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FROM THE BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF PRIMITIVE OR OLD SCHOOL BAPTIST MINISTERS BY DAVID MONTGOMERY AND MARK GREEN:
ELDER PAUL T. TRAUTNER
In the heart of the Badlands, at Lemmon, South Dakota, on February 2, 1933, I was born the seventh of nine children into the family of Fred and Bertha Martin Trautner. My father was a German Baptist minister who served churches in both North and South Dakota. In the spring of 1951, I finished high school in Beulah, North Dakota, and that fall left home for Lexington, Kentucky, to attend a Missionary Baptist Bible College.
In March of 1953, I was ordained to preach for the Missionary Baptists. Soon after, I began to question the Arminian doctrine they preached under the guise of "Calvinistic Articles of Faith." At this time, I did not know of a people called Primitive Baptists. I had heard the term "Hardshell" used in a derogatory way and was warned to avoid the anti-missionary movement of a Daniel Parker. He, at the end of the eighteenth century, advocated "Two Seed in the Spirit Predestination." As students, we were warned that these people were heretics who taught a no eternal hell or non-resurrection of the body doctrine, as well as infant damnation; also they were against spreading the gospel. I soon learned this was not the case.
At the invitation of my brother, James Trautner, who had been baptized into the fellowship of Friendship Church in Newark, Ohio, I attended my first meeting at Naomi Church in Charleston, West Virginia. At this time, I still believed God used the preaching of the gospel to call His elect into divine life. It was a powerful experience to be in the midst of a people who practiced and taught the New Testament principles
During the year after my first visit among the Primitive Baptists, I traveled many miles with Brother Lasserre Bradley. We visited in the churches and homes of these dear people. They embraced us with open arms, showing us great love and hospitality. God in His gracious providence led me to the "House of my Master's Brethren."
Along with Brother Bradley, before the Salem Church in Madisonville, Kentucky, in August of 1958, coming as a poor sinner, I asked for a home with the church. They voted unanimously to receive us, but suggested that we postpone baptism until we returned to the congregations where we served, to let them know of our decision and to inquire if any would like to come with us.
In October of 1958, I was baptized into the fellowship of the newly organized Cincinnati Church. Several of the members from the New Testament Missionary Baptist Church, where I was then pastor, came for baptism with me. One of the happiest spiritual moments of my life was, when Elder Ben Lord, a faithful and humble servant of the Lord, baptized me. He along with Elder J. A. Monsees and Elder Cecil Darity were authorized by their home churches in Georgia to come and do the official work of constituting a church and baptizing believers. Fifty-five people from groups in Cincinnati, Berea and Lexington were baptized at thisunforgettable meeting. In August of the next year churches were constituted in both Berea and Lexington, Kentucky.
In the October of 1958 meeting, I was liberated to preach the gospel. The ministers who were with us at that meeting returned to the Cincinnati Church in April of 1959 and were joined by other ministers from Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. A presbytery was formed to ordain Brother Bradley and me to the full work of the Gospel Ministry.
Later that April, I met a young lady at a church meeting in Lexington, Kentucky. She was a college student and attended the meeting with her mother and father. Her father, Walter J. Amburgey, was a faithful deacon at Old Salem Church near Mt. Sterling, and her mother, Myrtle, continued to serve faithfully as a deacon's wife even after his death.
Patsy and I were married on October 3, 1959, and our union has been blessed with four children, Paula Michelle, Lisa Dawn, Pamela Jermaine, and Patrick Timothy. Our little Lisa lived only 3 months and 2 days.
During my thirty-one years in the ministry with the Primitive Baptists, I have been blessed to pastor four churches. I was at Berea Church from October 1958 to January 1966, at Lexington Church from March 1966 to September 1988, and Shady Dell Church in Paris from January 1989 until the present, all in Kentucky. I also served Testament Church near Lafayette, Tennessee from June 1961 to September 1970. I have also been blessed, along with my life's companion, to travel extensively among the Lord's special and peculiar people in twenty-four
states and the District of Columbia. I have found the churches to be sound in faith and practice, much as the New Testament believers. |
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