When little makes a big impact.
I grew up in a little Norwegian Free church in Northern Minnesota. Do you know what I learned in my little church?
I was with a multi-generational congregation where these old Scandinavian men and women in these prayer meetings would get down on their knees and weep and cry out to God for people who didn’t know Jesus.
I learned how to pray not from reading Ole Hallesby’s book on prayer, but from Norwegian men and women who knew God. They talked to Him like He was real and like He would answer their prayers in the sense of abiding in Christ and depending upon the Holy Spirit. It was just who they were.
They opened doors up for us to do ministry. I preached my first sermon when I was fifteen and I still have the notes. They gave us opportunities to serve.
When I heard Josh speak the other day about opportunities, I look back to this little church with a small youth group. There were people who invested in us and taught us how to preach the Word. Five of us have served as pastors and four missionaries. Two mission agencies (one in Asia and one in Europe) were started by kids I went to high school with. A professor at Denver seminary. And more elders and women ministry leaders in churches than I can even think about.
Out of this little church. And who would have ever thought that the President of the Free Church might come out of that place?
It is the investment from people who really knew Jesus. And they weren’t afraid to let us try and to serve and to stand with us because they knew Jesus.
In June 2015, Rev. Kevin Kompelien was elected president of the Evangelical Free Church of America. For the previous nine years, Kompelien was the international leader for the Africa division with ReachGlobal (the international mission of the EFCA) and a senior leader of the mission. A graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (1983), he served over twenty years as pastor of two EFCA churches. In addition, Kompelien served on the North Central District Board chairing the church planting committee and on the Central California District Board (now EFCA West). A native of Thief River Falls, Minn., Kompelien and his wife Becky have been married for 34 years. They have four grown, married children and seven grandchildren.