ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

The Liberal community was in for a surprise earlier this year when Rex Petty announced his retirement from Faith Tabernacle Church after 40 years and recently, a new face has officially taken over.

Larry Moore was recently hired as the church’s new pastor, and as he tells it, he is no stranger to serving the community.

“I’m originally from Amarillo, Texas, and spent about 25 years in music ministry and moved to Liberal in 2003. I was at First Baptist Church for a while, and then in 2008, I started working for USD 480,” Moore said. “I taught at Liberal High School for about 12 years, and then I went to Prairie View Elementary School as an assistant principal, and retired from there in 2024. Before all of that, however, when I was 18, I felt a call to ministry, and music was kind of kind of my gift and talent, so I did a music ministry for about 25 years. Then when I when I was with the school district, Emmanuel Southern Baptist Church was without a pastor, and I met with them, and I went there for about two years and pastored their church. And then when Rex retired, I think he and Eydie actually gave the church my name, and they contacted me to see if I would be interested, willing. I went over there about three or four months ago after he retired.”

Moore added he was very surprised when he was contacted about taking the reins at the church.

“I was definitely a little surprised to begin with. After I retired from the school district, I wanted to go back into ministry somehow, and then this opportunity came available,” Moore said. “I met with the board a few times, and then went through a trial period where they had me preach four Sundays in a row so they could check me out and I could check them out. After all of that, they had a vote and decided to bring me on. It felt like a huge responsibility following Rex and his very successful multi-decade ministry. I felt a little overwhelmed when I started, but I decided I would just be available for everyone, try to serve the people, and just preach His word, and that's what I'm trying to do.”

Still being rather new to the post, Moore said things have started off very well so far for him.

“It's been wonderful so far, and the people have been very, very kind and very receptive. They had a wonderful pastor for 40 years in Rex, and a lot of that congregation has never known anyone different in that role,” Moore said. “But everyone has been very, very kind, very receptive, and very helpful. It's been a really smooth transition from Rex to now. Right now, we're just trying to just get our feet in the door. Rex did a lot of work in the community, and to continue that work is definitely some huge shoes to fill. Right now, we're just taking things kind of slow and getting a feel for how everything works and getting to know everyone. The church really does want to grow and everyone is open to that, so we're just kind of taking small steps be available in that way.”

Moore said he is excited to be stepping into such a new role and already has some ideas for continued community outreach.

“We've we started what we call a tutoring ministry – my wife, Gina, teaches at Seward County Community College, and periodically, some of the students will come to the church building, and we'll have kind of a tutoring session,” Moore said. “She offers that for those students, and then our church people can come and get to meet those kids. Whether they come to church or not for services, I don't know, but at least we're building that rapport with those young people, so I’m really excited about that. We're also planning to try to bring back the singing nights that used to happen in town – I think the First Church of the Nazarene used to kind of coordinate that, so we're looking forward to maybe beginning that again.”

Moore added he feels a lot of his skills learned while working in the education field will transfer very well to being a pastor.

“In some ways, education and ministry are not a lot different. In the education field, educators are servants of a sort, whether it be serving their students or their students’ parents. Or, as an administrator, you have to serve the staff and the students and the parents,” Moore said. “There are definitely a lot of similarities. Like I said earlier, I'd already spent some years in ministry before, and my personality is just to kind of be a helper and a servant, and so the transition was there. Being in the classroom and having to prepare lessons and those kinds of things, a lot of those skills will transfer to preparing sermons each week, so I’ll use a lot of that things. Then, as far as other aspects of education, especially from when I was in administration, I’ll be working to build a climate and a culture among the people, learning how to manage those kinds of things.”

And since he has been in the Liberal community for a while, Moore added he will not have to worry about being new to everyone in town. He also offered encouragement for people in the community to visit the church.

“I've lived in Liberal since 2003, so I'm already pretty well established in the community and I know a lot of people through working with USD 480, so in that respect, I'm not doing anything different because I've been here for so long,” Moore said. “If they come visit us Sunday mornings, we meet at 10 a.m. They'll find a very friendly, loving group of people, and hopefully hear an encouraging word from the scripture. I stay true to the Scripture. I don't deviate off on the tangents. I try to stay true to the text. So if that interests people, I would encourage people to come visit.”