Humbled to read this writing by one of my friends and mentors in life, Pastor Dan LeRoy:
My dear friend Kerry Willis is the district superintendent of the Philadelphia District for the Church of the Nazarene. He’s a Harkers Island boy who grew up in our Free Grace Wesleyan Church there. My dad was his boyhood pastor.
Kerry is a great, Spirit-filled advocate for holiness. Kerry is one of those people the Lord chooses to wear like a coat.
He tells the story of riding his bicycle to the church on the Old Ferry Dock Road to watch my dad and Samuel Davis, the Island sign-painter, hang a fifteen foot wide sign on the front wall of the sanctuary, prominently placed above the pulpit for all to see. It read, ‘Holiness Unto the Lord’, in gold, Old English script on a natural stained board, in high gloss finish. It just shines.
Kerry says witnessing the hanging of that sign was a moment of inspiration that has impacted his life to this day. ‘Holiness Unto the Lord’ got deep into his heart.
There was one thing about us, back in the day. Our church neighbors around the corner had a brass cross sitting on their communion table inscribed with the Latin phrase, ‘In Hoc Signo’.
Not us.
We didn’t even have a brass cross in that little Island church. And if we were going to have a sign, it wasn’t going to be in Latin. It was going to be in English, and it was going to be bold, and it was going to tell you who we were and what we believed. And we were going to do our best to live up to that sign. We didn’t always accomplish that, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
That sanctuary burned down in a lightning storm a decade ago. The congregation had just finished a new sanctuary and the old sanctuary, attached to the new construction, had been converted into a fellowship hall.
The ‘Holiness Unto the Lord’ sign had just been moved from the old sanctuary and was placed over the entrance doors in the new sanctuary. By God’s intervening grace, the fire that destroyed the old sanctuary burned right up to the side door of the new sanctuary, but came no further.
The battle for the heart, soul, mind and future of The Wesleyan Church will be won or lost in the same proportion ‘Holiness Unto the Lord’ is lived and proclaimed by the pastors and people of The Wesleyan Church.
I’m talking about that holiness that, by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, is best described as Christlikeness. The kind of dynamic that does not simply confine itself to being ‘personal sin management’, but is characterized by the love of God filling us in such a way that it transforms every aspect of our lives, and overflows into all our relationships, everywhere we have influence, and into every dark place we take it.
May we be like the young Kerry who has never gotten over his encounter with the Holy One through his boyhood church’s testimony of ‘Holiness Unto the Lord!’
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify us through and through. May we be kept blameless until the day of his appearing. May we know the reality, by faith, that the One who calls us is faithful, and he will do it!
It is for real. It is for now. It is for you.
Pastor Dan LeRoy, Retired Wesleyan District Superintendent
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