Oceanside pastor gets to know his flock

A year after Sandy ravaged his new community, Rev. Steve Phillips, who has served as pastor of Oceanside’s First United Methodist Church for just over a year, recalled learning the names of his parishioners while rebuilding alongside them.

“It speeded up the process of getting to know the congregation,” Phillips said. “What is it, the blackest cloud can have a silver lining? Well, for me, it fast forwarded the process of getting to know people, gaining their trust, and becoming their pastor.”

But Phillips’s path to Oceanside was anything but quick and easy or straight and narrow — at least in the geographical sense. Born and raised in Dallas, Phillips studied chemistry as an undergraduate, and worked in manufacturing for six years before going back to night school to study business. After graduating, he worked for accounting titan Arthur Andersen for a short time, before the economy hit a rocky patch and oil prices went haywire. The firm gave him an ultimatum: move to London, or find another job. The answer was obvious.

Phillips was slated to stay in London for three years, but ended up living there for over a decade. Early in his stay, he began singing with an amateur opera company down the block from his flat — as a child, he sang as a chorister with the Dallas Opera Company — and during one of those practices met his future wife, Cecilia, who had come to London from Zimbabwe with the hope of becoming an opera singer.

After four years in London and a number of successful business dealings in Poland, Arthur Andersen gave Phillips another ultimatum: move to Krakow, or find another job. This time, Phillips chose the latter. He stayed in London another eight years, working for Inter-Continental Hotels as director of financial planning and analysis and, later, vice president of purchasing. But the transcontinental life couldn’t last forever.

“We got tired of living 5,000 miles from the closest relative,” Phillips said.“ [And] there was not a lot of time for spiritual outlets.”

The Phillipses, with their three children in tow, moved to Westchester in 1997 to be closer to Cecilia’s brother, who had moved there a number of years back. They began attending a church in New Jersey, where Phillips became involved in bible study. Soon after, his fellow churchgoers were so impressed by his readings of scripture that they suggested he become a pastor.

“And I thought, well, they must be out of their minds,” he laughed. “But the seed was planted, and I enrolled in a theological seminary and got a scholarship, and thought, well, maybe I can try this, and see how it goes.”

It went well. Phillips’ wife, Jewish by birth, was supportive of his decision, and after attending seminary, he was ordained in the United Methodist Church in 2004. He served as pastor to a church in Pleasantville, NY from 2005 until last July, when the bishop of the New York Annual Conference asked him to move to Oceanside. Three months later, Sandy arrived.

“And so, for the next six months or so, it was all about, you know, trying to help people with what they were going through, trying to help them get their houses gutted out and rebuilt, getting them FEMA applications and all that sort of stuff, when there’s no electricity to operate a computer,” Phillips said.” But fortunately, I think pretty much everybody in the church is back on their feet now.”

Phillips led a church-wide campaign to help neighbors in need, aiding in ripping out soggy sheetrock from over 10 houses before contractors were able to get in, and all the while working with the community to rebuild the church. It was a difficult process, but one with very real results: a community pulled itself up by its bootstraps and started again.