A Banker in the Pulpit

For the 25th time in 25 years, Pastor Max Sanders last week offered his resignation. If one member voted to accept it, he explained as usual, he would resign. Max Sanders is still pastor of Valley Christian Church, near Louisville, Ky.

He is also the president of Louisville's Stock Yards Bank (because it is just across the way from the Bourbon Stockyards, he likes to call it "a stinking good bank"). Sanders works hard at both jobs and feels they go together fine. "Because I live in the same world my people do, I am closer to them," he says. "And I'm a better banker as the result of my preaching."

White-haired, wispy little Lisle Maxwell Sanders--who is often called "Mr. Kieran" for his famed look-alike--was born 49 years ago, the son of a Kentucky farmer and stock trader. When he was eight he went to work as an errand boy in the stockyards, and he gave up his schooling after a single semester of high school. In 1932 he joined the bank as a clerk, and has been there ever since.

Max Sanders became a Christian at a revival run by Texas Evangelist Dr. George W. Truett. When the single-room, red-brick Valley Christian Church needed a pastor, he began preaching on alternate Sundays to its congregation of eight. Since 1923 he has carried on alone, with weddings and sick calls as well as sermons. Now his congregations run to 150, out of a membership of 450.

When two couples from another congregation asked to join his church because there were two opposing factions in their own, Pastor Sanders sent them away. "Why, in my church there are seven factions," he said. "You go back and try your church for another year. If you still can't get along, then come back and you can join my church." As Sanders expected, they never returned.

Valley Christian's pastor has a direct, put-up-or-shut-up banker's approach to most problems. At the church's annual fund-raising he says: "Give what you think this church is worth to you. If you think it's worth a dime, don't let anybody talk you into giving a dollar."

Once, when someone asked whether his religion ever interfered with his banking, Sanders exploded: "Christianity isn't worth a tinker's toot if it won't work! The place to find out if Christianity works is at your desk. I apply it to life as I live it."

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