Jenine C. Ouillette/Special to the Eagle

The Rev. William Lyle, the new Pastor of Marco Presbyterian Church, is looking forward to serving the spiritual needs of his Marco Island congregation and hopes they will be inspired to join him in missionary work.

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The Marco Presbyterian Church congregation welcomed a new pastor on March 1: Rev. William Lyle was pleased to share a few inspiring thoughts with the Marco Eagle’s readership when we interviewed him recently in his spacious office.

We noticed the wall in back of his desk was lined with shelves holding a sizeable collection of books, and also spied several framed photos prominently displayed around the room. Reverend Lyle (who rather be called Pastor Bill, please) mentioned that he brought the books and family photos along when he, his wife and their young son and daughter moved to Marco Island, from his previous ministry in Atlanta, Ga.

“Dr. Bruce Fiol, he’s the one who established this church, his ministry, in 1983,” Pastor Bill began. “When he announced his retirement last year, the congregation started a Church Team that went out looking for potential candidates. When I first heard about it, I wondered where it was, even though the church name and address was on the stationary.”

He explained that even though the Marco Presbyterian Church (MPC) is a member of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) denomination, the denomination itself doesn’t assign pastors. Rather, each PCA church is responsible for finding a suitable minister.

“I have no idea how they first got my name.”

Pastor Bill related that over the course of the summer and through the fall of 2007, they (he and the Church team members) had a dialogue.

“We spoke about mutual interests — what my passions and interests were. They (MPC) are very mission minded. My spiritual father, Dr. Donald Hoke, my pastor in my home church in Knoxville, was a missionary in Japan for 25 years and that is what drew us together.

“Our other commonality was my zeal for bringing together Biblical principles and applications of the Bible to modern-day needs and problems.”

Pastor Bill explained about his involvement with an underground church in a closed country as well as his mission to inspire and guide others to plant and strengthen underground churches in the closed countries.

“What I do — I take teams of twelve or less people to do door to door evangelism and start churches where there aren’t any — I’ve been doing this since 1999. I see the value of taking people to an oppressed society because they come back changed people and the reality of their faith grows at least ten-fold,” he declared. “Putting it into a lighter perspective: I am afraid of getting on a plane. Yet, I am less afraid of facing scary immigration officials than I am flying to my destination in closed countries.”

Pastor Bill noted that his ministry in Atlanta was deeply involved in getting people to go on short term missions — they actually generated at least 14 trips a year all over the world, he recalled.

“I was in Atlanta five years and before that my ministry was in Jacksonville.”

However, Pastor Bill’s desire to get people involved in mission wasn’t on his mind when he graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in Political Science with the goal of eventually becoming either a DEA or FBI agent after finishing law school, he said.

“At that time my spiritual father, Dr. Donald Hoke invited me to lunch and offered me a position on staff with him at my home church and I started working with him. After two months I realized that I really enjoyed sharing Jesus with others, so I enrolled in Seminary at Jackson, Mississippi — a bible-believing seminary — and the rest is history,” Pastor Bill declared. “Some say that the Bible contains the word of God — I say the Bible is the word of God.

“It is the desire of my heart to share with people here and around the world the simple truth found in a children’s song — ‘Jesus loves me this I know because the Bible tells me so’ — and in that song is a message that changes people’s lives and gives them hope!”