40 Years, 40 Memories

Thinking about my retirement from Waterstone has brought times of reflection and reminiscing for Jan and me. In November, we plan to write our Grateful Goodbye but first, here are some memories from forty years of pastoring. Thanks for indulging us!

Fresh out of college in 1985, Jan and I served a church in Syracuse, New York for five years as Youth Pastor.

1. Most memorable moment from a youth missions trip was when one of our kids, a young man who was a sophomore in high school, proposed marriage to a Brazilian young woman in our missionary’s church youth group, complete with a ring. Jan and I found out about this from the young woman’s concerned parents.
2. Most memorable moment from a youth group game time was when a young man, for some unexplainable reason, decided to throw a basketball the length of the court. The ball hit Jan, who was walking laps with one of the kids, hit her square on the side of her head. I can still see the soles of her sneakers about a foot off the floor as she was knocked completely off her feet.
3. Most memorable moment while teaching was during a summer youth adventure to the Adirondack Mountains. While teaching, a skunk walked between tents to within five feet of where I was standing. What’s black and white and screams all over?
4. Most memorable season of pastoral care was a school year when we walked through an attempted suicide, an accidental gunshot emergency, a young woman in our group giving birth to her child, and a young man coming out. Ecclesiastes 1:9 as it relates to the volatility of youth.
5. A favorite moment was praying with a high school exchange student from Germany to receive Christ. He came at the beginning of the school year thinking that “church” meant an empty old building where old people went because they were scared to die. A couple months before he returned, he came to understand and trust the Person and work of Jesus Christ for salvation and gave him highest allegiance.

From 2003-2008, Jan and I served a church in Osterville, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.

6. My first three weeks “on the job” I sat in a Barnstable County courtroom as a civil trial against the church took place. Three women had sued the church for defamation after a misunderstanding with my predecessor and the elder team. The jury fined the church and the three women a dollar each. It made the papers all the way to Boston. During our entire time there, the three women showed up in front of our church every Christmas, Easter, and Fourth of July (a huge Sunday on the Cape) with large picket signs that said, “Liars.”
7. Best moment of godly bragging was when we would say to our Colorado friends, “Our church has the largest baptistery in the world.” It even had a name – the Atlantic Ocean. The trick to a seamless dunk was the timing between the waves. We called our baptism services “Beach Night.” They were beautiful in every way.
8. During our time at this church, we ran the Alpha Course (a course to introduce Jesus to people who do not yet know him) eight times, and we saw forty adults get baptized! What we will never forget was how the entire church owned this effort. For instance, a team of about twenty women and men committed to cooking weekly full course meals complete with silverware, china and folded cloth napkins. It demonstrated unbelievable love for our village.
9. A most surprising moment (though there were many moments like this in Osterville as the village is full of summer homes for the rich and famous) was when our church sponsored a 5K Jingle Bell Run in December. During the last mile, a woman caught up to me (I swear I was flying so I don’t know how she caught up to me), and we started to chat a bit. As we finished, I invited her into the church for hot chocolate (the race ended on Main Street in front of our building). As we talked, it came out she was the granddaughter of Walt Disney! I never saw her again, but she did take some literature, including the Jesus Story booklet. Come Holy Spirit.
10. A teachable moment happened while officiating a funeral. I began a prayer saying, “Our Father…” Immediately the entire audience, unprompted by me, finished the Lord’s Prayer aloud. Catholic country. They know how to pray.
11. A high and a low on the same day was during a Fourth of July celebration. Early in the morning, churches from all over the Cape gathered for an outdoor worship service where I preached to a crowd of over a thousand in a Hyannis park. The text was Luke 9 and the feeding of the five thousand! Later that morning, several clergy were invited to walk in a parade down Main Street Hyannis where we had orange peels thrown at us. Orange peels?
12. Most fun for a sports fan was being chaplain for our local team – the Cotuit Kettleers – in the Cape Cod Baseball Team. Every week I had the opportunity to share a devotional with the team! The League recruits the best college freshman and sophomores from around the country, and it’s the only amateur league that uses wooden bats. One out of every five players in Major League Baseball has played in the Cape Cod Baseball League. Go Kettleers!

Okay, now for our thirty years together at Waterstone… By the way, we would be happy to fill out any of these stories further for a cup of coffee.

13. My first job description included driving our old church van, affectionately called “Hobart,” to pick up children living in poverty on the streets of Englewood and bring them to our Sunday night AWANA (kids) program. I could not imagine better training for the ministry.
14. My first sermon at Waterstone was preached to an audience of one, our founding pastor Nick Lillo. Nick set the standard for preaching extremely high because the gospel of the kingdom deserves our most concentrated efforts.
15. Most memorable staff meeting was in June 1991. We were deep into a meeting, and the church phone kept ringing and ringing (this was before cell phones). Finally, our nursery director said to me, “Larry, isn’t Jan two days past her due date? You’d better get that.” Sure enough, Ethan would arrive soon!
16. For six years, Waterstone met in a movie theater. Proof of God’s existence was that during those six years the theater, for liability reasons, never gave us a key. We had to rely on whatever young associate manager drew the short straw to meet the set-up team at 6 o’clock in the morning to let us in. We never missed a morning!
17. Some of you might recall that dramatic skits were a staple in worship during the '90s. On one particular Sunday, we started the service with a skit where guys dressed in combat fatigues ran into the theater from the back shouting at the top of their lungs. I cannot remember why or what the skit was about. What I do remember was my poor Grandma happened to be visiting from PA that morning, and she let out the loudest, longest, purest scream. I can still hear it. Shout to the Lord, all the earth!
18. Most memorable gifts were given to Jan and me when we bought our first home. Several people from Waterstone gave us money for the down payment. The house was an extreme fixer-upper—mice infested and sorely neglected. For over a year, people from Waterstone showed up to work on our house each week.
19. Most memorable Christmas Eve services were before we had our own building. We would rent out the Town Hall in old Littleton. If you’ve ever been in there, you know it seats maybe 200 people. The whole atmosphere on Main Street outside the theater was so nostalgic. We would pack it out for five or six services when our congregation was maybe 200 people! Coming forward to today, I imagine thousands and thousands of people have heard the good news of Jesus on Christmas Eve. The hard work of Waterstone staff and volunteers over forty years and the thousands of invitations to our families, friends and neighbors—God knows the impact.
20. Most memorable graveside service—breaking up a fistfight at Mount Lindo cemetery up above Tiny Town.
21. Most memorable funeral moment was at the end of a service for a soldier in the Air National Guard who died in a small plane crash. In the Guard, he flew Apache helicopters, so as the pallbearers were putting his casket into the hearse on Waterstone’s south patio, it was perfectly timed that four Apache helicopters would fly over about 100 feet off the ground. It was breathtaking. Only thing is, they flew in from the east, which meant that they flew that low over our backyard. Jan happened to be working in our yard at the time. Jan grew up in a very, let’s say, pre-tribulational rapture environment. She ran into the house screaming like the end of the world. Oh, and I probably should add that I forgot to tell her it was going to happen.
22. Most memorable moment during a wedding was at a venue on Lookout Mountain. The service was planned to be outdoors, but a storm rolled in and we moved it indoors last minute. We crammed about 200 people into a room for 100 people. It was hot and stuffy in there. We start the service and not long after the processional, one of the groomsmen began to wobble back and forth. Team Groom had partied hard the night before. Sure enough, the guy passes out and lands in the laps of people in the front row. We stop the service, and he says he wants to continue. We get him up and restart the service. He passes out again. We get him up again. As he is falling for the third time, he yells out for the room to hear, “I gotta go now.”
23. Most memorable wedding reception moment. No question. Meeting Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons at the Wellshire Inn.
24. Scariest moment in the church building was when I was at Waterstone late at night working on a sermon. All of a sudden, I hear pounding on the west entrance doors. At the doors, I find four teenagers in an absolute panic. They come in and proceed to tell me they have come from a séance in Morrison where several spirits had come up from the realm of the dead and were in their car! They had driven down C-470 with voices from the spirit-world screaming at them. The rest of the night into the early morning was the most intense sermon prep ever.
25. Most surprising moment while preaching was during a message on worship in our former worship room (now called the Activity Center). I was illustrating how churches end up in all kinds of disagreements about styles of worship. My plan was to pull back the curtains (we used to close them before the message) and point to the drum kit and say, “And these have caused us all kinds of problems!” When I pulled open the curtain, our drummer was still sitting at the drums. This startled me so badly that I jumped backwards, caught my heel on a mic stand and landed squarely on my… pride. After the service, I asked him, “What were you doing back there in the dark?” He said, “Just praying for you, man.”
26. Most beautiful introduction to a sermon was when I wanted to use the composer Beethoven as an illustration during the sermon. I don’t remember why, nor, I am sure, does anyone else who heard that sermon. To begin the sermon, we had a ten or eleven-year-old whom we had heard was a “fairly good piano player for a kid,” sit at our baby grand piano on the floor of the Activity Center. The plan was that after the Scripture reading, the kid would do the best job he could at playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I am telling you, the Spirit came down and what we received for the next eternal minutes was the most compelling rendition I have ever heard. After he was done, no one moved. Complete silence. Then someone started to clap. Then we all stood. Then I tried to start the sermon, but kept stopping, overcome. We were shaken.
27. Most embarrassing faux pas while preaching—none. Cannot think of any. (Just seeing if you are still reading)
28. First service in the new building, west side in 1997. The night before our first worship service in the new building, one of our key leaders suffered severe head trauma after being hit by a car while on his motorcycle. The accident left him paralyzed and unable to communicate. For the next seven years, people from Waterstone helped his wife care for him day and night. Volunteers from Waterstone, every day, every night. The most amazing demonstration of Romans 12:10-13 I have ever witnessed.
29. First service in the new worship center, east side in 2003 was the funeral for a beloved Waterstone teen who was in a car where the driver lost control and three kids were killed. Before the service, I was witness to the teen’s family extending forgiveness to the driver in a powerful demonstration of the Cross of Christ.
30. Most lament-full season was the year following Columbine. Waterstone had forty kids in the school building that day. Walking with them and their families changed the course of my life and ministry.
31. Most lament-full voice was during our vigil the day after the 9-11 Terrorist attacks. Near the end of the service, during a time of silence, a lone man started to sing America the Beautiful, which, when you listen to its words, is a humble prayer. He sang the entire first verse of the song by himself, his voice breaking from emotion. We wept.
32. I loved elder meetings. Not so much the meeting part; the eating part when we would share our lives and our hearts. There was often intense discussions, even disagreements, because there was such passion for the church. Deep gratitude to all of the elders over the last four decades. You have led us well.
33. Among the most transformative gatherings was the leadership program that we ran for eight years. One hundred graduates who met weekly for nine months, getting deep into doctrine, spiritual practices, ministry and community. On you go…
34. The pandemic took its toll in two hundred ways when long timers would leave our church without a conversation. It wrecked my heart for quite a while.
35. Best Renoe family time in the Waterstone building was Luke’s 16^th birthday party. We played murderer at night, even taping off the emergency lights. Happy to report no lasting injuries.
36. Waterstone staff leading around the world. We reckon there are over seventy leaders around the world who once served on Waterstone staff.
37. Waterstone Global Partners serve with courage, humility and suffering every day, especially the spiritual opposition. I remember being with one of our partners serving in Mali, West Africa. He told me that many times while driving home after showing The Jesus Film in remote villages, there would be two red eyes looking into the windshield. The gates of hell could intimidate, but they would not and will not prevail.
38. Day to Serve. Waterstone has faithfully demonstrated the love, justice and mercy of God’s kingdom by holding Day to Serve events. One time, a group from Waterstone showed up at a woman’s home to rake leaves and do yard work. When they arrived, they discovered the woman’s husband had died the night before. They spent the next hours in prayer and comfort with the woman and her family and stayed in touch for a long while.
39. Best budget line item for pastors—book fund! “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes” – Erasmus, AD 1536. Amen. Thank you, Waterstone.
40. To my Jan. “It is no wonder if so many years, so many endearments, so many obligations have produced such an uncommon effect, for by long habit, it is almost impossible for me to draw a breath, in which you are not involved” (John Newton to his wife Polly).