Called Out of the Darkness into His Wonderful Light
by Rev. Keith Boyette
“My entire life is enveloped by my relationship with Jesus and His church,” said the Rev. Keith Boyette as he delivered the major presentation of the day at “Transformed! the Wesleyan Covenant Association’s Fourth Global Gathering” at Asbury United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, November 9, 2019.
As he continued to share his story, Boyette, President of the WCA, recalled, “One of my earliest memories is of standing at the age of three with my extended family as my newborn sister was baptized at Lynnhaven Methodist Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
It was a couple of years later that, while attending a Vacation Bible School at Cheltenham Methodist Church in Maryland, I first heard the Gospel in a retelling of Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep. Using a flannel board, the VBS teacher concluded the telling of the story by asking if any of us wanted to be one of Jesus’ sheep. I leapt to my feet crying, ‘I do!’ and never looked back.”
“I love the church,” Boyette said. “We are the body of Christ – poured out in the midst of a broken and troubled world to offer God’s love, His salvation, and His transforming grace to each and every person to become more and more like Jesus. In the words of Peter, we are God’s very own possession so that we can show others the goodness of God who called us out of the darkness into His wonderful light.”
To applause and shouts of amen, Boyette proclaimed, “God is birthing a new Wesleyan movement rekindling the fires that burned in the hearts of those first Methodists who let no social convention or obstacle stand in the way of their sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with anyone and everyone.”
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