I didn’t recognize the phone number that appeared in my voicemail notification, but as soon as I began listening to the recorded message, I knew the voice of my old friend Jim. We hadn’t seen him or his wife, Pat, for a few years, though Christmas letters and occasional e-mails kept us in touch. Jim’s brief, soft-spoken message was to let us know that his dear wife, Pat, had passed.
Pat was one of the first people our family met when we moved to the little community of Wayne, Illinois, in the mid-1990s, in part to help start a new church near there. Pat came to our front door one day as part of a community “welcome wagon” program, one we later learned she had started personally, in order to meet everyone she could who moved into the community.
After a brief conversation about local shopping and schools, and the presentation of a few brochures and coupons, Pat asked pleasantly, “Are you interested in finding a church in the area?” Grateful for the opening, I explained that we were actually part of a small group that hoped to reach out to the community and help start a new church nearby. Pat then shared that she too was a Christ-follower and promised to do what she could to help us.
Over the next few weeks, I learned what an understatement Pat’s promise of help really was. Once she got to know us better and learned more about the vision for our church, she shared with us that, for some time, she had been intentionally meeting people in the community and organizing them into local Bible studies.
The church Pat and Jim attended was almost 20 miles away, and most of the folks she was meeting through her Bible studies weren’t interested in driving that far to church. So she was glad to introduce us, and to help us invite those who didn’t have a church home to consider being part of our new church.
Before we met Pat, we had four families committed to starting a new church. Soon after we met Pat, we grew to over 20 families. Our first baptisms were in the swimming pool of one of those families, and others hosted our first small groups. They became our first children’s ministry leaders and some of our strongest workers and givers. When we began public worship services a few months later, many of the families to whom Pat introduced us became the core of a church plant that soon grew to about 200 weekly attenders.
In Acts 16, the Bible briefly describes Lydia, a God-fearing woman who gathered with other women for prayer by the river, outside the city gate of Philippi. When Paul and Silas arrived with the gospel message, they found quickly receptive hearts, and help for the new church they would plant and grow to love there, thanks to Lydia and the women who were already gathered by the river, seeking God and praying.
At Pat’s memorial service a few days after Jim’s phone call, I described her as a “community missionary,” who loved God, loved others even before she met them, and was personally responsible for countless people coming to Christ or connecting with a church.
One of the most prominent pictures on display at Pat’s memorial service was one of her sitting in a lawn chair beside a small creek that ran through their property. I thought to myself how appropriate that picture “by the river” was, for a modern-day Lydia named Pat. And I wondered what could happen if every church planter was blessed with the help of such a remarkable woman.
Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.