Warsaw Community Church Founding Pastor Denny Wilson will give his last sermon Sunday before retiring after over 30 years in ministry.
“I didn’t grow up in a Christian home. I didn’t grow up going to church. When I was in college, I accepted Christ. And shortly after that, graduated in 1980, I started to feel a call to ministry. Got married and a week later, I started seminary at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ohio,” Wilson said, noting he was always curious and was always a seeker.
He said he thinks God planted a seed in him in middle school. He thinks he always believed in God but never really understood “you enter into a relationship with Him and you accept him as your Savior and the Bible’s your guide.” He thinks it was in college in 1979 when he made the full surrender.
Wilson said he is in his 32nd year in ministry, starting in 1993. He served three years in a Brethren church in Dayton, Ohio. He then came out to pastor at North Winona Church of the Brethren for seven years.
He started WCC in 1993 at Harrison Elementary School.
“I spent 10 years pastoring in good churches, both traditional. But I just felt there were a whole bunch of people in this community that hadn’t given up on God, but they’ve given up on church for a whole variety of reasons,” he said.
He wanted to do something different and create a church where people can come as they are and don’t have to dress up. They were singing more contemporary music, which a lot of churches weren’t doing at the time. Wilson also spoke about grace and the love of God.
“This church is built on the mantra of grace and truth are inseparable,” he said.
WCC spent about three years at Harrison Elementary before moving to McClain Auditorium. Wilson said the church grew a little bit while at Harrison, leaving with about 150 people. When at McClain, they roped off about half the auditorium. Within four years, the church had four services.
They realized they needed a bigger facility. They made an agreement to meet at Lakeview Middle School and the first Sunday they met at the school was the Sunday after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“And church just exploded. I mean 300 or 400 people new showed up. So we’ve never been able to fit everybody,” he said.
WCC was at Lakeview for five or six years and had three or four services and were using 25 or 26 classrooms to set up and tear down every week.
Knowing there wasn’t another place big enough for the church to rent, church staff reluctantly decided to build their own church. The church moved into its current County Farm Road location in March 2005.
“It’s been an amazing journey,” Wilson said.
Wilson said, over the years, WCC has moved away from being a “seeker church,” which tries to bring in people who weren’t church type of people. He said WCC still wants that, but they’ve moved more to an equipping church over the last 10 years so the church can help people mature in their faith in Christ so they can go ahead and reach out to people where they work, live and play.
“And we’ve really seen that change and it’s been pretty exciting to see that happen,” Wilson said.
Wilson said WCC probably has a couple thousand people attend services and is probably one of the biggest churches in the county.
“I think Kosciusko County, this whole area - Warsaw, Winona Lake - has a long history of Christianity with Billy Sunday and Billy Graham and the Prophecy Conferences and Grace College. And most of it has been great. But I also think there’s been a lot of legalistic religion. I think the county was ready for grace, to hear a message that God loves you, he’s not mostly disappointed in you, but he actually loves you. And I was pretty relentless in preaching that message. And so, I think people were hungry for that,” Wilson said.
He was senior pastor until two years ago, when he passed that title on to Todd Gerst, who was a longtime missionary.
“But as a senior pastor for 30 years, I did the majority of the teaching, the majority of the preaching on Sunday mornings, led the staff, did a of funerals, weddings, visits, counseling, a lot of typical things pastors do. But we had a larger staff that could help with those things, too,” he said, noting it’s been a blessing.
For the past two years, he’s been able to focus more on the pastoral side of the church. He has been the primary teacher until now.
When asked why he decided to retire, Wilson said he’s been thinking about it.
“I started pastoring when I was 25 and, for some reason, I had a goal in mind I was going to pastor until I was 68. But I think more than that, I think it became obvious that it was time. And about a year ago, I kind of felt God say this is your last year being a full-time pastor here,” Wilson said.
He and wife Cookie have children and grandchildren in Denver, Colo.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Indiana and he wants to have more time to spend with his family.
Wilson said he thinks God still has work for him to do, part-time. Nothing is set in stone.
“We’re taking six months off to relax and do some traveling and spend time with our kids and grandkids,” he said.
He said he never wanted to be the person who stayed too long.
He believes the leader should leave the church better than the way he found it and he believes he has achieved that goal, noting he thinks the church is healthier than it’s ever been.
On Sunday, Wilson plans on preaching on the goodness of God.
The sermon is going to be the story of how God affected his life and the choices God made for him, which he said he’s grateful for.
“And I think I want to conclude I think God has always seen a better version of myself than I’ve seen of myself and it’s made me want to show people a better version of Him than they often see and I want to leave the congregation with that challenge,” he said.