Article Image Alt Text

Pastor Chishiba to lead worship in the park; will move soon

OSMOND — Pastor Rodgers Chishiba of the United Methodist Church will lead an evening of worship and music at Poolside Park on Sunday, May 16. All residents from all denominations are invited to attend the event, which will be held from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. It will include music, singing by the Chishibas and others, testimonials and messages from the Gospel. A meal will also be served.

This special worship was organized following news that Pastor Chishiba and his family will soon be moving to Colby, KS, to lead a congregation in that community. His final Sunday Worship Service here will be on Sunday, June 13, he said, and the family will be moving sometime after that.

Pastor Chishiba and his family — wife Abiba Alice and sons Aaron, Johnson, Rodgers Jr. and twins Jephte and Japheth — came to Osmond in the summer of 2014. He has since become an active community member, not only in the Methodist church, but in the community of Osmond. Son, Aaron graduated from Osmond High School in 2020, and son Johnson, graduated this year. Son Rodgers “Junior” will be a fifth grader next year, and twins Jephte and Japheth will be in second grade.

Receiving the Call

Pastor Chishiba received the call to Colby in early April and because of the way the call system in the Methodist church is set up, he explained, he had to accept because he had turned down two other appointments in the past. He explained his decisions on the last two calls:

“On the first one, that is when I had just two years here and I realized it was not good to leave the church at that point. The church had just started healing (from the change between the last pastor and himself) so I thought if I left by then, it was not going to do any good. And the second one, they offered me certain things, but I knew that I should not move because of those things but because God wants me to move. I needed to be where God needed me to be.”

As far as what he is looking forward to, Pastor Chishiba said, “Just trusting God to do what He can do through me. I feel I am a vessel, and God will use me as he wants.”

What will he miss? “Osmond is home,” he said. “Osmond is the first town we have lived for seven years, since we came to America. When we were in Atlanta, we lived in Decatur for two years, and then two years in Norcross, so the four years in Atlanta were in two places. But here it has been seven years and looking back, this community really welcomed us. We felt at home. This is a very different community. It is very welcoming, very open, very loving, very caring. So we’ll miss all those things. Remembering the moment we went through the flood, and the way we came together as a community, the time the grocery store burned down, we went through those down moments together. We also went through the times of joy together — the celebration of the Q125, it was a good time where we celebrated together. So we have created good, good, good memories in Osmond, and it will be tough.

“It will be tough to leave,” he continued, “and because of the ministry, I can’t come back until maybe after a year minimum, so that I can allow the incoming pastor to really build a relationship, making him or her really the pastor of this church.

“After I preach on June 13, the relationship will change for me with Pierce and Osmond. It won’t be the relationship of the pastor, it will be the relationship of friends. So that I try to give space to whoever is coming in and allow him or her to succeed. Because if I am still here, people will keep measuring whatever he or she is doing with Pastor Chishiba. And I don’t want them to do that. Because I wouldn’t want to be in a new church where people are measuring the work of what I am doing to the previous pastor. So maybe two years, and then I can come.

“The other thing that will be tough, there are people that we have a very good relationship with here, and you can’t even come, so it will be tough,” the pastor said.

Preaching in the Park

The pastor explained where the idea of preaching in the park came from. There is a prayer group that meets every Thursday, and Pastor Chishiba said that it is not just Methodist, because they have people from different denominations who come. They had different people coming in, and they have been saying they would like to have something outside on a Sunday. However, they have been postponing it. But now, because the family will be moving away, they said “we have to do it.”

In Africa, Chishiba said, “Evangelism is done door-to-door, where we go up to someone’s house to see if that person goes to church, and if that person does not go, then they would preach Jesus to that person. And then in time they would organize something ‘in the open air.’”

Pastor Chishiba added, “I have seen it here — in Washington, D.C., I have seen it in Las Vegas, where people can stand and start preaching. So we thought of doing this, seeing the way the community welcomed us, it would be a way of also saying farewell to the entire community. And we are looking forward, we are hoping many people come together and we can say goodbye to Osmond, because this is our home. Some of the people here are no longer just friends, they are family.

“We will be bringing together friends who have ministered together with us, so there will be more music, more testimonies, and probably a short message from the Gospel,” he said.

There will be a Facebook Live and it will also be video recorded so that people can see it on the Pierce - Osmond United Methodist Churches Facebook page.

Stay in the know!

To get news alerts on your cell phone, get the Cedar County News app in the ITunes store or  in the Google Play Store.

Northeast Nebraska News Company

102 W. Main
Hartington NE 68739
402-254-3997