated people. To his last days, Gale would have wished to be known as nothing else than a servant of Christ.
Gale Fister lived a life of love; his influence touched untold thousands. He was a patriarch. Today his work continues around the world, from rural ports in Canada to mission fields in Brazil and Honduras.
His years were an example that the life of a person can have meaning and influence, that a spiritual life has substance and significance and that Christianity can be more than a doctrine, a set of convictions or a message of fear.
“Love conquers all.”
Written by Jesse Fister, his Grandson.
