EDMOND—California member Paul MacFarland calls himself an “adrenaline junkie,” and a conversation or two about his seven decades of life bear that out. MacFarland says his experiences with sports, firefighting and the Church of God have taught him lessons of faith.

Growing up, MacFarland loved playing sports, especially baseball. But at age 13, his 6’1” frame and size 13 shoes drew the interest of his school’s basketball coach. They met on the weekends for basketball drills, and MacFarland entered an intramural league.

When he moved on to high school, MacFarland helped his team win the Northern California championship. He even received an athletic scholarship for college. However, soon thereafter, he hurt both knees while doing weighted squats. Though still able to play basketball, the injury limited him, and it cost him the scholarship. “I think God humbled me,” he says.

Since basketball was no longer a serious option, MacFarland got a job with Standard Oil after graduating high school. He worked in the utilities division, processing fresh and salt water, natural gas, steam and electricity for public use.

MacFarland then moved on to work at the local fire department. One experience stands out to him; one more dangerous perhaps than some of the structure fires he went into. It was an incident during the 1960s civil rights movement, after police had shot and killed a local black man. Black youths were rioting in the streets, and some rioters set a furniture store on fire.

MacFarland’s crew raced toward the burning building, but got caught in traffic. MacFarland was riding on a ladder attached to the outside of the fire truck. Then the rioters turned on the firemen.

“Kids were throwing Molotov cocktails at me,” he said. He was thankful that the Coca-Cola bottles—encasing flammable mixtures of gasoline and alcohol—were too thick to break; they bounced off the rig without burning him. (Near-death encounters like this compelled fire truck manufacturers to redesign trucks so that all firemen are now seated inside the cab.)

“Don’t you know who I am?” MacFarland scolded the enraged teenagers. “I’m Paul MacFarland. I won the Northern California basketball championship.” His stern rebuke caused the youths to halt the assault.

More and more people in the fire department came to know who MacFarland was. He quickly rose through the ranks, accumulating experience as a firefighter, engineer and fire captain.

At the same time, he developed an interest in the Worldwide Church of God. When a wcg minister visited MacFarland in 1984, he told him that in order to keep the Sabbath, he had to either quit his job as a firefighter or find a different position within the department that did not conflict.

MacFarland found just the right position: He became the battalion chief in charge of training. “I had worked all the positions, so I had credibility,” he says. For the next 10 years, he supervised five city fire departments and had the flexibility to schedule training sessions around the Sabbath and annual holy days.

The 250-member San Francisco wcg congregation welcomed MacFarland, his son, and his twin daughters to services in 1985. But the MacFarlands had arrived just in time to see the Church leadership change.

“I saw Mr. Tkach Sr. twice. I saw Joe Jr. a number of times in Oakland,” MacFarland recalls about one of Tkach’s visits to Stockton, during which he greeted thousands of members. “I never walked over to meet him. He wasn’t approachable or friendly. His father was.”

The first time MacFarland met Tkach Sr. was in 1993 while he was serving on security at church services in Oakland. During that visit, MacFarland described the elder Tkach as fearful, paranoid and sequestered backstage, probably because he had received criticism and threats over the Church’s numerous doctrinal changes instigated by his son. “His son was running the show,” MacFarland says.

MacFarland came into the Philadelphia Church of God before Passover in 1996. “I saw Mr. Gerald Flurry on tv, the Key of David program,” he says. “This was like listening to Mr. Armstrong on the World Tomorrow—same spirit, same message.”

MacFarland celebrated his first pcg Feast of Tabernacles in Red Deer, Alberta, where he met then-Pastor Wayne Turgeon in the hotel weight room early in the morning. He says he was surprised when his new acquaintance and fellow insomniac walked onstage later that day and gave the sermon.

MacFarland has visited Feast of Tabernacles sites around the world: Canada, Jordan, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tobago, England, Ireland, South Africa and Kenya. “I’ve traveled extensively,” he says. “You name it. I’m on the move.” His favorite destination is the holy land of Israel.

When he isn’t busy traveling to various Feast sites, he pays frequent visits to pcg headquarters in Edmond to attend graduations or take in concerts. At home, he spends his days in Point Richmond, a sailing community near San Francisco. He says he enjoys San Francisco’s cultural diversity and sports teams.

A first-year baby boomer, MacFarland says the world is drastically different from the one he was born into in 1946 after World War ii. He remembers television replacing radio as the primary information medium during the 1950s and 1960s, with programs such as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best drawing massive amounts of viewers. At that point, there was only enough programming for one or two hours of television a day, he recalls.

MacFarland says you could see his generation progress through expanded maternity wards and newly built schools like a pig bulging in the belly of a python. It was a different time compared to the situation the United States finds itself in now, he says.

MacFarland’s 70 years have been rich with experiences. And since he still maintains his vibrant, adventurous, healthful way of life, he undoubtedly has more of those experiences coming