Welcome Pastor Bill Meyer
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Pastor Bill Meyer is a second-career minister, ordained in 2000. Galion First United Church of Christ has called Meyer to serve as its intentional interim pastor, beginning Jan. 1.
He said he has felt a special call to help congregations during the interim season, between settled pastors, to prayerfully plan and discern God’s preferred intermediate vision for them. Meyer said he sees this as a key way to help congregations search for and call the right settled pastor. “And all this greatly increases the chances they’ll get where God wants them to go,” he said.
“I also think this interim process can be fun, as well as spiritually rewarding.”
He has served as an intentional interim pastor for several United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) congregations. He also served as the interim pastor of a multi-racial Presbyterian Church USA congregation in Cleveland.
His most recent interim pastorate was at St. John’s United Church of Christ in Powhatan Point, Ohio. This is a former German-speaking church in a farming community above the Ohio River.
For nearly five years, Meyer was the settled senior pastor of a congregation that shifted while he served there from an elderly, all-white membership to a younger, blended membership with a Korean-American majority. Prior to ordination, he also planted and served as the licensed lay pastor of an independent congregation that joined the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). This is the partner denomination of the United Church of Christ. He has ministerial standing in both.
Meyer’s ministry has always been part-time. He has mainly supported his family through his work in Ohio’s newspaper business. Prior to his call to ministry, Meyer also farmed part-time. He and his wife, Kim, sold about 100 tons of Concord grapes each year to a Geneva, Ohio, processing plant.
“So, I sort of replaced one vineyard with another.”
After shutting down the vineyard in Geneva, Meyer and his wife attended Ashland Theological Seminary part-time. Both focused on counseling. “I wanted to know what not to do.” Meyer has both a counseling master’s degree and a master of divinity degree. (He also has a master’s in journalism from Ohio State University.) His wife now works for Case Western Reserve University – helping mental health agencies across the state effectively provide in-home therapy to distressed young people.
He worked for several decades as a copy editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Before that, he was the editor of a small daily paper in Bellevue, Ohio.
Meyer said he has a special interest in diversity questions and in helping people who have had bad church experiences. He and his wife are both members of the International Cultic Studies Association. Both are licensed counselors and have provided pro-bono counseling to distressed cult exiters in a residential clinic setting. Both are interested in encouraging resilience and recovery.
“But Kim’s credentials are now superior to mine,” Meyer said. “So when I walk in the door, I have to remember to salute smartly.”
As adjunct faculty, Meyer has taught a class on new religious movements at Ashland Theological Seminary. He also taught journalism at the Firelands campus of Bowling Green State University.
Bill and Kim Meyer live near Canton and have three adult children and three grandchildren.