General News
10 December, 2024
Quarter-century marked for Stuart Rodgers
This recently celebrated quarter-century milestone was never a guarantee for Stuart Rodgers, pastor of the Wattle City Church, who shared his story of persistence, community, and faith.
From moving the church every few years, to owning the current Wattle City Church building outright, and then streaming the service online to thousands during COVID, there’s a lot to remember and celebrate in his 25 years spent as a pastor.
For Mr Rodgers, who spent 18 years working on railways, being a pastor since 2000 in Maryborough has brought him immense personal fulfillment.
“I feel really passionate. I feel like I’m doing something that I enjoy, that I love to do, and probably get more fulfillment out of pastoring than any occupation I’ve had,” he said.
But it hasn’t always been this way, especially early on.
“There’s been hard times. After about the first five years I was really down, just wanted to quit. But I pressed on and just kept going,” he said.
Every few years the church had to move when their lease ended which Mr Rodgers found to be a lot of pressure.
“Hard yakka,” he said.
This cycle continued until 2014 when the “old methodist church” on Argyle Road was being vacated. Mr Rodgers rented it for two years before the owners wanted to sell and gave him first option to buy.
“We didn’t have any money, well, not that kind of money: $200,000,” he said.
But then his fortunes changed, a woman who had gone to church in that building most of her life offered to gift the money to buy the church.
“I said ‘slow down, what about your childrens’ inheritance, you know’, and she said ‘no, no, that’s okay’. She said ‘we sold the farm 40 years ago and the money’s invested and they’ll do okay’,” he said.
He negotiated the price down to $165,000, bought it, and finally had a permanent location after over a decade of moves.
“They were happy, we were happy, and now we’re in that building and we own it outright which is really fantastic. It gives us a base to operate from and a place of our own,” he said.
But as brick and mortar was solved a new challenge faced Mr Rodgers in years to come. What do you do when the COVID pandemic is sweeping the globe and you can’t meet in person?
The answer they found was to take the church online. He and his wife would stream the Sunday service live on Facebook and YouTube to the people that used to come in person.
“But then, to our surprise, most Sundays we were reaching four to five thousand people around the world. I was just blown away,” he said.
But as COVID became something that had happened, instead of something that was happening now, a thought came to Mr Rodgers that would change his role once more.
“I had this idea that, well, we’re reaching all these people online I wonder what we can do to reach more people in our community,” he said.
At the same time a number of new members with diplomas in ministry arrived.
“I had all these people that could be potential pastors and I didn’t know what to do with them so I thought, let’s plant a few churches,” he said.
This led to the opening of churches in Bealiba, Talbot and Beaufort.
“My role has changed from being a pastor at one church to now overseeing four churches. So I’ve sort of gone into a bit of a management mode to a small degree,” he said.
In his 25 years of ministry speech, Mr Rodgers acknowledged it’s the people around him, along with his faith, that made it all possible.
“There’s a statistic that says 10 out of 10 people who are born will die, and it’s true isn’t it? So when it’s my turn hopefully I’ve done some good in the world and I’ve set something up that should be able to continue,” he said.