Image Credit: Katie Henderson

Poulsbo Pastor Ordained

Family, friends, western Washington pastors and Washington Conference leaders filled the pews of the Poulsbo Church to support and celebrate the ordination of Ryan Rogers, Poulsbo Church pastor, on June 3, 2018.

Rogers was blessed to grow up in a Christian home in Kelso, Wash., with committed parents, two sisters and a large extended family. Rogers attended Southern Adventist University (SAU) in Collegedale, Tenn., where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in theology. He also enjoyed three summers of camp ministry at Sunset Lake Camp in Wilkeson, Wash. and a year of student mission service at Nile Union Academy in Egypt during his time in school.

Rogers married Alyssa Minear on Feb. 27, 2010. Rogers had not yet been hired for full-time pastoral employment in their first year of marriage, and Alyssa was experiencing pregnancy complications that led her to be hospitalized on bedrest for two months at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn. While Alyssa graciously adjusted to hospital life, Ryan worked as a part-time youth pastor at Standifer Gap Church in Chattanooga and sold Cutco Cutlery. God blessed through the pregnancy complications, and their first daughter, Rue, was born in early February 2011.

Rogers accepted a call from the Idaho Conference in April 2011 to pastor the Wood River Valley and the Salmon churches. While in Idaho the Rogers family welcomed two more beautiful girls: Mabel and Evra.

Rogers left Idaho Conference in August 2015 and moved with his family to Vader, Wash., finding work as a counselor doing functional family therapy throughout southwestern Washington.

When Rogers received a call to interview for a pastor position in Washington Conference, he and Alyssa had just put a payment down on a property in Idaho and were about to close on the property within a few days.

“My wife and I weighed the options: accept the interview or go for the property. We chose to cancel the interview,” says Rogers. “When my wife and I were out at the property, we sat down by a creek on the property, opened the Bible and started reading 1 Peter 5. It was like God was telling me, ‘I have a flock that needs a shepherd, go and be a shepherd to them!’”

Rogers and his family accepted the call to Washington Conference, and he began working as a pastor for the Belfair and Poulsbo (Wash.) churches in July 2016.

Featured in: September 2018

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