Rev. John Haney has been in the ministry 46 of his 73 years, but he is no longer active as a pastor. He plans to stay that way for at least the next 20 years, and he fully expects to be around at age 93.
“I plan to,” he declared without hesitation recently. “My mother died four years ago at 97. My dad died in 2011 at 91, and my granddaddy on my mother’s side lived to be 93. My dad had nine siblings. Out of nine, five of them lived into their 90s.
“I did a funeral for one of my aunts a couple of years ago who was 100. I did the funeral for her sister, who was 99. And my dad’s oldest brother lived to be 99. And then his last living sibling turned 95 the last day of last year.”
Only time will tell, Haney mused as he began to share his life story. At the outset, he acknowledged that as a youngster in Buford, he had a problem with school.
“The only thing I ever wanted out of high school was out,” he said. “I didn’t do well in my 10th and 11th grades. I liked the 10th grade so much I did it again,” he chuckled.
Haney recalled an incident in the 11th grade when he cursed out the teacher. He went to the assistant principal’s office and told him what he had done.
“I sat in his office during that class period every day the next week, and then he and the principal flipped a coin to see who was going to apply the board of education to my seat of knowledge,” he grimaced. “The principal won out, so I got 10 licks looking at the assistant principal on the other side of his desk.”
That same assistant principal, however, helped Haney.
“He got me into auto mechanics. I loved it, loved working with my hands. I ended up rebuilding the engine in his car, rebuilt the transmission, and rebuilt the exhaust system.”
It was about that same time that Haney started changing his focus somewhat.
“The beginning of my 11th-grade year, I started attending a youth group at a church, and, interestingly enough, they met on Saturday night. I mean, you couldn’t get a youth group today to meet on a Saturday night for the love of money.”
Haney recalled a time when that church held what was termed a lay witness mission, when the youth met for a weekend. He didn’t attend, but some of those that did came up to him later.
“They said two things to me I’d never heard. First of all, that God loved me. I always pictured God during that time as a big man carrying a big stick. ‘And I am going to get you in line if I have to.’ The other thing they said to me was, ‘I love you’, and I’d never heard that before either. Never heard it from my mom and dad,” Haney confessed.
It was about a year later — after episodes that included a total blackout and what he termed his first authentic prayer — that Haney made the decision that ultimately changed his life.
“My senior year I became a Christian, and it changed my whole world, changed my whole outlook.”
Haney decided to enter a tech school when he graduated, but that did not last long. He started contemplating his future.
“I could not focus on my school work for struggling with my call to the ministry,” he explained. “I went to work at Winn Dixie in order to save money to go to school in the Fall. I had no intention to work long because I had made up my mind to go to school to prepare for the ministry.”
Haney talked with his pastor, who counseled him and assisted him in his quest. He was finally accepted into Reinhardt College. “The interesting thing is I never took an SAT. Don’t even know that I would have passed it.”
Haney may have tried to do too much. He moved off campus, got a job, took night classes, and worked as a Youth Minister.
“I got burned out. I was going to school two nights a week after working all day, and I just quit. And,” Haney added, “nobody told me I needed to drop the classes, so my GPA dropped to 1.7.”
Haney ultimately ended up in Colquitt as a summer youth worker and managed to get back into school at LaGrange College in 1976.
“Put my nose to the grindstone,” he said. “Made Dean’s List three quarters in a row.” He got his GPA up to 2.3, “just over the threshold to be able to graduate. And, I got into Emory by the skin of my teeth and by the Grace of God.”
Haney stayed busy while in the seminary, serving three churches in West Georgia, “driving 68 miles one way, four days a week.” He graduated from the Candler School of Theology in May of 1983 with a Masters of Divinity degree.
Two weeks after graduation, Haney and Gale Wood were married. They had met in Roopville while he was serving churches in West Georgia. She was still in school at the time.
“After she graduated from high school, we went out a couple of times and started dating,” Haney recalled,” … And dated a year before we got married.” The Haneys have been married nearly 43 years and have a daughter, Beth, and son, Matthew.
As a Methodist minister, Rev. Haney was subject to being transferred periodically. From 1983, two weeks after his wedding, until 1997, he served in no less than six churches before he was sent to Jones County.
“We moved to Gray from Macon in 1997, becoming pastor of Gray and Clinton,” Haney shared.“It was an exciting time because Gray/Jones County was growing by leaps and bounds.The churches grew and became involved in a number of ministries in the community.Gray grew from 350 members to 1,050 when I left. Clinton had 72 members when I came; they had 140 when I left.
“Not that I had anything to do with it,” he added quickly. “Happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
Haney expressed his gratitude for their first experience in Jones County.
“Both of our children graduated from high school here.It was a great place to raise our family. In 46 years in the active ministry, it was 10 of my best.The citizens of Gray and Jones County embraced us and loved us far more than we were deserving.”
Haney left Jones County in 2007 when he was sent to Savannah, where he served for 11 years. He contemplated his next move as he neared 65 and possible retirement.
“Gail and I began to talk about where do we retire? You know, when you grew up in North Georgia, and yet you’ve lived in South Georgia for 40 years, where do you go? So, one day I gave her a map of Georgia, and I told her to list 10 places that she thought she might like to retire. I would list ten, and we would sit down and look at them.”
Four possibilities surfaced: Gray, Forsyth, Peachtree City, and Woodstock. Haney explained the decision.
“We rode around Woodstock with my best friend, who lives there, and decided we didn’t want to be in that much traffic. So I finally said to Gail, ‘You know what? We’ve got some great connections in Jones County. I don’t want to be in the way of the present pastor at the Methodist Church. But, both children graduated from high school here. This is a place they know as home.’” The Haneys looked and looked and finally found what they wanted and purchased their present home in 2015. They moved back in 2018.
Haney decided against retiring. “I found out that Pitts Chapel was coming open. I knew some of the folks there. So I said to the district superintendent, ‘Move me there.’” The minister served at Pitts Chapel for five years and fully retired from the conference in 2023.
Despite that ‘retirement,’ Haney has clearly been busy. He is a chaplain for both the Jones County Sheriff’s Dept. and Hart’s Mortuary. He has been an attendant at the funeral home since he moved back here, and he has been a bailiff in Jones County courts for eight years.
The retiree is also a representative for a tour company whose president was a friend of and guide for Haney in Israel in the late 1990s.
“What I try to do is to encourage, especially pastors, to travel. And help them to put together tours to Israel, Greece, Turkey, Alaska, England, a lot of biblical tours.”
Haney himself is not going to sit still. He and his son took a skiing trip when he turned 60 and planned to do another at 70. However, he broke his right foot in his mid-60s, and Gale wouldn’t approve a trip then.
“She said it’s still too early yet,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Ok, so when I turn 80, you are going to send me on a ski trip. If one of the Popes can do it, I can do it.’ So, I am going skiing when I am 80.”
