Illinois Great Rivers Conference 2025 Journal-Yearbook
After the third time, Eli said, “If you hear the voice again, say, ‘Speak Lord for your servant hears.’” And we got Samuel. We need more Hannahs and Elis in all of our churches. I don’t know about you, but the Hannah and Eli in my life, was my father, Robert Irvin, and my mother, Laura Irvin. From the time I was six years of age, they gave me this Bible for Christmas. They took me to church on Sunday morning, Sunday nights and Wednesday nights. They discipled and raised me, and when I finally told them I felt a call to leave my prior career to go into ministry, they fully supported me. I love both of them. My father passed away eight years ago, but he was here during my ordination by Bishop Christopher. My mother sat on the front row seven years ago when Bishop Beard introduced me as a new D.S. If you can picture in your mind right now your Hannah and your Eli, it may be your father and mother, it may be your grandparents or a child, aunt or uncle, a pastor, a counselor, or a teacher, if you can picture that person in your mind that in your church led you to positions of lead- ership or possibly to go into ministry yourself, like the two young people, Kyan and Sarah from the Wesley Foundation at ISU spoke earlier. If you can picture that person or those persons in your mind right now, your Hannahs and Elis say amen. The need for pastors has always been great. Jesus said the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. And then he said, “Pray to the Father that the father sends those laborers into the field.” Paul the Apostle put it this way, “How are they to believe and be saved unless they hear? How are they to be saved unless someone preaches? How is someone to preach unless they are sent?” And then Paul quotes Isaiah 52 when he says, “How beautiful on the mountaintop are those who preach the good news?” We need more preachers, but we need something else. And that’s my second request to you on behalf of the cabinet this afternoon. Just as we need more preachers, we need all of us (myself included) to double, triple, quadruple giving people Jesus. Now, let me say this, Methodism has always been founded upon two prongs. Upon social justice, Wesley cared for abolishing slavery, for prison reform, for education, for the poor. He was active in those political issues of his days, so we’re to be involved in social justice issues. But by the same token, the second prong is: he and so many others, like the circuit riders went around preaching passionately in the fields wherever they could go giving people Jesus. I believe that all of us, if we re-double that effort beyond what we’re even doing now, we can change the world. You see, giving people Jesus is not so much to build up the numbers in our churches, although we welcome that. Giving people Jesus is not so much to turn around the decline of Christianity in our country in our lifetime, although we pray and desire tha.t giving people Jesus brings this ontological change to the person. It transforms them from the inside out in the darkest of situations. This afternoon, I’ll offer you some proof of that. For 16 years prior to going into ministry, I served as a prosecuting attorney -- eight years in Southern Illinois and eight years in Brooklyn, N.Y. In Brooklyn, I was in the Homicide Bureau. I prosecuted hundreds of bench and jury trials. Among those were
224 Leadership Reports
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