Rev. Cabel Trent Remembered For Ministry Of Compassion

 A former Chattanooga United Methodist minister who was considered a giant among fellow ministers and church congregants was laid to rest this week in Knoxville.

 

The Rev. Cabel Winton Trent developed his praiseworthy reputation as a pastor not necessarily from the pulpit, but from the less glamorous and quieter hospital rooms and retirement residences, where he fulfilled his true calling as a visitation minister.

 

For more than six decades until declining health finally forced him to retire just a few months before his death Jan.

19 at the age of 89, he continued to care for those struggling either through illness, being homebound or other issues. And he also did it by basically never taking a vacation and by still finding time for all his other pastoral duties.

 

In his later years while serving as minister of visitation at the downtown Church Street United Methodist Church in Knoxville, he was often older than the fellow elderly whom he was visiting. But that never seemed to slow him down.

 

“He liked to be God’s person. He was called to be God’s person,” said the Rev. Bill Fowler, who served as senior pastor at Church Street UMC from 1994-2008 and worked alongside Mr. Trent.

 

Mr. Fowler spoke at his funeral at Church Street on Thursday afternoon, as did Bishop Richard Looney, who has lived in Chattanooga in recent years but is serving as the interim senior pastor at Church Street.

 

Bishop Looney said that Mr. Trent definitely lived to serve. “Jesus came to serve and not be served and so did Cabel,” he said.

 

Born on Sept. 22, 1927, in Independence, Va., just above the Western North Carolina border as one of 12 siblings or half siblings, Mr. Trent graduated from the University of Chattanooga. He had begun his ministry way back in 1946 serving the Etowah, Tenn., circuit.

 

He would go on to serve as the pastor of such Chattanooga Methodist or United Methodist churches as the now-closed Ridgedale Memorial from 1949-50, Soddy from 1950-54, St. Andrews in Highland Park from 1978-80 and Wesley Memorial on East Brainerd Road from 1980-85.

 

He had 13 total appointments over 47 years – including at several Knoxville churches and as a stint as a district superintendent in Big Stone Gap, Va. – before “retiring” to begin serving as special needs/visitation minister at Church Street for 21 years. He also taught Sunday school during most of his years there.

 

Bishop Looney during the service read a heartfelt note from the Rev. Larry Edmonds, Mr. Trent’s former associate minister at Wesley Memorial in Chattanooga, praising him. Mr. Edmonds, who is now serving at Memorial United Methodist Church in Virginia Beach, Va., wrote that he learned much from Mr. Trent, including how to be a servant leader.

 

Bishop Looney agreed. “He was a dyed-in-the-wool churchman,” he said. “He did it by the book and he did it from the heart.”

 

Both Bishop Looney and Mr. Fowler said that his surviving wife, Doris, was also an important part of his ministry and was always with him. They did not have any children, and the churches they served became like their families.

 

There were also a few light-hearted moments discussed at the funeral about Mr. Trent, including his wry sense of humor and the fact that no one really knew his age in later years and that he never wanted to tell anyone.

 

Mr. Fowler said that when he came from a smaller church -- First United Methodist Church in Bristol – he was a little apprehensive about serving at Church Street. But Mr. Trent, who had just come as the special needs pastor, helped him.

 

“I relied on Cabel,” Mr. Fowler said, adding that they would talk most nights around 10 p.m. on the phone regarding the immediate pastoral concerns. “He became my mentor. I remember he said, ‘Bill, at Church Street, you’ve got to run hard to stand still. And for 14 years I saw him running hard. He always had a place to be.”

 

Even as he became older, his desire to help the flock seemed not to diminish. It might have even increased. As an example, it was not uncommon for one of the other Church Street pastors to stop by a hospital room to visit a member as part of his or her assignment for that day and to learn that Mr. Trent had also taken it upon himself to stop by voluntarily earlier in the day.

 

Mr. Fowler said that he learned one day that Mr. Trent had been injured falling through his attic at home, so he visited him while he was recuperating and saw tears in Mr. Trent’s eyes. “He said, “I can’t do the work and I’m afraid Church Street will let me go.”

 

Mr. Fowler quickly assured him that his work at Church Street was very valuable and the church obviously wanted him to continue once he recovered, and that seemed to make Mr. Trent feel better.

 

Mr. Trent soon returned to his ministry, and one of his and Mr. Fowler’s Christmas Eve traditions, Mr. Fowler said, was for them to visit church members in an extended care facility in between the evening services at Church Street.

 

This past Christmas Eve, the now-retired Mr. Fowler went to visit Mr. Trent at the facility where he had been staying due to declining health. Mr. Fowler tried to keep up the tradition by having a mini-Christmas service and reading Mr. Trent the Christmas story from the Bible.

 

“When I was finished, I looked up and his eyes were watering and he said, ‘Thanks so much Bill.’ ”

 

It was a rare and well-deserved opportunity to receive for this man who had spent most of his life giving.

 

“Cabel knew how to give and to give first,” Mr. Fowler said. “It’s amazing how in a time of need, there was Cabel.”

 

Jcshearer2@comcast.net