The Ups and Downs of Ministry

In October 1988 we moved to Asheboro, North Carolina, to pastor the Neighbors Grove Wesleyan Church. This was a big change in our life. Not only did we move 600 miles from the area where we had lived all our life, (Central and Southern Indiana) we left old friends behind, the legalism we had grown up with, and Naomi’s family. We did not know anyone in North Carolina, except Darrell’s family who lived in Salisbury and a couple ministerial friends who previously had moved to North Carolina. Immediately Darrell fell in love with the area, it took Naomi a while to adjust.

Neighbors Grove Church had been a leading Wesleyan Church in North Carolina but had fallen on some hard times. We plunged into our ministry there and the church began to take on new life. During our 6 years there the Sunday morning attendance increased from 140 to 210. The church built a new Family Life/Day Care Center. We built our first home to live in outside of a parsonage. During our years there we finally freed ourselves from the legalism we had always known. It had been a slow struggle. Always wanting to do what was right and the legalism so ingrained in us as the “only way” it had been painful and difficult to get free. Once free from the legalism we realized what bondage and suppression it had been. In our sixth year at Neighbors Grove we begin to experience difficulties with pastoral staff. During a time of tension and staff interference I made a hasty decision to resign. This was a decision I soon regretted and realized it was a mistake.

The year following us leaving Neighbors Grove was difficult. I was not able to find myself. We continued to live in the home we had built, did some pulpit supply, worked at a couple jobs, continued to look for a new pastorate.

In the summer of 1995 I accepted the call to pastor the Forest Hills Wesleyan Church in Evansville, Indiana, a move back to Southern Indiana. Again I made a bad decision. Forest Hills was a leading church in Southern Indiana and I thought this would be a good move for us. We sold our house and moved. I remember as we pulled out on the highway Naomi asked me, “do you think we will ever return to North Carolina”? Right then and there I should have stopped, and said "let’s don’t go", none of us really wanted to make the move. I had recently had a chance to go to another Wesleyan Church north of Greensboro and should have. We moved on to Evansville.

The Evansville Forest Hills Church was a good church, I tried to put myself into it. After we were there about six months, I looked at Naomi one day and said, I am not happy here, she was not either. Right away I made contact back in North Carolina hoping to find a pastorate there again.