Will’s conversion experience, in a small church at the foot of a tall cliff in Yosemite National Park, infuses his work on the Church Health Team, an ad hoc group created last year to do long-range planning. Focusing on “Needs-based Evangelism,” the CHT aims to help our church become a more effective spiritual home for newcomers and for those already members of our congregation.
Will is one of the newest members of the CHT. He grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania, and after majoring in journalism at Bloomsburg University, his first job was at a local bank. He worked his way into the IT field, moving to Princeton for a new job. He married long-time PUMC member Sandra, joined the church, and serves on the finance committee.
Will had stayed away from church since age 10, when he managed to persuade his father that church attendance was unnecessary. “We had a very somber Lutheran pastor who as I remember preached a lot about hell, and not much about joy. And then my father died, which shook my faith in the goodness of God. I still believed in God, but I never prayed anything but ‘foxhole’ prayers. But I loved the outdoors, and I always sensed the Creator there.”
When Will met Sandra (a love match made on match.com), she brought him to a church service. “It wasn’t a bad experience,” he remembers, and “it came at a time where I was trying to decide for myself who God really was.” Alone on vacation a few weeks later, on the spur of the moment, he attended a tiny church in Yosemite, where the minister played the guitar and preached on the Gospel of John. “I realized that Jesus had done everything he could do for me to believe in Him, and that it was up to me to either believe -- or not believe. In that service, I accepted Jesus Christ as Lord.”
Will says he is really a shy person, and it’s not easy for him to strike up a conversation with people he’s not familiar with. “But my understanding is that we are saved only by having faith in what Jesus Christ did for us, and that we are commanded to find a way to reach out to those who do not know Jesus Christ. And as church members, we can encourage each other to follow Christ better.”
For the CHT, Will wants to focus on helping the church create “discipling paths” for people in all stages of their faith development. The other two areas of “Needs-based Evangelism” are clarifying the church’s mission and creating an atmosphere of “irresistible hospitality.”
