Times Editor
Cathryn and Pastor Brian Reagan both have both had interesting and eventful lives both before and after they married.
Cathryn was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, growing up in a military family. After high school she worked as a florist and event planner, doing original floral designs. She also was a cheerleader for the local arena football team, the Birmingham Fire, for one and one-half seasons.
Brian grew up on the “eastern plains of Colorado,” in a town called Brush. He said the area was all “cornfields and cattle,” and he grew up working in the hayfields. He got his calling to the ministry when he was in kindergarten and began to preach at age 12 and attended college to become a minister. He attended Amridge University (formerly Southern Christian University) for his undergraduate studies, then moved on to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, to earn his Master of Divinity. After that he wandered from his planned path.
“The Lord allowed me what I wanted,” he said of his decision to join the United States Marine Corp. “After seeing on a larger scale the incongruency of the people in charge I walked away from the church and joined the military, but then later walked away from that was well. I learned a lesson from all this, however. Everything is corrupt and broken down, you just must do your part where you are.”
Brian and Cathryn both ended up living in Texas in the late 1990s. They were both involved in Internet chat rooms during the infancy of social media. He posted a photo of himself, taken in front of the Tower of Terror at Universal Studios, taken by his biological mother (he had been adopted at nine days old). Cathryn was attracted and recognized his military bearing. They began to chat and, four days later, she “set the hook,” as he called it. She thanked him for the conversations, saying it was so nice to talk with a “seemingly intelligent” man.
He took exception to the term “seemingly” and fumed about it for several days. Soon after, however, the “hook” worked as he informed her that she was going to be his wife. They continued talking for the next five months, then finally met face-to-face in June 1999. They married in October of the same year.
When the first married, he worked in sales, selling Ford trucks and Lincoln Mercury cars. He said that, at that time, he had no interest in returning to the church. The couple then moved to Colorado and he got a position in the restaurant business.
Cathryn was baptized about a month after they married because he said he “did not want to live in a divided house.” They stayed with his grandparents and Brian was quickly told by his grandmother that he “was not doing what he was supposed to do.” They prayed about it and his grandmother decided to give him a little nudge in the right direction – she started getting a publication that contained a “Want Ads” section for churches seeking pastors and kept leaving it around the house where he could see it frequently.
One day Brian picked up the ads and started reading them. He said he found an ad from a church on the West Coast who wanted a pastor who could sing baritone, with a wife who could sing alto. The ad rubbed him the wrong way.
“I told Cathryn that I was going to have to break a promise I had made her and go back to the pulpit,” he said. “I knew that was a church that needed help, badly. And just that morning in church the pastor had been preaching about God needing men to stand in the gap (Ezekiel 22:30).”
As it turned out, the couple did not go to the West Coast, but ended up in Missouri. He had began visiting churches within a 12-hour drive of their home and had been talking with a church in Missouri. He decided to visit a church in Ft. Campbell, KY and the people at the Missouri church asked him to stop by on his way home.
When he started home from Kentucky, he got into terrible road construction and traffic in Missouri, with it taking he and Cathryn eight hours to cross a state that would normally take four. Brian decided that they would not make the stop, but they could not find the contact information for the church, so they decided to go to the town and call. When the got to the town they went to the city hall and the police station and found out who they needed to call. It was then they found the book containing the contact information – right on top of the things in the trunk. Brian talked with the people at the church and he and Cathryn moved to Missouri the following Halloween. They stayed 21 months.
After Missouri, Brian served churches in Arkansas (six years), then in Texas (nine years) and, most recently, came to the Lake Butler Church of Christ. The couple will have been here four years in May. Brian said it was interesting he ended up in Lake Butler because 28 years before he had been friends with a man from here. He and Cathryn arrived in May of 2018 and he preached his first sermon the Sunday after Mother’s Day.
When asked whether he was in Lake Butler to stay, Brian said it was not is decision.
“I go where God says to go and where I am told is the next duty station,” he said. “I can say I have no immediate plans and also that I can honestly say that I like it here and have never seen such a high concentration of nice, kind, giving and loving people than those I have found in Union County.”
Cathryn says she is also willing to go where they are called. She said that when she was in her teens, she dated a young man who got the calling and they broke up and that she had not wanted to be a preacher’s wife. Today, she said she loves her husband and is at peace with what his calling entails.
“It is not always easy, but I have always trusted in God and also follow where I am led,” she said.
Since their two children are grown, the couple spends time not only on church activities, but also in the community. Brian is the Commander of the Union County American Legion and the President of the Lake Butler Rotary Club. Cathryn is the current second vice-president of the Lake Butler Women’s Club, the leader of the local TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) chapter and a coordinator with the local SAFE (Stuffed Animals for Emergencies) chapter – a program that provides stuffed animals to law enforcement, fire and rescue personnel as aids to calm children in emergency situations. Both love being involved in the community and both said they were very happy to be each other’s Valentine.
