Twenty Years Ago

From the June Newsletter:

Can it really be? Twenty years ago...I was much younger, much less gray. Cathy I had been married all of four years and I had spent all four of those years in seminary. I had been ordained Deacon a year before, an Elder's ordination was two years away. Graduation had finally arrived, and we were headed to Muncie to serve at High Street UMC as an associate pastor. Everything looked possible. Armed with this great knowledge I had received at Asbury Seminary, I was convinced that we graduates were going to win the world for Jesus.

Twenty years ago...we moved into our first parsonage. We had enough furniture to fill our one-bedroom, three-room apartment in Wilmore, but not nearly enough to fill a three-bedroom home. (My, how that has changed!) I was at the church about three weeks when I went off to senior high camp for a week, never having been to camp myself as a camper. That was an experience I will never forget.

Twenty years ago...I preached about once a month, learned ministry from a gifted senior pastor, met weekly with a bunch of youth who weren't that much younger than me, visited in the hospitals, and sought to serve God as best as I could. The world has changed, but my desire to see others draw closer to Jesus has not. In some ways, the world is more difficult even than it was twenty years ago...and in other ways, it's much more open. Jesus told his disciples centuries ago, "The fields are ripe for harvest..." (John 4:35). That's still true today, even if the "harvesting" isn't easy.

Twenty years ago...I had no idea what would come next. Twenty years or so from now, I will likely retire from active ministry. It's rather humbling to think I very well could be at the midpoint of ministry. I'm thankful for the ways God has used these last twenty years, but I'm also a bit eager to see what God has in store for the next twenty. And I'm grateful, at this point in the journey, to be serving with you. Wherever God leads us all in the next twenty years, I pray his kingdom will be more evident then than it is now, more people will know Jesus than do now, and that Portage will be forever changed because of the ministry of this church. And if that comes to pass, I will be grateful all over again.

I'll see you at the gratitude place on Sunday!

Pastor Dennis