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Friends United Meeting |
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April 2005
By Kerensa Edinger
In June 2005, Dave and Deb Phillips will complete their 30th year of ministry at Wabash Friends Meeting, Indiana. In a telephone interview, Dave described how his journey began and how his call to ministry had shaped his life.
Phillips had not originally intended to be a pastor. He had trained to be an elementary school teacher, but taught for only a year before he decided to change the direction of his life.
“My [teaching] colleagues found out I was a Christian and started asking me all these questions about the Bible so I just quit and went to get a Master’s in Bible,” Phillips said. He began his Master’s degree at Columbia Bible College, now Columbia International University. He took courses in anthropology, psychology and church history, but no divinity-based classes. “I wasn’t interested in theology…even though I ended up studying it,” Phillips said, adding, “I didn’t go there to be a pastor, so I didn’t take any classes to be a pastor.”
While enduring diffi cult circumstances and health issues both with his family and personally, Dave found himself struggling with God in a state of despair and wrath.
“Out of that depression and anger at God, I received my call to pastor,” Phillips said. He began his ministry in 1971 at Farmland Friends Meeting, Indiana and pastored there for four years. Phillips credits Farmland for laying the foundation for his future ministry. “Farmland really helped shape me. I learned a lot those fi rst few years there,” Phillips said. Phillips began pastoring at Wabash Friends Meeting in June 1975. Over the years, Wabash has gone from one meeting for worship to three. Two are more formal and traditional programmed services and one is a more contemporary (“I hesitate to use that word,” Phillips said) style of worship, with a worship band and the service simplifi ed to music, open worship and a message.
Some members were resistant to the changes at fi rst, but Phillips knew that change was necessary to the success of his ministry at Wabash. “You know, staying in one place as long as we have, I have to grow as a person, I have to keep growing. You can’t stay the same,” he said.
Other changes in the ministry at Wabash included expansion and shifts in focus. After a speaker came to speak about his struggles with addiction, Wabash Friends reacted powerfully to meet the needs of those who might also be suffering. “[The speaker’s] message had really impacted our church and caused kind of a ministry shift that led to counseling and eventually a Day of Healing in our counseling center,” Phillips said. The demand for specialized counseling grew so great that Phillips hired someone specifi cally for that job. “I just couldn’t do it anymore and still be pastor,” he explained.
The meeting based its counseling services on “the Quaker insistence of ministry to the whole person: emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually,” Phillips said. The meeting also added emphasis to its children’s ministry and to leadership development.
Having reached his 30th year of ministry in the same place, Phillips is thinking of the future of the meeting. “I think the thing we’re looking at with Wabash Friends is how far do we expand the ministry, and part of that is developing leaders. But I think the emphasis in the last few years from the purely practical standpoint is how much energy do I have left, where should I be putting this energy.”
“A major factor in our long tenure,” he states, “is the pastoral and support staff. I could not have survived and grown without them. They are such an important part of the ministry team.”
Dave and his wife, Debbie, met at a camp for inner city kids near New York City in 1967, even though she was from Huntington, Indiana, 30 miles from Dave’s home. Debbie was on the full-time staff of Children’s Bible Fellowship. They were married August 24, 1968 at Jonesboro Friends Church, Indiana. They have one son, Michael, who is married to Natalie and lives in Apple Valley, California; and two grandchildren, Jedediah (8) and Carolina (7).
Phillips credits his success at Wabash Friends Meeting to “God in His sovereignty and his goodness,” and to the “strong, really strong, wonderful people” who belong to the meeting and have supported the ministry of the meeting throughout the years. “The church has not only supported me in ministry but has freed us to minister in the community.”
Kerensa Edinger is an editorial intern for Quaker Life. She is studying in Quito, Ecuador in a Bilcot College exchange term.