GARDENDALE Wesley Meeks worked for a long time as a policeman and a Child Protective Services investigator, but he always had becoming a minister in the back of his mind and he has now acted on that ambition.
Recently appointed minister of the Gardendale Church of Christ at 4448 E. Morning Glory Road, Meeks enjoys preaching on the interrelatedness of the Old and New Testaments. “I preach about anything in the Bible, mostly the good news of the Gospel,” he said.
“Part of my mission is to make sure the congregation is exposed to the entire Bible because the Old Testament is also there for our learning,” he said.
“In it, we see the way God wants us to live. It would be a shame to ignore all that knowledge and the examples of the Old Testament that point all the way through to Jesus Christ.”
Meeks is a 60-year-old Gatesville native who graduated from high school in Waco, studied criminal justice at McLennan County Community College and served as an officer with the Waco, Midland and Lamesa police departments from 1979 to 1992. He was also an adoptive assessor for two private placement agencies and a security officer at Midland Memorial Hospital. He and his wife Sherron have two children and two grandchildren.
An average of 35 people attends Gardendale Church of Christ at 10:30 a.m. Sunday with an additional dozen participating through Zoom video teleconferencing.
Meeks is a student at Sunset International Bible Institute in Lubbock whose father Weldon was a Church of Christ minister. “I had felt like I was supposed to do this for a number of years,” he said.
“I had part of my intestine cut off in 2020 and was in the hospital for four days. I had a lot of time to think because it was during the pandemic and I couldn’t have visitors. I realized I wasn’t getting any younger, so I decided to take a leap of faith. Through prayer and talking to Greg Fleming, co-minister of Downtown Church of Christ in Midland, it seemed like the right time.
“The Bible gives us the background to understand Jesus as he lived. His experience was from the Hebrew point of view and that’s why it can be hard for us modern westerners to understand why he did what he did.”
Fleming said Meeks’s family background is a big part of his motivation. “Wes has had a longstanding interest in the ministry because of his father’s work in Gatesville,” Fleming said.
“He was at the stage when he was ready to think about the next chapter in his life. He has an interest and an aptitude that led him to this point.”
