Pictured is Pastor Andy Cook of Panama Baptist Church, where he has served since 2020. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

PANAMA – Andy Cook of Panama Baptist Church did not begin his career in the working world as a pastor.

“I have a degree in chemistry and a degree in teaching,” Cook said. “My dad and father-in-law are both pastors and my fiance at the time said if I was going to be a pastor she wouldn’t marry me. I think God kind of blocked us into it and I started as a part time youth minister.”

Cook was originally asked to be a part-time youth minister at Panama Baptist in 1991. He worked at a local campground before that, and remained at Panama Baptist for 20 years in various roles before he and his family moved to Portugal. The town they lived in was 745 years old, but did not have a church, so the Cook family started one.

He returned to the area in 2020 and to Panama Baptist, but in a different role.

Currently he is co-pastor at the church with Joel Hart. Cook’s focus is on vision and discipleship and he oversees strategic direction, vision, mission and the values for the church.

“I help create processes that help people live out their faith at home, work and school,” Cook said. “I preach 50% of the time and I am paid to pray. I actually made that a requirement when I started, because I have seen God do too many amazing things to not think it is important to pray.”

Cook added that he and Hart split a lot of the work, and that he thought being co-pastors was unique because he did not hear about many other churches having that, instead having administrative assistants and other similar leadership roles.

He added that since beginning as a youth pastor, God has changed his heart over time.

“I have a love for people,” Cook said. “I enjoy teaching but I want to teach things that will last forever. I want to teach things that matter for your whole life and the life to come.”

As a pastor, Cook said his main two jobs are to honor God and help people. He said that his job is to help his church live out their faith when not in the building. He referred to people who live their faith but who are not pastors as “lay heroes”.

“I use an aircraft carrier metaphor, in that for the aircraft soldiers come back and fuel here and go back out into battle,” Cook said. “The battle is out there, an example being as parents we have to teach our kids to know Jesus. I am an officer on an aircraft and I serve the soldiers who are doing battle.”

Cook said pastors are important because these lay heroes are important, God is important and wanting to introduce people to God is important. Passing on the knowledge of God is something that Cook said the church wants to get better at.

“As a church we want to get better at what we do and we are especially passionate about passing on the knowledge of God to our kids and those who may not be in church but open to it,” Cook said. “I want us to find creative ways to do that.”

Cook added that he wanted to think of ways to connect people to the church using VR, and find other non-traditional ways to pass on the knowledge of God while making more lay heroes.

Overall, he said being a pastor is his way of reflecting on his beliefs.

“I have gone through several seasons of questions and doubts and at the end of every one of those seasons my faith has come out still intact,” Cook said. “The shock is that I have come out with another reason to believe in the God of the Bible. I think people sometimes think that pastors only say what they say because they are pastors and they are paid. It’s actually the opposite. Pastors say what we say because we believe those things.”