Spokane

Adventure just part of pastor's job
Paul Winslow's lifestyle of service, generosity never lacks excitement

Lyssa J. Gooch
Correspondent

When Paul Winslow proposed to his future wife Karen, he made three promises.

Number one was that life never would be dull, "and he has lived up to that because he has always been so adventuresome," said Karen Winslow.

The second promise was that she would never starve. "In other words, he would be responsible in his adventurous lifestyle," she explained.

And he promised she would be the best-loved woman ever.

"And all of those things have remained true throughout our marriage," she said.

Paul Winslow, 67, is pastor of the Valley Bible Church at 3021 S. Sullivan Road. He came to the church in 1991 as a teaching pastor.

But his incredible life journey began at the age of 13 months, when he traveled to China in 1937 with his parents, who were missionaries.

The region was politically unstable and fell under Japanese military rule. The Winslows lived and ministered there until Paul Winslow was 6 years old. Some memories have remained particularly vivid.

"When the Japanese stormed our city, my father was down at the city gates rescuing refugees, and he told my mom not to let anybody in the house," he recalled. "So, there was a knock at the door -- the Japanese soldiers had broken through into the city -- so my mom threw an American flag over her shoulder and opened the door and the Japanese sergeant was there and he said in Chinese, `We search.'

"And she said, `No, we're Americans.' So, (the soldier) stuck his rifle bayonet about an inch from her nose and said again, `We search."'

The Japanese soldiers didn't discover the Chinese Nationalist soldier who had taken refuge in their kitchen. "If they had found him in there, they would have killed us all," he recalled.

Winslow's father died when he was 9, and his mother had become very ill. His relatives sent him to boarding school in Michigan, and he graduated from high school at the age of 16. He then hitchhiked to the Catskill Mountains in New York where he purchased his first motorcycle.

Eventually, he rode out to California, where he found work in construction and later went back to school. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1960 with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering.

He married Karen in 1962, and they have three children. The eldest is Todd, 38. Twins Troy and Tracy are 35. When his children were young, Winslow was introduced to dirt-bike riding, a passion that endures today.

Paul had earned his living mainly as a sales representative in Latin America for Caterpillar tractors and as a management consultant. In 1971, he began teaching Bible classes at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, Calif.

He maintained his management consulting business, but his focus gradually shifted into almost full-time ministry.

Winslow was recruited to the Spokane Valley by his old friend, Harley Halvorson. He brought with him that adventurous quality that captured his wife's heart.

Winslow organizes dirt-bike trips several times a year with his family and friends. They have planned elaborate trail rides through areas of Utah, Baja, California, Mexico, Australia, the Idaho Panhandle and Montana.

He rode across northern Australia with a group of six in 1989, including his two grown sons, Troy and Todd. The trip took two weeks, taking them through the Kakadu National Park where the movie "Crocodile Dundee" was filmed.

Winslow also has combined his motorcycle riding with charitable ventures.

In the mid-1980s, Winslow and a group from his church in California traveled by motorcycle to the Copper Canyon region of Mexico on a mission.

"We took medical supplies and Bibles and soap and vitamins and all that kind of stuff to the Indians," he said. "We rode down into the canyon, and we stayed at a Tarahumara village. The Copper Canyon is deeper than the Grand Canyon. It's a huge canyon, and they don't have any electricity or anything like that."

In 1994, Winslow designed a special, high-efficiency wood-burning stove. He and a group of men from Valley Bible Church transported 20 of the stoves to the Tarahumara Indians. They transported the stoves in pieces in saddlebags on their bikes.

He then taught a Tarahumara Indian how to weld so that he could put the stoves together for use in the schools and homes of the villagers. "It became a little cottage industry for him," Winslow said.

Integrity in Christ is the main theme in Winslow's preaching, teaching, and writing. "The whole business of being a Christian," he explained, "is basically to function as if God was living through you."

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