For more than five decades, religion professor inspired and encouraged Wingate students

by Chuck Gordon

For over half a century, Dr. Byrns Coleman helped fill the pulpits of Baptist churches throughout the Carolinas. As a Wingate University religion professor for 52 years, he played the role of teacher, friend, leader and mentor, recommending countless former students for jobs in the ministry.

Coleman passed away Sept. 19, less than two weeks before his 90th birthday. Funeral arrangements are incomplete at this time.

Fresh out of the seminary, Coleman joined Wingate Junior College as a faculty member in 1960, sharing a cramped office in the basement of the Burris Building with business professor Donald Haskins. "When a student came in, one of us would have to leave," Coleman recalled in an article in the Biblical Recorder in 2010.

He was hardly put off by the accommodations. Having left the seminary with plans to become a minister, Coleman discovered a love of teaching the Bible to eager students, and he did so until his retirement in 2012. He sent many graduates on to seminaries and into the pulpit, and he brought Bible stories to life even for those who took religion courses only because they were required to.

The Rev. Ken Lance '83, a longtime pastor in Rowan County and other parts of the Carolinas, felt Coleman's death acutely.

"He made the scriptures come alive," Lance wrote on his Facebook page. "His winsome manner and powerful presentations made the old, old story alive and fresh through every lecture, every sermon and every conversation I had or heard in his company."

"But he was also more than a great Bible teacher," Lance added. "He taught me to be a pastor. … Dr. Coleman taught me that loving your church was one of the most important things a pastor can do."

Coleman was a guiding light for other faculty members at Wingate. He was already a two-decade veteran of the Wingate classroom when Dr. Edwin Bagley joined the religion and philosophy faculty in 1981. Coleman was the first person to stop by to welcome the Bagleys to Wingate. "The moving van hadn't even gotten there," Bagley says.

Bagley says that Coleman, whom he referred to as "a good colleague and a good friend," was "very intentional about being attentive and encouraging."

"He always had such a positive and encouraging way with people around him," he says. "He always saw the good in people and pointed it out."

Coleman served 17 years as chair of the Department of Humanities, leading with enthusiasm - for the students Wingate served, for the material, and for Wingate as an institution. With over five decades at Wingate, it was natural that Coleman would become something of a caretaker for the University's history - a history that took many twists and turns during Coleman's time in the classroom. He started his tenure while Wingate was still a junior college. In the 1970s, when it became a four-year college, he went back to school to earn his Ph.D., from Vanderbilt University. The school became Wingate University in the 1990s and, a few years later, parted ways with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

"He was the same Byrns through it all," says Dr. Rob Prevost, associate professor of philosophy.

Coleman's knowledge of Wingate's past was instructive for Bagley, Prevost and the other religion and philosophy professors.

"It was important that he had internalized the history of Wingate University and its institutions," Bagley said. "He was a source of great understanding about that while, at the same time, being an active part of the changes that took place."

Wingate President Rhett Brown '89, '01 (MBA) remembers first encountering the longtime religion professor when the Colemans' youngest son, Allen, a teammate of Brown's on the Wingate football team, brought him home for Sunday lunch.

"From that day forward, Byrns did for me what he did for countless others: He looked after me - as a professor, a mentor, a colleague and a friend," Dr. Brown says. "His intellect, his decency, his wit and his care were unmatched. From Burris Hall to Wingate Baptist and to all the congregations, family and friends in between, Professor Coleman's life was an extraordinary witness to the University's motto of Faith, Knowledge and Service."

Coleman kept his preaching chops sharp by serving as interim pastor at several churches throughout his Wingate tenure, and he remained an inspirational speaker. For years, Coleman gave the devotional during the faculty-and-staff "welcome back" event every August, just before the start of fall-semester classes.

"You just walked away excited and pumped up about being here and about teaching," says Prevost, who worked with Coleman for 18 years. "He just had a way of encouraging you and motivating you."

For many years, Coleman's positive and optimistic nature benefited the other professors in the department.

"He just never had a bad word for anybody," Prevost says. "It was great when he was writing your faculty evaluation, because you knew you were going to get a good one."

Coleman was much tougher on students, because he expected so much out of them, but his teaching stayed with them for years afterward.

"I can't imagine any students not feeling appreciated and affirmed by him," Prevost says.

"Whatever I have done well as a pastor," Lance says, "I can trace back to some snippet of a lecture or in the example of the patient and humble service he gave to so many churches that were in pastoral transition."

When presenting Coleman with the Corts Teaching Award in 1989, Dr. Paul Corts, then the president of Wingate College, called him "an inspirational teacher." Coleman and his wife, Alice, showed their devotion to the University in 2017 by donating their house to the institution he called home for so many years.

Sept. 20, 2024

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