Rev. Dr. Anthony McPhail
Rev. Dr. Anthony McPhail, lead pastor at Valdosta First Methodist Church in the South Georgia Annual Conference and supervisor of registration and hybrid teams for the General Conference, shares the story of reconnecting at the General Conference with Pastor Wesley Nascimento, a mentor who profoundly shaped his calling to ministry during a mission trip to Brazil nearly two decades ago. Their reunion brought back memories of Wesley’s encouragement and prophetic words, renewing Anthony’s commitment to inspire and uplift others in his own ministry.
One of my favorite metaphors used to describe the Convening General Conference went something like this: “a family reunion with family we are meeting for the first time.” I certainly experienced that to be true, as we shared in the joy of joining with new friends from across the globe with a unified spirit and a common vision for the future of our family. The conference also presented a unique and unexpected joy for my wife Emma and I, as I also was able to reunite with a Brazilian pastor that had a significant impact on my life and ministry nearly twenty years ago, and she was able to meet him for the first time. It is a story of God placing someone in my path at an impressionable time in my life and seeing him again made the joy of the Convening General Conference even sweeter for Emma and myself.
In the spring of 2006, I was a recent graduate of the University of Georgia and a first-year intern at the UGA Wesley Foundation. As part of my internship, I led a mission team of students to São Paulo, Brazil for UGA’s spring break, which is how I first met Pastor Wesley Nascimento. I did not know I would meet him on that trip, and in fact we knew very little about what to expect until we arrived. I am a detail person and I want to know as much as possible before going somewhere, but I quickly realized that was not the Brazilian way! We showed up at the São Paulo airport on a Saturday morning with uncertainty of what to expect, but then rejoiced that a well-organized welcome party was awaiting us. In addition to our missionary contacts, the pastor of our partner church, and our translator, there also was this young Brazilian pastor named Wesley who had tagged along because he was in town trying to obtain a visa to visit the United States. He became a quick favorite of our team with his beaming smile, maniacal laugh, and a propensity to joke around about everything.
After meeting everyone we headed to the church we would be serving and realized that the trip was much more organized than we anticipated. They had every single day scheduled well, but from my perspective some details would have really been helpful ahead of time. Here was the big one: as they went over the schedule, they casually mentioned that we would have a worship service with the church that night and again the next morning, and for both of those the instructions included “and one of you will preach.” I cannot begin to describe the heat I felt as every eye on my team burned a hole through me when they said those words. I was hardly a preacher, but I was the closest thing our team had. So, with a healthy fear and a strong dependence on the Holy Spirit, I got to work on writing a sermon in just a couple hours and then that night put together another one on very little sleep.
I know one sermon focused on Peter’s confession of Christ in Matthew 16, and I have no clue about the other one. I do know that both sermons seemed to go over well, which I assumed meant that my translator was better at preaching than me! At a churchwide lunch on Sunday afternoon, we quickly realized that one person enjoyed the sermons more than anyone else, as Pastor Wesley’s praise of my sermons became the running joke of our team for the rest of the trip. Every time he would see me, he would wrap his arm around my shoulders, and yell for all to hear, “Anthony is going to be the next Billy Graham and the next Francis Asbury!” and then would laugh wildly with a smile from ear to ear. Friends, I am only aware of one human being that has ever uttered my name alongside the names of those two legends of the faith, and that one human being is Pastor Wesley Nascimento. On the one hand he loved to laugh and have a good time, and on the other he was and is a tremendous encourager and supporter.
On Monday our team worked on a project and heard the sad news that Wesley’s visa was denied. He would be unable to travel to the United States for a study program, and we would be unable to see our newfound friend in the states. Undeterred by his set back, Wesley traveled back the eight hours to his home and continued to pastor his church faithfully. He also stayed in touch with me, and asked if I could bring a team the next year to his home in Além Paraíba. Only one other member of our team was able to go, but for the next spring break the two of us traveled back to visit our friends in São Paulo for a couple of days and then stayed with Wesley and his family for the rest of the week. At night we would lead revival services at area churches, and during the day I think he took us across every kilometer of his region. We experienced some incredible moments that trip, but one would stand out above them all.
One day he took us to lunch at this outdoor restaurant with amazing grilled fish, and traditional Brazilian rice and beans. As we sat there, he asked when I was going to go to seminary and become a full-time preacher. I politely explained that while I enjoyed serving in campus ministry, I had other vocational plans than preaching. He looked at me sideways and assured me that I would preach. I assured him I preferred the idea of being a professor, playing music, or really anything else. He saw past it. He pulled out a toy brick that he his son had left in his car and placed it in my hand. With full sincerity he looked at me in the eye and said, “this is a building block for a powerful Methodist ministry, and I prophesy that God is going to use you as a mighty preacher.”
I would love to tell you that I accepted this prophetic word and rushed back home to apply to seminaries. The truth is I laughed out loud, thanked him for his encouragement, and changed the subject. In the next couple of years two other pastors would sit down with me and have similar conversations with me. They also looked at me, and said I think God is calling you to this and God can use you in this way. I kept wrestling with my call, and it was not until years later that I looked back and saw that my friend Pastor Wesley saw something in me long before I saw it in myself. He believed in me, and despite my defiance to his prophetic word he kept on believing it.
Wesley and I had talked of reuniting over the years, but it never worked out for us. A few weeks before heading to San Jose though, Wesley reached out to let me know that he was coming to show support and celebrate the formation of the Global Methodist Church at the Convening General Conference, and wanted to know if I was going to be there. Tears welled up in my eyes not just because I knew I would get to see my friend again, but also because Emma had just made a last second plan to attend for a few days. She and I went on our first date a couple of weeks before I visited Wesley’s home in Além Paraíba, and she had known how much he meant to me for as long as we had been together.
The morning General Conference began was quite chaotic. I oversaw onsite registration that morning, and that was the easy part. At one point I received a phone call asking if I could get the plenary room cleared because a generator had caught fire meaning the production team needed to run several tests to get things back online. I also oversaw the Hybrid Liaison Team (the group that facilitated the participation of Zoom delegates), and we were still working out kinks in the minutes leading up to the opening plenary. Amid that chaos, I found a beautiful moment of bliss. Standing at my registration post, I looked up to see my friend Wesley Nascimento with that same smile I saw nearly two decades ago. After a long embrace and him giving me a big kiss on top of my head, he looked at me and said, “you were just a boy, and look at you now – a mighty Global Methodist pastor and leader.” I may question the mighty part, but I have given up on questioning anything he thinks God is doing in me. A few hours later Emma arrived and made our family reunion moment complete.
As the bold witness of our movement continues to grow, I believe we need spiritually attuned people like Wesley to come alongside us with a Barnabas-like spirit of encouragement. Now that I am in a different season of ministry, I long to grow in that spirit myself. In 2023, I was asked to create and launch our Certified Lay Ministry program in South Georgia, which has given me an opportunity to teach and lead dozens of participants from across our conference and neighboring conferences. Most participants fit the primary goal of the program – people serving in their local church with a desire to grow spiritually and be better equipped to serve effectively. While that covers the majority, we also have seen God use the program to identify lay people that God is calling to preach, serve churches without a pastor, and in some cases enter ordained ministry. Joy abounds when I get to sit with that latter group of people and help them see what they cannot see yet. I get to walk alongside them in their journey and say, “God is going to use you as a mighty preacher.” From a pragmatic standpoint, I know we need laborers for the harvest, and we need to encourage them in their journey. For me though, it has even more meaning – it is a chance to give someone a gift that was once given to me, long before I knew I needed it.
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