Pastor Pat Nemmers will be our guest speaker at this year’s Harvest Baptist Church Summit Meetings. We will be getting to know him in this week’s interview.
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Episode Transcript
Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, our host on this program is Pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor of Harvest Baptist Church. Every week, we spend these twenty five minutes together telling you the stories of our church by interviewing our members and other friends in the ministry. We have two services at harvest every week, the first at 08:45AM, the second at 10:45AM Sunday. We have Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45AM service each week, and that’s also when we livestream at hbcguam.org. hbcguam.org.
Be sure to join us beginning Sunday for our summit meetings. The first service is at 08:45AM and 10:45AM on Sunday at the church, and then we have services Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evening at 7PM. Let’s begin today’s Harvest Time by welcoming Pastor Gary Walton. Hi, pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey, Chris. Good to see you again, and, great to be able to talk in with our audience. We are looking forward to the summit meetings. Annually, this is a highlight of our fall. It’s an opportunity for our church family to connect over a series of days and just really put our focus on God and his word and his plan for our lives.
As Chris mentioned, we’d like to invite you to come and be a part of it. I’m gonna introduce our speaker in just a minute. We’re actually gonna talk to him here, but, God has brought to us, is bringing to us, Pastor Pat Nemmers, and we just feel like God is gonna use him and his ministry. If you don’t have a church home, I wanna invite you to come to Harvest this Sunday or any of those evenings. If you can get free Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night, you’ll hear from the word.
You’ll hear a passionate description of the gospel, and we’d love to have you come and join us. So I wanna offer that invitation to you. We have the privilege of having, pastor Pat on the phone with us from his home. He’s not in on Guam yet, but he’s on his way, and I wanna welcome you, Pat. Thanks for joining us on harvest time.
Pat Nemmers: I think it’d be great to join you. Gary, Chris, thanks so much for this, invitation, pastor. I look forward to this conversation.
Gary Walton: Pastor Pat is the pastor lead pastor at Saylorville Church. I’ll have him talk about, you know, God’s work through that church over the years, but, it’s in, it’s in Des Moines, Iowa. Right, Pat?
Pat Nemmers: That’s correct. Yeah. Des Moines, Iowa. Sometimes we’re affectionately called Ankeny South, and we’re so close to Ankeny that we’re technically in Des Moines, Iowa, the capital of the state of Iowa.
Gary Walton: And God has used pastor Pat, his, wife, and, that ministry to really thrive over the years. I’m anxious for him to, tell some of that story. And in the process, have planted just a number of gospel preaching, vibrant churches that are reaching the people in their community. They’re bringing hope to the broken, and so we love the opportunity to have him come out to Guam. It’ll be his first time here and and join us.
Pat, thank you for your willingness to come. Tell me a little bit about the journey of the church maybe as we get started.
Pat Nemmers: The journey of the church? Yeah. Okay. So, so Fayetteville Church has been around for many, many years, and I’ve been the pastor of the church. I’m actually you know, I just started my twenty seventh year.
I can’t believe I’ve been the lead guy for that long.
Gary Walton: That’s great.
Pat Nemmers: But I came in 19′ yeah. I came in 1998. It was a church of about 300 people, decent sized church, but sort of dead in the water, really wasn’t seeing virtually any conversions. And so when a church sits stagnant, doesn’t matter how small or large it is, as you know, Pastor, it can just get stale and and and even ugly. You know?
Mhmm. So I came to the church right after a really ugly church discipline situation, if you can believe it. Mhmm. And there was sort of a paw hanging over the church, And they asked me to come because they knew I had a heart for evangelism. They knew I had a heart for expositional preaching.
And I they knew I had a heart for strong leadership, and that’s why they asked me to come. And that’s kinda what I brought to the table and, really, really grateful for what God has done in the years that I’ve been here.
Gary Walton: The churches planted tell me again, seven other churches, or or is it more than that?
Pat Nemmers: Yeah. So actually that’s exactly so the and maybe that’s where I apologize. That that’s where you were probably going with the church planting network when you asked the question. I should have No.
Gary Walton: No. No. You you were right on. You’re tracking with me.
Pat Nemmers: So what happened, actually so Saylorville started growing, and, and we reached about 500 people, by the, early two thousands. And and we’d just gone through a major building renovation, spent a large amount of money, and our people just gave like crazy. And our philosophy was not to borrow money. We’re not I’m not dogmatic about that. I don’t enforce that on anybody else.
It’s just our philosophy. Let let our people rise up and and bring the money in. So we never borrowed any money, but we did this major renovation and expansion. There was a ton of joy. And in my mind, the most spiritual thing a church should do at that time is build a gymnasium.
I’m being facetious here. But I really but in my in my stupidity, I thought, really, we we we are growing. A gymnasium would be great. So I immediately went for raising money for a gymnasium. And it was really a foolish thing on my part because our people were pretty much tapped out.
And so the first offering, pastor, for that that gymnasium was so pitiful. I didn’t I couldn’t even tell the church family what it was. It was so bad. And so I went back into the office that Monday, sat down with a couple of people that were on staff, and I was sort of muttering something and kinda maybe complaining even that our people didn’t give very much. One of the guys looked at me and goes, well, maybe it’s time for us to start a church.
And I looked at him, and I said, what did you say? He said, well, you know, we always talk of planting here. Why don’t we just why don’t we give our efforts to that? And I’m telling you, Gary, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. I just said, that’s exactly what we’re gonna do.
I had just mentored a guy who had gone off to, pastor a church, a small church in Northern Iowa, and things weren’t going well because he kinda ran up, you know, against all the kind of hardheaded, you know, almost legalistic kind of stuff. And he was just frustrated. And unbeknownst to me, he and his wife had been praying about what they were gonna do next and praying that God would just open up a fresh door towards church planting. I called him that afternoon. We met secretly at a restaurant, and, and we hammered out a template a template, mind you, that we use to this day.
And we can come back to that another time. But so he we brought him back. We planted a church in 2005, and then I introduced him to a a young man that was the AD of Faith Baptist Bible College in seminary, a tremendous athlete as well. I introduced and just a great passion for souls. I introduced Josh Daggett to Dave Heistercamp.
They they became he became the next church planter three years later. And we have been able to, by the grace of God, plant a church on the, average about every three years, and we’ve even shortened that a little bit. We just planted our seventh church a year ago, and we are, looking to plant the eighth one, within the next year. And the total in all those churches now over the last because we just celebrated the twentieth anniversary of what we call the Engage Network. And there are now over 5,000 people in those eight churches total.
Pretty cool.
Gary Walton: That’s fantastic. Are they all around the Des Moines area, or is it a little bit broader than that?
Pat Nemmers: Yeah. Our paradigm and, again, I mean, I don’t want you to think I I sat there, you know, as the guy with all the great wisdom, but our paradigm became the greater Des Moines area. And so we go as far south as Winterset. That’s the home of John Wayne. And and we go east to Altoona.
We go north to Park City. These are all areas all around. We go into the heart of Des Moines in North Des Moines. We’re also in Ballard or Huxley, which is further north toward Ames. So that’s all the greater Des Moines area.
And this the the philosophy is it allows us to lose people. We we lose people. In fact, Fayetteville Church gave up over 80 people over 80 members in our sixth church plant, and we gave up 30 or 40 in the last one. So we’re constantly losing people, but so we were losing our whole philosophy is to it it’s it’s that gaining by losing idea. And and God has blessed us.
He keeps us hungry when we lose people. In fact, I just figured this out over a year ago. When I came to Saylorville, there were about 325 people, and that’s almost exactly today how many people we’ve sent out into our church plants.
Gary Walton: Yeah. It’s really
Pat Nemmers: It’s been a blessing. Great blessing.
Gary Walton: Yeah. It’s really a beautiful picture of, of a generous church, right, of saying we’re gonna be generous with the resources that God has given us, and the most precious resource is the people. And I really love that. I love the whole picture.
Hey. Let me back up a
little bit, Pat, and and talk about your spiritual story. The you know, you grew up in a church background. Tell us about that, how you became a believer in Jesus.
Pat Nemmers: Yeah. Okay. So this is actually something I wanted I want to unfold into my preaching while I’m there, but I’m happy to share it and, maybe give you the more compressed version. Yeah. But but I was raised in a I was raised in a great home, strong Roman Catholic home.
And by great, I mean I mean very kind, loving, patriotic, spiritual. I’m putting quotes around spiritual. You know? And I was an altar boy, all of the above. In fact, my cousin, a Roman Catholic priest, married my first wife and I.
And so we’re very Catholic. But, you know, I was I was a seventies guy, so I did a lot of partying, smoked a lot of marijuana, drank a lot of beer, all that kind of stuff. And and what happened was I my brother, who I was particularly close to, became a Christian. And we’re much alike, but not totally. I mean, he I’m more like the the bull in the China shop.
You know? He’s more of the subtle guy, and he just really very kindly and regularly would call me from Dallas Theological Seminary where he was going to school, and he would share Christ with me. He would share the gospel with me, but not, he wouldn’t, you know, put a full court pressure pressure on me, you know, nothing like that. But but I I was I started gaining interest, when somebody gave me a book, which is Gary, you’re not as old as I am, Pastor Gary, but the the book, The Late Great Planet Earth, was very, very popular back in the eighties. Okay?
Gary Walton: I remember it.
Pat Nemmers: Was a book by us.
You remember it?
Gary Walton: I do. Yeah.
Pat Nemmers: So Hal Lindsey was the wrote it. He basically just wrote sort of a you know how we talk about historical fiction? This is more prophetic fiction where he takes he postulates what what the future and the antichrist and all of that might look like when, you know, when it all comes around. And it was captivating to me, absolutely captivating to me. And in fact, I got to a place, as an unsaved man, I could discuss prophecy intelligently Mhmm.
If you can believe it. And but in but I was and and little you know, it was actually becoming very convicting to me. I realized I was lost, I mean, because Lindsay makes the gospel clear in his book. And then I was working with a guy at John Deere. I worked in a a in a tractor factory in Waterloo, Iowa.
And and during the nineteen early eighties, there was a major recession. There was a lot of layoff. And so little by little, we got bumped around. I went from having a nice job to working in the foundry, the worst place in the whole place. Yeah.
And and while I was there, I worked with a guy who had a tattoo on his shoulder. I figured he was a partier, so I asked him if he wanna smoke some marijuana with me at break. And he said he said, Pat, I used to do that stuff, but I I got saved. I remember thinking, oh my goodness. I gotta work with a Jesus freak.
So but by then, I had a lot of questions because my brother Mike had been sharing with me. So I’m just I just started asking this guy all kinds of questions. And every time I’d ask him a question, instead of saying, my priest says this, my pastor says this, my church says this, here’s my opinion, I was ready to go tooth and nail with him on that. But he’d always pull his little pocket bible out. Man, I hated that pocket bible at the time.
And, and he would answer my question. He’d say, well, Pat, let’s see what God has to say about. And he answered all of my questions with scripture. And and he and he just really, tattooed me, so to speak, with the truth that I was a sinner, that Christ died for me, rose again for me, and I needed to confess my sin, repent, place my faith in Jesus. I didn’t have to be convinced that I was a sinner, and going to hell did seem like the right consequence even as a Roman Catholic.
Some of that theology was actually pretty decent. You know? And, and the Lord used it. And as a result, on 09/06/1982, at 24 years of age, sitting at my kitchen table at 11:30 at night, I called my brother up who had originally witnessed to me. He was now a pastor.
And Pastor Gary, guess what my opening question to him was?
Gary Walton: I don’t know. What was it?
Pat Nemmers: Well, I asked him if the Catholic church was the harlot of Revelation 18. Got him out of a out of I got him out of a dead sleep and asked him if the Catholic church was the harlot of Revelation 17. So, I mean, that’ll get you to wipe the sleep out of your eyes pretty quick. You know? And and God gave him wisdom and said, Pat, that that’s that’s not the most important question you need to have answered.
Let’s go back to what we talked about. Went back through the gospel, and I I knew what I needed to do. I hung up the phone. By then, it was 12:30 in the morning, sitting there by my kitchen table. I placed my faith in Jesus, and my life and eternity were were changed instantaneously.
Gary Walton: Compelling of God’s work in your life, and, I’m so anxious for you to be able to share that more here. I mean, you know, our our community, our church family, many people have similar stories to yours, and it’s amazing to hear the, you know, the transformation, the work of the Holy Spirit as he does in our lives as he calls us, compels us to him. It’s I really appreciate that. Yeah. You mentioned in there Yeah.
If I could go back to it, you said something about your first wife. I I know that you were widowed, along the way. Can you tell us about that and then kind of the story with, your marriage today?
Pat Nemmers: Yeah. So briefly, my wife Nina came to Christ literally exactly two weeks after I trusted Christ as my savior. So I kinda pulled her along, so to speak, you know, God’s savior. But and we had seven children together. So we had a big family.
I was pastoring. My first pastor was us it was a farming community, a Baptist church up in in North Central Iowa, and that church in in ten years quadrupled in size. Now don’t be too impressed. There’s only 27 people there the first time I I showed up. So but God was saving people.
We had a great ministry together, and we were, sitting in bed one day together talking about so many of the issues and problems and tragedies and sadnesses that we had dealt with and and ministered to. And we both looked at each other, we said, you know, we really haven’t had any tragedies in our lives. And, you know, I could distinctly remember that conversation, Pastor Gary. And it wasn’t very long after that that in the evening, after I had just returned from a preaching all week long at a high school retreat, the the day after I got back, we were together. It was, again, late late at night, and and my wife of sixteen years who gave me seven children gasped.
She was only 36 years old. She gasped and plunked over and died. She had a heart attack and died and literally died in my arms. And it was a there was nothing nothing hereditary. There was obviously, it was a time of great, great shock and sadness and sorrow and mourning, but I can honestly say that I was never angry.
I just profoundly sad. And so it’s just myself and my children who were aged 14 down to one just weaned a few days earlier from his mother. Mhmm. And and so that was our life. We were sort of an instant novelty because I was really young and had all these kids.
And a little a little levity here. I I this was 1995, Pastor, and and this was before email. I had I got 700 pieces of hard mail. And, I mean, there were just so many encouraging notes, and people sent money. And this is really neat to see how the church responded.
But I also got letters from every kind of woman under the sun. I mean, I had everything but it was everything but perfume in the with phone numbers, and and they were married. They I’m not married, but they were divorced, single, widowed. And but to make the transition, true story, on the day that my wife died, many things happened. I I’d love to be able to tell that story in a in a fuller way, but I actually thought of my wife, Marilyn, on that day.
And the reason I thought of her, not in a romantic way, I thought of her because, I don’t know. God just put her on my mind, and it was weird. I remember thinking how weird it was. And within three minutes, our mutual friend came to our house, laid down some groceries and some money, and looked at me and said, I told Marilyn Swanson what happened to you, and she’s gonna write you a note. And I remember thinking, woah.
That was weird. And, and that was the first thing that got my mind going that way. So, God, I’ll I’ll I will skip through the romance because it’s a really fun story that we often tell. But
Gary Walton: And Marilyn was widowed widowed as well. Right, Pat?
Pat Nemmers: Yeah. She was her husband died of a liver, hereditary liver complication. The same thing that took out his dad and the same thing that nearly took out Marilyn’s youngest son. That’s a different story. He he had a liver transplant, and he’s a twenty year survivor of a liver transplant.
Wow. But his dad, Marilyn first’s husband, did not survive it. Okay. He died in 1989. So she’d been a widow for six almost seven years.
Mhmm. And we began to see each other, and, you know, God put us together. We were married in 1997. And a year later, we moved from, the Northern Iowa area to Saylorville, where we’ve been for twenty seven years.
Gary Walton: Anything that you would say either from your or Marilyn’s testimony just of how you saw God’s faithfulness kind of through all of those trials and then, of course, the beauty of bringing you two together?
Pat Nemmers: Yeah. The story itself is a really cool story. And I’ll be candid, pastor. This is a story you would want my wife at my side to hear because she she really contributes to this story. We have scripture God used to interact with our story, our love story, how he put us together.
She had three children. I had seven. We have 10, and I can tell you 20 I can tell you what that you know, you don’t have to be much of a mathematician to know what that the possibilities of that are. We have 38 grandchildren.
Gary Walton: Oh, man.
Pat Nemmers: So, and they’re all most of them, about 85% of them are all in the greater metro here, so we get to see them quite often, which is cool. Yeah. To the spec of the story, it’s a really neat story, and we love to tell the story. We love to tell the story because it encourages people and encourages those who’ve also suffered great loss. Our story puts hope in their lives, and so we do love to tell that story, but we’re we’re grateful to God for what he’s done.
Gary Walton: We gotta think you’ve told me this before, Pat, but we gotta think of some way next week as you’re here that we can get both of you guys on stage or in some in some way be able to tell that story. We’ll we’ll talk offline.
Pat Nemmers: Yeah. No. That that’d be great. That’d be great. That’s up to you.
We’re we’re certainly willing.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Okay. Great. Time goes so fast. We’re come kinda the end of our stop on this part.
We’re super excited about you coming. We believe that God, you know, prep has prepared you for this week here at Harvest. We we have a lot of, young families, young believers. Could you just let us know some of your burden for how God’s leading you as we meet together and as you have the opportunity to share God’s word with us?
Pat Nemmers: Well, I wanna make the gospel as crystal clear as I possibly can. I want to articulate the gospel and the ramifications in in your life, in everyone’s life, whether you’re young or old, and, and what it means to be, you know, gospel when we talk about being gospel centered or gospel centric, it kinda becomes a buzzword. Mhmm. But everybody wants to say that they’re gospel centric. I don’t think everybody actually is.
Mhmm. And so the gospel is gonna be front and center on all of this, my story. I’m gonna weave it in there. And and and I’m also gonna I want I wanna give your your God’s people a charge in how they can become gospel centered in their orientation, the way they look at people, etcetera.
Gary Walton: Man, Pat, that’s fantastic. I could tell you that our church family are praying, for for these days that God would do a special work in our hearts and our lives, and and we’re inviting our friends to come along to, you know, just be part of hearing from God and hearing from his word. And so your trip, your time here, the messages in particular are being bathed in prayer, and we can’t wait for you to get here. We wanna introduce you to the beautiful island of Guam. I know that you’re gonna love it.
You’re gonna love the Harvest family, and, we’re just thankful for your willingness to say yes to this.
Pat Nemmers: I can’t wait to meet you and your wife personally. Of course, Gary, you and I have met met. But, but to meet, you and your wife and then to just hang out a little bit, get to know the school, and, just what makes Harvest Baptist Church go. And, I’m excited about the whole thing. So is my wife.
We’re excited about hanging out with you and to whomever we interact with.
Gary Walton: I’ll give you a head start on that. God makes Harvest Baptist Church go, and I don’t mean that but, really, I think being here on this island and knowing there’s no way this happens without God is just such an overwhelming sense, and, you’ll see that. I know that you’ll feel that. So we’re looking forward to that time together.
Pat Nemmers: I stand reproved and joyfully so.
Gary Walton: Thanks, Pat. Thanks for joining us. We’ll talk to you soon as you get here.
Pat Nemmers: Alright. God bless you, Gary.
Chris Harper: Well and thank you for listening to Harvest Time. Of course, at this point in the program, we always want to invite you again to Harvest Baptist Church this weekend, Sunday morning, 08:45AM and 10:45AM. Remember Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45AM service. You can listen live here on 88.1 and KHMG.org, 88.1 FM and khmg.org. And, of course, our summit meetings, Sunday, but also Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evening, 7PM.
We hope to see you there. Thanks again for listening to Harvest Time.