Vision Inspired Leadership

Leadership lessons learned from the Arcanum experience.

Valuable lessons were learned from the Arcanum experience that prepared me for what God would do later in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Arcanum posed a challenge of discipling seven families, all committed Christians, as we worked together to establish a church. We watched God supply our needs without our orchestrating how. In this small town of nine hundred people, we worked to establish pleasant relationships. We learned the importance of prayer. Our needs were often met at the last moment, just as Peter was released from prison the last moment in Acts 12. We learned the necessity of sacrifice of time and money. We learned the importance of personal evangelism, going house to house, and visiting the sick.

Early in our ministry in Arcanum, I invited Rev. James Gurley, my pastor in Gary, Indiana, to preach for a week of evangelistic meetings at the church. I said, "Jim show me how to tell people about Jesus Christ and their need to be saved. I'll line up the appointments all week. We'll call on people by day, and you can preach by night." I was desperate to learn how to lead people to Christ. We visited people telling them of the good news of salvation. The first Monday after Jim left Arcanum, I went out alone to visit Virginia Hart. She received the Lord into her life. Her children soon came to know Christ also.

Shortly thereafter, twenty adults and teenagers had received Christ, were baptized and were received into the church membership. Arcanum was my internship so to speak. After five years, the Lord called us to pastor at the Immanuel Baptist Church in Fort Wayne

READY TO GO, (Immanuel Baptist Church, Fort Wayne)

My wife, Davina, and I first became acquainted with Fort Wayne, by driving through the city from Ohio on the way to visit my parents in Gary, Indiana. Each time we drove through Fort Wayne I dreamed of a church-planting ministry in a city like this. I knew of the Reverend Carl Brown, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Fort Wayne, but had never met him.

In 1956 a search committee comprised of Dewey and Geraldine Roth and Marvin and Hazel Degitz, representing the Fort Wayne Immanuel Baptist Church dropped in on a Sunday morning in Arcanum, Ohio, to hear me preach. At lunch they asked if I'd be interested in moving to Fort Wayne and becoming pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church. That was in April and in July I was installed as pastor in Fort Wayne. Immanuel Baptist was about forty years old, ministering to three hundred adults and children.