To Whomever It May Concern (or not),
I am now pushing 90 years of age and some days I feel even older. The last few days I have been hoping it would be my turn to go to Heaven. My dear wife Shirley, of just short of 60 years of marriage, has gone there without me, leaving me with heaviness of heart and extreme loneliness. (Every night as I get in bed I tell her good night and that I still love her and miss her daily...and she never answers me! It upsets me...but maybe she is just too busy!? Honestly, I just don't know what she and others in Heaven are actually doing...) Oh well, I guess I will soon find out.
I am having severe breathing issues and some days, I am very weak. I just pray the Lord will push my moving date up on His calendar. In the meantime I am staying rather busy with preaching and teaching in churches and I am also teaching (via ZOOM) a group of preacher boys & men about the qualifications to be a pastor for the Harbor Baptist Church in Hainesport, NJ, where the pastor is Patrick Higgins. I am honored to continue to stay busy and this Sunday night (10/1/23) I will be preaching in my home church (Straightway Baptist in Lawrenceville, NJ) for Pastor Louis Guarneri in the PM service and finishing up a 5 part Marriage Seminar. (You can tune in on YouTube, if interested, or go to my website and read the printed version: pastorpaulfedena.weebly.com - created by brother Rob Maden)
The Lord has been so good to me and my dear wife over these many years (44+ as pastor of 4 churches). Each church experienced great growth, in spite of me. The first was a student pastorate for 2 years in Walton, NY (Pinesbrook Community Church, which we led to become Pinesbrook Baptist Church. Shirley and I and our first baby Crystal, would drive to the church about 60+ miles on Sat. to do calling and preach and teach all day Sunday and then drive back to Baptist Bible Seminary in Johnson City, NY late on Sunday night when I would have to prepare for Monday AM classes and go to work at IBM in the parts department every evening.
After graduation I received a call to 4 different churches in NY state (brrr!) to the Calvary Baptist Church in DeRuyter, a summer resort town due to the beautiful lake there for summer vacationers. God wonderfully blessed that ministry with growth and spiritual health.
Then I received a call to pastor the Calvary Baptist Church in Glen Burnie, MD (south! AMEN!). I pastored that church through a difficult church split due to the former pastor's stubbornness, etc. While there Shirley and I took a train (!) and attended my first "Pastor's School" under Dr. Jack Hyles in Hammond, Indiana. I received sound doctrine in college, but little practical experience. There I got the practical side of the ministry. Dr. Hyles would warn all the attending preachers to return to their churches and put into practice what we had learned, but to simply feed our churches "one spoonful at a time". I, instead, gave them the entire bottle of spiritual medicine in one large dose! It worked miracles there and the church mushroomed. We built a baptismal pool (in the beautiful & fairly new building!), started a bus ministry, a Christian day school and started an aggressive soul-winning outreach!
Next we were called to 2 different churches. #1 was in Des Moines, Iowa with 1 bus route, about 300 members, a beautiful octagonal building, a radio broadcast and an assistant pastor. It looked like a done deal. But in the meantime, Faith Baptist Church in Fairless Hills, PA also extended a call to us. When I went there to preach just to fill the pulpit we only had 22 in attendance, the small building was in shambles, dirty and the former pastor was a 5 point Calvinist, and no one had walked the aisle for any reason during his 7 year tenure. After much prayer and soul searching, Shirley and I made the decision to go there instead of Iowa???? I had asked the Lord for at least one convert in my first service as pastor. A middle aged man walked in and sat in the last row. When I gave the invitation he raised his hand and after the service I took him into my office and led him to Christ. Praise the Lord! For the first several months our hearts were still rooted in Glen Burnie, MD. Finally I was asked to do "Gospel Magic" for an AWANA rally back in Glen Burnie and while there I realized that they were no longer "my people" and went back to Fairless Hills and apologized to the congregation and that from that point on, I would be THEIR PASTOR!
They had never had a VBS and I announced that I wanted to do so that summer (I came there in January, 1971) and that we could blitz the area with flyers and rent a bus from the local Christian School. We did so and by the last day of the VBS we had 97 riders!!! That Friday night we invited the parents to come and 3 parents got saved! I then told the deacons that we should buy that bus and start a bus ministry. One of the deacons (Mr. Bob McLintock) and I went to Thomas Rd. Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA, under Dr. Jerry Falwell, for a Bus Conference where the guest speaker was Dr. Jim Vinyard. That deacon and I returned home excited, we purchased that bus and we started the first of 14 bus routes.
My best friend Brother Herb Brail and I met the first day we enrolled in Seminary, and he was pastoring at the time in Iowa and was holding outdoor drive-in services on Sunday nights in his church parking lot. I presented the idea to our deacons since we had a 13 acre field in back of our church parking lot, and in spite of some objections among the deacons (mosquitos, teens in the back seat of cars, etc.) , the oldest deacon (Mr. Doug Scarborough), said it might be a great way to reach the unchurched and unsaved in our community and that we should try it. We began that Memorial Day weekend and for the next six years we held Drive In Services every Sunday night until Labor Day weekend. They were great and many received Christ.
We decided to reach a high attendance day running all our buses and have McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken after the service. We labeled it "Old Fashioned Sunday" and had a barbershop quartet, a unicycle, and even rented a double decker bus on one bus route. Mr. and Mrs. Mike and Sylvia Gross were the driver and Bus Captain and they ran their bus and the double decker bus and had 215 riders on that big day. The total was over 1200 in attendance and a young man (Brother Ron Barber) came and got saved that day and later went to Chattanooga, TN to attend Tennessee Temple College under Dr. Lee Roberson. Upon graduation he called me and asked about a position as a youth pastor. We called him later to do so.
We had our ups and downs and due to enacting biblical church discipline (which no church seems to do these days!), we did lose some members who thought we were too harsh. One involved a former youth pastor who engaged in an adulterous affair with a young lady in the church with a subsequent abortion. He was a very charismatic personality and it hurt our youth group. We then called brother Rob Madden to fill that vacancy. He inherited a youth group who still had allegiance to the man we disciplined and subsequently he had a difficult ministry to win their confidence and to follow his leadership. He and his sweet and dear wife Brenda, were a blessing to Shirley and me and to our church family. We are still good friends and he has created and built a successful website for me representing my years in the ministry.
Unfortunately I had a stroke that paralyzed my entire left side for about 2 months, then I had quadruple heart bypass surgery, several mini-strokes, and decided that it was time to retire from the pastoral ministry. We had no idea how we would survive financially, but the Lord has supplied our needs and kept us in teaching and preaching in "on the road" ministries from Penna. to California and even some foreign countries. (Along with the above health issues I have had Tourette's Syndrome most of my life... fortunately it only involves bodily twitching and not verbal cursing, etc. which some experience.)
Shirley and I invested our lives in God's service and true to His promise He has wonderfully blessed us and our 4 children and their families over the years. Shirley was saved in a Gospel preaching church in the Chester, PA area at age 8 and almost immediately began playing the piano in churches. She only took one year of piano lessons and could play by ear and was a wonderful wife and "pastor's assistant". I didn't get saved until I was 22 years of age. Evangelist Oliver B. Greene of Greenville, SC rarely came north, but he held a large crusade in the area I grew up in outside of Chester, PA. When I registered my decision with a young lady, she caught my eye. I later learned that she played the piano at Youth For Christ rallies every Sat. night, and so I started attending there. I also found out that they held a little staff prayer meeting on Friday nights, so I began attending that as well so I could see and be near her. Shortly after, I left the U.S. Navy Reserve after 6 1/2 years and joined the Army. I was sent to Germany in 1957. We had never dated, but I wrote to her and we began a 2 year correspondence and "courted" by mail. We were married about a year after I returned to the States...and we - having 4 children and 4 God blessed ministries humbly say THANK YOU LORD!
Pastor (emeritus) Paul C. Fedena
P.S. If YOU haven't trusted Christ as your Savior, repent of your sins and call upon Him and you too will be guaranteed a place in Heaven after you leave this life on earth. See you in Heaven!
GIFTS GALORE: Upon reflecting on the above I realized a great omission regarding family members. Shirley and I gave 4 gifts to this world, named Crystal, Dawn, Daniel and Dean. They in turn gave Shirley and me many gifts. Crystal and her husband Jerry Lefevers gave us Paul, Jason, Stephanie and Stephen. They in turn gave us our great grand-children through Paul & Sarah Lefevers: Amelia and Jack & Julia, the twins. Jason Lefevers and his wife Sara gave us Chase. Dawn & Steve Roy presented us with their gifts: Justin who married Stephanie - Alexandra, married to Trevor Keena, and Westley. Stephanie and Andrew Sims gave us three precious girls: Kenzie, Hannah and Ariana. Stephen and Linda Lefevers have given us Becca, Crystal and Nicole. Daniel and his wife, Amy presented us with two more precious gifts: Taylor & Dylan. Our son Dean (now in Heaven) and his wife gave us Mickey and Dean, Jr.
I am now pushing 90 years of age and some days I feel even older. The last few days I have been hoping it would be my turn to go to Heaven. My dear wife Shirley, of just short of 60 years of marriage, has gone there without me, leaving me with heaviness of heart and extreme loneliness. (Every night as I get in bed I tell her good night and that I still love her and miss her daily...and she never answers me! It upsets me...but maybe she is just too busy!? Honestly, I just don't know what she and others in Heaven are actually doing...) Oh well, I guess I will soon find out.
I am having severe breathing issues and some days, I am very weak. I just pray the Lord will push my moving date up on His calendar. In the meantime I am staying rather busy with preaching and teaching in churches and I am also teaching (via ZOOM) a group of preacher boys & men about the qualifications to be a pastor for the Harbor Baptist Church in Hainesport, NJ, where the pastor is Patrick Higgins. I am honored to continue to stay busy and this Sunday night (10/1/23) I will be preaching in my home church (Straightway Baptist in Lawrenceville, NJ) for Pastor Louis Guarneri in the PM service and finishing up a 5 part Marriage Seminar. (You can tune in on YouTube, if interested, or go to my website and read the printed version: pastorpaulfedena.weebly.com - created by brother Rob Maden)
The Lord has been so good to me and my dear wife over these many years (44+ as pastor of 4 churches). Each church experienced great growth, in spite of me. The first was a student pastorate for 2 years in Walton, NY (Pinesbrook Community Church, which we led to become Pinesbrook Baptist Church. Shirley and I and our first baby Crystal, would drive to the church about 60+ miles on Sat. to do calling and preach and teach all day Sunday and then drive back to Baptist Bible Seminary in Johnson City, NY late on Sunday night when I would have to prepare for Monday AM classes and go to work at IBM in the parts department every evening.
After graduation I received a call to 4 different churches in NY state (brrr!) to the Calvary Baptist Church in DeRuyter, a summer resort town due to the beautiful lake there for summer vacationers. God wonderfully blessed that ministry with growth and spiritual health.
Then I received a call to pastor the Calvary Baptist Church in Glen Burnie, MD (south! AMEN!). I pastored that church through a difficult church split due to the former pastor's stubbornness, etc. While there Shirley and I took a train (!) and attended my first "Pastor's School" under Dr. Jack Hyles in Hammond, Indiana. I received sound doctrine in college, but little practical experience. There I got the practical side of the ministry. Dr. Hyles would warn all the attending preachers to return to their churches and put into practice what we had learned, but to simply feed our churches "one spoonful at a time". I, instead, gave them the entire bottle of spiritual medicine in one large dose! It worked miracles there and the church mushroomed. We built a baptismal pool (in the beautiful & fairly new building!), started a bus ministry, a Christian day school and started an aggressive soul-winning outreach!
Next we were called to 2 different churches. #1 was in Des Moines, Iowa with 1 bus route, about 300 members, a beautiful octagonal building, a radio broadcast and an assistant pastor. It looked like a done deal. But in the meantime, Faith Baptist Church in Fairless Hills, PA also extended a call to us. When I went there to preach just to fill the pulpit we only had 22 in attendance, the small building was in shambles, dirty and the former pastor was a 5 point Calvinist, and no one had walked the aisle for any reason during his 7 year tenure. After much prayer and soul searching, Shirley and I made the decision to go there instead of Iowa???? I had asked the Lord for at least one convert in my first service as pastor. A middle aged man walked in and sat in the last row. When I gave the invitation he raised his hand and after the service I took him into my office and led him to Christ. Praise the Lord! For the first several months our hearts were still rooted in Glen Burnie, MD. Finally I was asked to do "Gospel Magic" for an AWANA rally back in Glen Burnie and while there I realized that they were no longer "my people" and went back to Fairless Hills and apologized to the congregation and that from that point on, I would be THEIR PASTOR!
They had never had a VBS and I announced that I wanted to do so that summer (I came there in January, 1971) and that we could blitz the area with flyers and rent a bus from the local Christian School. We did so and by the last day of the VBS we had 97 riders!!! That Friday night we invited the parents to come and 3 parents got saved! I then told the deacons that we should buy that bus and start a bus ministry. One of the deacons (Mr. Bob McLintock) and I went to Thomas Rd. Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA, under Dr. Jerry Falwell, for a Bus Conference where the guest speaker was Dr. Jim Vinyard. That deacon and I returned home excited, we purchased that bus and we started the first of 14 bus routes.
My best friend Brother Herb Brail and I met the first day we enrolled in Seminary, and he was pastoring at the time in Iowa and was holding outdoor drive-in services on Sunday nights in his church parking lot. I presented the idea to our deacons since we had a 13 acre field in back of our church parking lot, and in spite of some objections among the deacons (mosquitos, teens in the back seat of cars, etc.) , the oldest deacon (Mr. Doug Scarborough), said it might be a great way to reach the unchurched and unsaved in our community and that we should try it. We began that Memorial Day weekend and for the next six years we held Drive In Services every Sunday night until Labor Day weekend. They were great and many received Christ.
We decided to reach a high attendance day running all our buses and have McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken after the service. We labeled it "Old Fashioned Sunday" and had a barbershop quartet, a unicycle, and even rented a double decker bus on one bus route. Mr. and Mrs. Mike and Sylvia Gross were the driver and Bus Captain and they ran their bus and the double decker bus and had 215 riders on that big day. The total was over 1200 in attendance and a young man (Brother Ron Barber) came and got saved that day and later went to Chattanooga, TN to attend Tennessee Temple College under Dr. Lee Roberson. Upon graduation he called me and asked about a position as a youth pastor. We called him later to do so.
We had our ups and downs and due to enacting biblical church discipline (which no church seems to do these days!), we did lose some members who thought we were too harsh. One involved a former youth pastor who engaged in an adulterous affair with a young lady in the church with a subsequent abortion. He was a very charismatic personality and it hurt our youth group. We then called brother Rob Madden to fill that vacancy. He inherited a youth group who still had allegiance to the man we disciplined and subsequently he had a difficult ministry to win their confidence and to follow his leadership. He and his sweet and dear wife Brenda, were a blessing to Shirley and me and to our church family. We are still good friends and he has created and built a successful website for me representing my years in the ministry.
Unfortunately I had a stroke that paralyzed my entire left side for about 2 months, then I had quadruple heart bypass surgery, several mini-strokes, and decided that it was time to retire from the pastoral ministry. We had no idea how we would survive financially, but the Lord has supplied our needs and kept us in teaching and preaching in "on the road" ministries from Penna. to California and even some foreign countries. (Along with the above health issues I have had Tourette's Syndrome most of my life... fortunately it only involves bodily twitching and not verbal cursing, etc. which some experience.)
Shirley and I invested our lives in God's service and true to His promise He has wonderfully blessed us and our 4 children and their families over the years. Shirley was saved in a Gospel preaching church in the Chester, PA area at age 8 and almost immediately began playing the piano in churches. She only took one year of piano lessons and could play by ear and was a wonderful wife and "pastor's assistant". I didn't get saved until I was 22 years of age. Evangelist Oliver B. Greene of Greenville, SC rarely came north, but he held a large crusade in the area I grew up in outside of Chester, PA. When I registered my decision with a young lady, she caught my eye. I later learned that she played the piano at Youth For Christ rallies every Sat. night, and so I started attending there. I also found out that they held a little staff prayer meeting on Friday nights, so I began attending that as well so I could see and be near her. Shortly after, I left the U.S. Navy Reserve after 6 1/2 years and joined the Army. I was sent to Germany in 1957. We had never dated, but I wrote to her and we began a 2 year correspondence and "courted" by mail. We were married about a year after I returned to the States...and we - having 4 children and 4 God blessed ministries humbly say THANK YOU LORD!
Pastor (emeritus) Paul C. Fedena
P.S. If YOU haven't trusted Christ as your Savior, repent of your sins and call upon Him and you too will be guaranteed a place in Heaven after you leave this life on earth. See you in Heaven!
GIFTS GALORE: Upon reflecting on the above I realized a great omission regarding family members. Shirley and I gave 4 gifts to this world, named Crystal, Dawn, Daniel and Dean. They in turn gave Shirley and me many gifts. Crystal and her husband Jerry Lefevers gave us Paul, Jason, Stephanie and Stephen. They in turn gave us our great grand-children through Paul & Sarah Lefevers: Amelia and Jack & Julia, the twins. Jason Lefevers and his wife Sara gave us Chase. Dawn & Steve Roy presented us with their gifts: Justin who married Stephanie - Alexandra, married to Trevor Keena, and Westley. Stephanie and Andrew Sims gave us three precious girls: Kenzie, Hannah and Ariana. Stephen and Linda Lefevers have given us Becca, Crystal and Nicole. Daniel and his wife, Amy presented us with two more precious gifts: Taylor & Dylan. Our son Dean (now in Heaven) and his wife gave us Mickey and Dean, Jr.
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