My church at the time, Syracuse Alliance Church, knew me to be a man who after losing everything, found God in his search for the purpose of life. Through the church I took exhaustive Bible study courses while it offered me first-month’s rent and a security deposit on an apartment and jobs with church members to get me back on my feet financially.

After several years more contented than I ever was before, I met my wife Kim, who urged me to pursue the ministry. After engaging in three separate master’s degree programs, including a semester at a brick-and-mortar seminary, I still hadn’t found a way to secure his critical piece of my background to give finding a ministry position more feasible. Finally, on my fourth attempt, I found a program that would work -- a program I’m still involved with today.

While in that program, my mentor received a call from a struggling church seeking a pastor. This call came in within a month of my mentor telling me a ministry position for a divorced man with no experience in his 50s was a long shot, to say the least. Regardless, he gave the church my name.

I applied for the position at Westside Community Chapel (WCC) and filled its pulpit several times over the next 18 months, but always received an encouraging but carefully worded “nice hearing from you” in response. Since leaving Lockheed, I’d had seven jobs in 14 years, including in communication, education, food service, retail and as a private contractor. But when I’d found myself unemployed again, I took a more desperate step with WCC: I offered to be its part-time pastor for a wage that wouldn’t even make me ineligible for unemployment benefits. WCC, praise the Lord, was at the time as desperate as I was, and an arrangement was reached to make me its interim pastor.

Four years later, WCC is about the same size, but sealed as a family in Christ pursuing more learning and blessing for itself and anyone who will allow it to reach them for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ. We’re an evangelical church in a relatively remote location near the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency (OCRRA) facility in Camillus, housed in the former Amboy Elementary School building.

WCC has reached out through movie nights, flea markets, Divorce Care and other means to serve as the area’s only evangelical church. Our mission is to maintain a 100-percent devotion to God’s Word through study, practice and teaching, just as Ezra did in the book we’re studying now.

It is our joy to minister to others through this wonderful facility God has given us.