The Youngest LCMS Circuit Visitor!

Make sure to follow @PastorDeberny!

Nifty Links:

Join the Community

Click Here to Check Out the Store

Click Here to Donate

Greatest Theology Newsletter on the Planet

Transcript

[00:00:00] Remy: Reverend Deberny. Thank you so much for being willing to come on my show and talk to me.

[00:00:09] Rev. Deberny: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. I love to, love to talk to fellow Lutherans about our faith, about the church and anything I can do to help.

[00:00:20] Remy: So to get this started, just sort of generally around what we're going to be talking about. If you could introduce yourself.

How long have you been doing ministry? Where are you at currently? Where'd you graduate from? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

[00:00:35] Rev. Deberny: Oh, I love talking about myself.

[00:00:38] Remy: Don't we all.

[00:00:39] Rev. Deberny: So my story, I like to say in the LCMS I would be what you call a system guy in that I just kind of went through the system. I, I grew up in an LCMS congregation out in Buffalo and Niagara Falls and I knew when I was seven years old I was going to be a pastor.

It's the divine call. God just calls you and I think that kind of is an example of that. I saw my pastor, he came to visit us. We, it was a school associated with the church and the pastor would visit every day and I saw him like that. That's, that's what I want to do. And I've had a lot of support, I had a lot of support from family, from friends. This is a vocation that you should pursue. So I went through the system. After high school I went to a Concordia, Concordia Nebraska where I studied conc. Computer science but also the pre seminary program, getting my Greek and Hebrew, all that done, graduated in three years with the Bachelor's of arts. And then you had to make the choice which seminary you're going to go to. And fortunately the computer science degree actually turned into a career at Concordia Publishing House. I developed software for a church management called Shepherd Staff. And so the choice of where I would go to seminary became easy because I had a side gig at in St. Louis. So I went to Concordia St. Louis for a Master of Divinity education and for after two years I got my vicarage assignment. And that vicarage assignment was kind of crazy because that was the 2020 year, which if you remember that was during the COVID pandemic. So I actually found out where I was going on vicarage at home, no call Service, over the TV. It was crazy. I was called to Garden City, New York which about, I would say a 30 minute drive east of New York City, Manhattan. And I spent a year there learning about, you know, what it means to be a pastor with the field experience.

It definitely was a fit for me. I didn't know if I was going to be coming back to New York. But I remember our district president. He was not district president yet, but he came to visit me during vicarage and he gave me the old like, so where do you think you would fit in as a pastor if you were to come back to our district? That kind of talk. Right.

And so after my fourth year we received our call assignments and sure enough I returned to the same district. And now I am a pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in Mastic Beach, New York which is about 60 miles east of the city, so further east on the island. And I am now in my third year. So two years ministry have not scared me off. God be praised for that. He has been with me in my ministry and I thank him every day. I thank him for the support I've received. I got called to a wonderful cong...