Fourteen years ago next month God gave us an extraordinary gift: a home church and two teachers through whom He changed our lives. God had already revealed the Lord Jesus to us and had gently but powerfully led us out of Adventism. We were new Christians, overwhelmed with actually feeling love for Jesus (who was not an archangel and who was not embroiled in an unresolved controversy with Satan), and disoriented by the loss of our culture, our familiar relationships, and most of our clients. And then God brought us to Trinity Church.
Gary Inrig was preaching through the book of Ephesians that fall in 1998, and I will never forget the day we knew our Father had brought us to the place he wanted us to settle. Gary preached on Ephesians 2:1-4, emphasizing that we all had been dead in sin, by nature objects of wrath, but in His great mercy He had made us alive in Christ. I felt as if Gary were preaching directly to me, telling me my own story, and knowing that God had brought us to a new home. Richard and I both were near tears throughout the service, and when we arrived home, almost unable to articulate the impact of that morning, we agreed. We would stay at Trinity.
As the months passed, God began to deprogram our Adventist worldview. First, Gary smashed my ignorant (and arrogant) conception of evangelicals as anti-intellectual. He preached without notes, referred to the meanings of the Greek text underlying the passages, and quoted supporting Scriptures from both testaments as needed to make comparisons or to add insight into a passage. He was clearly brilliant—but he was not arrogant. He knew and loved Scripture, and he brought every sermon back to Jesus and the gospel. Richard and I woke up excited on Sunday mornings because we knew we would be fed the Word with a clarity and depth we had never experienced before.
And then I met Elizabeth Inrig. As the pastor of women at Trinity, she wrote her own inductive Bible studies each year for the several hundred women who registered for her study each fall. Elizabeth loved the Bible and loved to laugh. She was vulnerable and openly submitted her own life to the word of God as she challenged us to do the same. She loved her husband and loved her children and now her grandchildren—and she also loved to learn. We all celebrated when she graduated from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with her doctorate in ministry.
Just a few months after we came to Trinity, we and a small group of fellow “formers” started a weekly Bible study, Former Adventist Fellowship (FAF), and the church accepted it as one of its ministries. From the beginning Gary “owned” us and took the role of our pastoral advisor. During those early months, Gary helped us unpack several of our Adventist strongholds. He spent one Friday evening with us teaching what the Bible says about death as opposed to our understanding of soul sleep. That night Gary shattered another of my unconscious “Ellenisms”. When he used the parable of the rich man and Lazarus to show that Jesus Himself taught that death is not unconscious, we shot back, “Oh, that’s just a parable!” To which Gary replied, “Jesus would never use an untruth to teach a truth.”
As time passed we realized Gary absorbed many criticisms and complaints about FAF. Situated just outside of Loma Linda, Trinity came under quiet attack for its stand regarding Adventism. Even when some people within Trinity felt our ministry was a political liability, Gary stood firm. He shielded us from the attacks, knowing the issue was the gospel, not merely public relations. He protected us when our group was threatened by a false teacher, and he answered our questions.
Through Gary’s and Elizabeth’s teaching we learned that God is truly sovereign, that His promises cannot fail because His word cannot fail, and that the Holy Spirit changes us as we submit ourselves to His word. We learned that words matter and context is everything—and we began to submit our minds to Scripture because it is God’s own word to us.
Then, in 2004, I became the editor of Proclamation! magazine. In 2005 Richard became president of Life Assurance Ministries (LAM), and in 2006 he was fired from Loma Linda University because of his work with LAM and FAF and then contracted to work with LAM. Our absorption of the Inrig’s teaching took on new significance. Increasingly we realized that the magazine and our online interactions with transitioning Adventists would be very different if it weren’t for the deep grounding we continued to receive from Gary and Elizabeth week by week. Their faithful teaching of God’s word to us has not only changed us, but it has prepared us to handle God’s word carefully when we expose false teaching and explain reality as revealed in Scripture.
Suddenly, however, everything is changing. Gary is stepping down from his position as senior pastor effective next June, 2013, and Elizabeth will also be leaving her position. Richard and I were grief-stricken when we heard the news. As Richard told Gary, there is an unbreakable connection between a person and the one who first taught him or her the Bible. With this change we are not only losing our much-loved teachers and mentors, but we are also losing the shepherd through whom God has protected this vulnerable but grateful flock of FAF-ers.
At the same time, we praise God even more intensely because we realize what a rare gift He has given us for 15 years. Gary and Elizabeth are two of God’s greatest gifts to the church in this generation, and God has placed us in their care because He knew we needed to learn from them how to minister, how to teach, and how to trust God. He knew when he brought the Inrigs to Trinity 20 years ago that they would play a significant role in the shaping of a growing ministry to those who were questioning and leaving Adventism.
Gary and Elizabeth are two of the most significant people God has placed in our lives. Even though we are struggling now with grief at the thought of their leaving their positions, still we rejoice because they are not retiring. They continue to face this transition just as they have faced other struggles during these past years: with faith in God and confidence that He will bring them their next assignment at exactly the right moment. Moreover, we rejoice because we know that their friendship is eternal. Because they and we have passed from death to life through faith in the Lord Jesus (Jn. 5:24) and because our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3), we know we will spend eternity with them marveling at the eternal work of the Lord Jesus that has made us one in Him.
Thank you, Gary and Elizabeth. You have taught us to love God’s word, and you have modeled integrity and faithfulness to Jesus. You have protected and nurtured us and those we serve who share our Adventist backgrounds. You have been faithful to the work God has given you even at great personal cost.
We praise God for you, and we pray He will bless you abundantly beyond all you can ask or think, according to His power that is at work in us (Eph. 3:20).
We love you, Gary and Elizabeth!
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