Rev. Dr. ‘Bobbie’ Yellott: ‘All of us are a work in progress’

Published 1:33 pm Saturday, July 15, 2023

The Rev. Dr. Roberta “Bobbie” Yellott, pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Sulphur, has been named Associate Regional Minister for Louisiana. In this role, she will be providing administrative and spiritual support to congregations in Louisiana in partnership with the Great River Region Staff and Regional Board.

Retirement didn’t sit well with the 71-year-old. She was 18 when she felt called to the ministry, and she served that calling for 35 years, not by standing behind the pulpit to preach or serving on the mission field in a foreign country. She served her calling by teaching math.

“My plan when I graduated from high school – haha – was to become a religious journalist,” she said, a reminder of the Yiddish adage, “Man plans, and God laughs.” She had a full scholarship to McNeese State University. McNeese, however, did not have a journalism degree.

“To get me ready for seminary, I decided to major in sociology,” she said.

She took one class and decided it was not for her. What she did like was math. So she took increasingly more challenging classes, changed her major to math education and received a Bachelor’s, Master’s and advanced degree in Math Education, teaching at the college level for 35 years.

Math, Yellott says, is not as black and white as some people think, but it does point to patterns and in those patterns Yellott sees the plan of the Creator.

“We describe a well-thought-out mathematical proof as elegant,’ and in such beauty we see the Artist,” she said.

She has always been active in her church as a lay person, and in 2007 she was commissioned as a pastor heading up the programs of prayer and visitation.

“When the minister left, I took on more and more responsibilities,” she said, including acting as associate pastor, even though she didn’t have the title.

She said it was a “gift from God” when First Christian Church in Sulphur began seeking a pastor. The year was 2014, and she’s been there ever since. Some readers may remember seeing invitations from Yellott in the American Press to join in on the fun of Holy Humor Sunday, an annual event at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

The idea of setting aside one Sunday each year to celebrate God’s gift of laughter and joy – good medicine according to Proverbs 17:22 – has a long rich history in congregations around the world, according to Yellott. AT FCC, attendees are encouraged to bring a favorite joke to share, wear funny outfits (or not), practice smiling and invite someone who likes to laugh or really needs to laugh.

The Disciples of Christ and First Christian Church were born on the American frontier in Kentucky around the 1800s, Yellott said, separately and individually after a protracted revival. The founders’ roots were in presbyterianism. When it was realized that they were both very similar, the two joined, thus the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) way of writing the name of the church. The church practices baptism by immersion and each church is congregationally led.

First Christian Church of Sulphur, though not a large church, shows its love for Christ and for others  by helping those in the community who need it most, often it is not church members.

“Our theology is to use your head and the gifts God has given. Read the Bible for yourself, pray and worship to form your own beliefs about God. A hand-me-down-faith is not a faith,” Yellott said. “It can get interesting sometimes.”

At the local level Bobbie is involved with many ecumenical ministries. She coordinates the area Women in Ministry group and is a member of the Sulphur Ministerial Fellowship. Bobbie has sung with the Lake Charles Messiah Chorus for 51 years and the Louisiana Choral Foundation Masterworks Chorale for 30 years. She has recently become a member of a women’s chorus, the Sonshine Singers, sponsored by Trinity Baptist Church, which ministers in area care facilities.

Yellott said she couldn’t have been faithful to the ministry to which God has called her without her husband of 48 years, Randy, long-term principal of Barbe High School.

“I always believed God called him there for that time and place,” she said.

Yellott was 64 when she was ordained and has always appreciated the George Eliot quote, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

“All of us are a work in progress,” she said. “It’s never too late to step in a new direction with God’s leadership. I have heard some people say that they have done their time, but God can use us all the time.”