Hi, church. In our 2025 Vision Sunday booklet that we handed out, there were a couple of different pages. One highlighted those who have not only been here for 15 years, and not only served for 15 years, but who have led various ministries. These are deacons. They have taught Sunday school. They started ministries, for at least 15 years. And then there is another page of leaders, the leadership changes that have happened within our church in the past year. So I want to talk through both of those, since this is our Vision Sunday. We just want to give honor to whom honor is due. Last year we honored our nursery coordinator, Carrie Rench. She had led the nursery for 18 years, and afterwards we thought, why do we have to wait until somebody is done to honor them? So there is this spread in the booklet we handed out that includes those two pages: the faithful for 15 years, and then the changes of leadership positions, of those who are steadfast and unmovable, according to our theme verse, 1 Corinthians 15:58.
Faithful for Fifteen Years
First, I want to mention Henry Ash. He first became a deacon in 2005 and has just been so faithful. He is rotated off right now, but he has been such a faithful man of God, and in that ministry, that position of deacon, he has been such a blessing in so many ways to our church. I appreciate him so very much. Nicole Burkholder has been our church pianist since the early ’90s. I do not know how early in the ’90s, but she was very young when she started taking lessons and playing for our church, all these years, and I appreciate her playing so much. She is just an excellent, excellent church pianist, probably one of the best church pianists out there, and I appreciate the music ministry of Calvary Baptist Church. Miss Marcela Esoy has been serving in our Sunday school for 17 years and loves those kids, loves giving herself to them. And then she has been filling in as one of those temporary secretaries: “If you can just cover us for a little while until we find somebody else.” I guess it has been over 10 years now that she has been doing that, and she is the absolute best person I have ever seen in the front office. I mean, she is incredible in temperament and in tenacity, and just such a wonderful person. I appreciate Miss Marcela so much. There was one who requested not to be named, threatened us not to name this person, and so we will just say, generally speaking, that our junior church for the little kids has been handled so very well for over 20 years, and we appreciate that very, very much. The Wrangles, Brother Sai and Miss Chris Wrangle: Brother Sai Wrangle has been involved in too many ministries to count. His background is just somebody who wanted to be a blessing to the church and be a right-hand man to my dad when he started the church. He started our discipleship and jail ministries and military ministries and security team. He just saw the need and took the lead. They came as charter members and stayed for the long haul, and they are still going strong. I appreciate them both so much. Chris Wrangle was church secretary for my dad for several years and is still our church clerk and still does discipleship, and it is like, you look around at where we are as a church, and it is built on the backs of those who are like the Wrangles. I just appreciate them so very much, steadfast and faithful, unmovable, and I love them dearly. My dad, our pastor emeritus, Pastor William Rench, has been continuing to teach the fellowship class and preaching regularly for us, just faithful to the Lord. My mom, Wendy Rench, has served in junior church and Sunday school every year since the beginning. I mean, as a church planter’s wife, she has been there all along the way, and she has been our church custodian, or janitor, as the official title, but I think that is just her way of keeping track of everything that is still going on at the church and having her hands in every corner of the church, and that is a great thing. I have appreciated her role so very much. Next is Nathan. He was taught by Randy Kaku to do the sound way back in the late ’90s, and he has been doing it ever since at our church and just does such a good job. He is the one I want on the soundboard for anything major that is happening, and he has trained several others along the way, and I appreciate his work there. And then, serving as teacher of the Lively Stones young families class, he did not quite make it; between him and Greg, I think they have been teaching for about 13 years, so that has not made it to the 15-year mark, but he has served in many other areas. And then, of course, we mentioned Carrie serving in the nursery for 18 years before that. Then Brother Pedro Sento first became a deacon here at Calvary Baptist Church in 2004 and has just been so faithful to the Lord, walking with Him ever since. I appreciate Brother Pedro so much. And Dr. Welsh is just the epitome of a servant. The word deacon is all about serving. He has been a deacon since 2006, off and on, and earlier this year I asked Dr. Welsh if he would consider being our grounds leader. Our church remembers Brother Baggley. He used to come with a couple of other retired men every single Thursday and trim the lawns and trim the trees, and in their retired years they just wanted to give themselves to make sure Calvary Baptist Church looked good. That is the comment we get from so many people when they walk up to our property: “Wow, is this new? It looks clean, and the grounds are so well kept.” Those first impressions are so important. So I gave Dr. Welsh a couple of weeks to pray about taking on the responsibility of being our lead groundskeeper. I wanted it to not just be that he was helping out the staff, but I wanted him to take the leadership, the ownership, of that ministry and commit to being the one who oversees the entire grounds, and this past year he took that on. Matter of fact, as I am recording this video, he is outside doing the lawns right now, and I appreciate that so much. And his wife, Christine: the Welshes, to me, have been there since I was two years old. Their son Ryan was my best friend growing up, so I was at their house all the time and saw their character. Wonderful, wonderful people. So the Welshes have been here since the ’80s. Mrs. Welsh began teaching kids on Wednesday nights in the old schoolhouse building, and then taught Sunday school, I believe for 17 years, and she has been teaching the Mary Hearts ladies’ class since about 2012, I believe it is. These folks are just an incredible testimony of steadfast, unmovable, faithful servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I love them so dearly. There are many others in the church who have been serving that long, and many others who have been leading other ministries for around that 10- or 12-year mark, and I believe that is a strength of a church, when people are settled in their faith. They are surefooted and stable, and we all need that. I mean, they are great examples for us.
Leadership Changes This Past Year
Now, we had a few leadership role changes this past year, with Brother Christian moving down to a church planter internship in San Diego. He had worked for such a long time to instill leaders in other areas, and he was doing many things, and our church volunteers and staff have just picked up the tasks and run and kept on running forward, and I appreciate our church for that. Brother Zach Roberts joined our staff the previous year, but he got married last year, and so now Shay Roberts has jumped in to do many of the graphics and social media and to help with the youth, now that Brother Christian is gone. She is doing such a good job already, and I am so thankful for her spirit. I mean, she is just on board, just so extremely pleasant, and she adds to Brother Zach’s ministries in ways we did not even know we were missing. It is so great to see them together. I just love it. I am telling you, we have great days ahead for our church because of Brother Zach and Miss Shay, and I am just so very excited. Another change this year is in our livestream leadership. Dea Good and Brandon Raman are kind of tag-teaming that, but especially Miss Dea is taking care of a lot of the coordinating and the scheduling and making sure the screens are up to date. She is also serving as choir secretary, organizing years of choir music, and she also came on as youth staff this year. So I just appreciate her willingness to coordinate all the volunteers and the screens, and just to do whatever needs to be done, seeing to the updates every week and making sure everything is ready to go. We are still working through who is going to be doing what and all that, but I appreciate that she is stepping up to the occasion and doing a good job. Brother Paul Haymon had been working with the ushers for a long time already, but then he agreed to oversee all the coordinating of it, and he is doing such a great job as well. They have this color-coded system for whose team it is, and they are always recruiting more guys to jump in and have this place to serve. If you want to serve, well, here is a great place: “We will schedule you next Sunday for being an usher,” that kind of thing. He handles all the last-minute shifting around. Recently we have had a lot of sickness in our church, and many people were missing, and it was like, “I do not know who is even left to usher after all the people who were out,” but Brother Paul made it happen. So I appreciate Brother Paul so much. I love his spirit, to serve and to get others involved. My son is on the list, and so my wife gets a text for the ushers from Brother Paul coordinating who it is that day, but he has always got something encouraging to say in the text message, always some Bible verse or something that encourages them in the Lord and reminds them about the spiritual nature of what they are doing, some kind of encouraging thought every week. So he is a great leader, and I appreciate Brother Paul taking over our usher ministry. Brother Emanuel Esoy was serving, and he was involved in the process of setting up our whole livestream, and I mentioned last Sunday, or maybe it was a couple of weeks ago, that he has already done so much with the livestream ever since taking over. He is just throwing himself into the work and coordinating and organizing the livestream room, and he is doing so much. I think he is doing too much at our church. We do not want any one person in the ministry every single service. We want them to be able to have a time in the service where they are just sitting and worshiping and not being distracted by the work they are called to do. So I would like to get Brother Emanuel even more help. I do not think it is good for someone to be serving every single service, and he has been in that room basically every week, and we want to try to help his director role be spread around. He has done so good. He is not only learning the system himself, but he is also training other people too, so I appreciate his leadership, not just his service, but his leadership. He is making it all happen without ever having to be asked. He is driven to do it. He is just making it happen, and what a great character. I appreciate Brother Emanuel so much, and that change happened just this year as well. Brother Rick Foss has been working with the security team for a few years now, and he and Brother Sai have coordinated some training over the years, but it was just more or less officially transitioned over to Brother Rick this past year in particular. I appreciate his law enforcement background and his help in making sure that we have people in place every single service for whatever might come up. This is anything from small disturbances, to patrolling the grounds through the services, to preparing in case we had an active shooter. We have an off-duty sheriff with us at every service, and that would be our law enforcement first responder, but the security team is also prepared all around the building, and Brother Rick Foss came into that more or less officially just this past year. Next is Brother Jared Burkholder. He was voted in at the last administration meeting as our children’s director, or our Sunday school superintendent, and he has been serving in the hallways of the kids’ wing every single week, all year, coordinating the substitute teachers, helping the teachers, loving the kids, and also keeping order back there. So I appreciate Brother Jared in his role. In many, many ways throughout our church’s history he has been so involved, and yet this is just another one of the steps he is taking, and I think working with kids is just such a great strength of his. I am just really looking forward to seeing what the future has for that. And last, I wanted to highlight our financial secretary, our church treasurer, Kelly Jones. She has faithfully served since Dan Colt moved back east, and this past year she and Sid sold their home, moved into a fifth-wheel trailer, and have been there for their kids. Praise the Lord, Dakota got married this past year. He is faithful in a church as a police officer in San Diego. Pastor Chris Chadwick goes on ride-alongs with him. He is the pastor of the church Dakota goes to, as well as the chaplain for the police department there, and he is with them all the time. And then Kelly’s son Anthony is stationed back here again, so the grandkids are closer by. They do not have to go out to Hawaii all the time to visit them. But especially this past year, it just became evident that Kelly wanted to be there with the grandkids and spend the time with them. So a few months ago she came to me and asked if it would be all right, since Miss Shay is here now, and she had extensive training doing the finances in a big church in Alabama where she was coming from, to transition the finances to Miss Shay. And I said I think that would work out. It would be according to the vote of the church, where Kelly would step down as the church financial secretary, or church treasurer, but she has been in the process for several months now of training Miss Shay on all the end-of-the-year wrap-ups, all the budget stuff, all the monthly reports, all the weekly reports. So this is a voted position, but if you would be open to Miss Shay becoming the new financial secretary, then this will be a part of our annual administration meeting coming up in just a couple of weeks. I just appreciate Kelly so much, her spirit and her kindness and her care, not just of the individual details of the numbers of our finances, but of the people they are connected to. That is what you want in a financial secretary, and she has done so well. I appreciate her very much. She has just been steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Such a blessing.
Faithful in the Little Things
Now, I wanted to take the time to actually go through all the people and talk specifically through that, because you might look at the sensational parts of life. You want the big moments, the big events, the moving of God, this emotional outpouring, and God might just be saying, “Well, hang on,” as in Mark 9:29: “And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” There are some simpler things we need to get taken care of first, God might be saying. We might want the big things, and I believe God wants to do some amazing things in our church, amazing things. I believe He can, and I believe He will. But if our character is not there in the little things, I do not think we can expect the outpouring of God until we have been steadfast, unmovable, faithful for a while. Our theme verse, 1 Corinthians 15:58, puts it like this: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” Well, God bless you as you go forward in 2025 for the Lord.
