Mountain Ministry

<p>When I retired from engineering no one could have told me that I would enter the ministry. I had considered becoming a pastor many years earlier but dismissed the idea as being impractical. I had a wife and four small children to support and couldn’t see how I could possibly take off the requisite amount of time to study for the ministry so I continued to work as an engineer eventually earning a Doctor of Engineering Management degree.</p><p>I worked as an engineer in Chicago Pittsburgh and Morgantown WV where I served as a professor at West Virginia University and later as Executive Director of my professional society the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE International).</p><p>I took early retirement in 1993 and my wife Betsy and I moved to Granite Falls North Carolina where we became very active members of the Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdese NC and later the Fairview Presbyterian Church in Lenoir NC.</p><p>While at Fairview I learned about a program of the Presbytery of Western North Carolina to educate lay people to better serve Christ and I enrolled in the program. At that point I had no intention to become a pastor but I could feel God’s call and I resisted it.</p><p>The Presbytery’s program consisted of two years of classes on alternate Saturdays. The classes covered among many other things preaching and I got hooked. I couldn’t deny God’s call any longer. I went well beyond the requirements of the program then called the “School of the Laity” and purchased every book mentioned by the instructors even casually and voraciously read them.</p>