MONAHANS The Rev. Joshua “Josh” Rieff says contemporary American culture has a way of separating people from one another and he likes to help them reconnect.
Pastor since 2016 of Southside Baptist Church at 1402 S. Main Ave. in Monahans, the Rev. Rieff preached March 22 from First Samuel 16, where the prophet Samuel anoints David king of Israel.
“God told Samuel, ‘The Lord does not look at the things man looks at,” Rieff said. “‘Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’
“The world tells us to divide ourselves from one another, but God puts things back together.’”
Rieff is a native of Hale Center in the Panhandle who grew up on a farm and earned a bachelor’s degree in the arts and religion at Wayland Baptist University in Plainview. He was a Southern Baptist missionary to college campuses in central Massachusetts and he took a master’s degree in education at Wayland, taught at McClennan Community College in Waco and earned a master’s degree there at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. Rieff and his wife Crystal have two children.
Southside Baptist Church meets at 10:45 a.m. Sunday with an average of 90 people.
“I love to connect people to the truth and then get out of the way like an electrician runs a wire to a lightbulb,” Rieff said. “I like to run the wire so people can make a direct connection with the truth. I get animated teaching people.”
One of his favorite scriptures is the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2, which says in part, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross!”
Rieff works with church member Robert Eubank in a 6:30 p.m. Thursday program to help people recover from drug and alcohol addiction.
Eubank said Rieff “really brought the church together” after he arrived. “Josh wears all kinds of hats,” Eubank said.
“He is a super dad and one of the best preachers I ever met. I’m an old man of 66 and he is 38 and highly educated, but he gets on my level where I can understand it.
“He got me to kick off the recovery program in our church and we are still in the basics. We’re working on it with about 20 people. He is an exceptional Christian. He touches my heart.”
