Meet the New Bishop

Steve Dennie

August 1993

Many young people aren't sure what they want to do with their lives. Ray Seilhamer didn't have that problem. A few years after becoming a Christian at age 12, he knew God wanted him to become a minister, and he never doubted or deviated from his call. And it didn't take long for him to realize what kind of minister he wanted to be--the kind that started new churches.

Six boys sat in the back row of the Orrstown, Pa., UB church one morning, cutting up. Then Pastor Leroy Perry, whose 1 2-year-old nephew Ray was among those boys, stepped in front of the pulpit and said, "I'm going to speak from John 3:16." At the end of the service, all six boys made decisions for Christ. One was Harold Myers, now a UB pastor in Harrisonburg, Va. Another was Jack Diehl, an active layman from Shippensburg, Pa., who has been a General Conference delegate several times. And another, of course, became a bishop.

"I thought I would farm up until I was 16," Seilhamer recalls. "But between my sophomore and junior years, I felt God working in my life for a radical change of direction--the ministry." So he began preparing for college, exchanging agricultural studies for Latin and algebra.

As a teenager, he was very active in Orrstown UB, and found many opportunities to speak and serve. At the same time, he kept busy at school. In the fall he played football (he was team captain, and "the smallest fullback in southern Pennsylvania"), in the winter he wrestled, and in the spring he played baseball, compiling the third highest batting average in the conference his senior year. In between, he was in school dramas and the school chorus, and even got himself elected King of the Senior Dance (much to his chagrin).

Then it was off the Huntington College.

When he first visited the college as a high school senior, he saw a girl who really caught his eye. He didn't know her name, but did run across her picture in the United Brethren magazine He cut out that picture, carried it with him all summer, and began tracking her down once he arrived on campus. It took a while, but he finally saw her in the snack bar. Her name was Ruth.

There were two problems. One--Ruth was a junior, and he was a just a freshman. Two--rumor had it that she was about to get engaged. But he soon discovered that she and her boyfriend had broken up, and on September 30 of that year, he and Ruth had a Sunday afternoon date.

"Ruth's background and mine are similar in ways," he says, "We're both from the farm and grew up in small, poor families. As our relationship became more serious, Ruth never questioned or resisted the idea of becoming a pastor's wife."

He graduated in 1960 with a History degree, and graduated from the HC Seminary in 1963. He spent two of those years, 1961-1963, pastoring his first church--Hopewell UB in Auburn, Ind. They gave him $70 a week. "We had excellent people, and grew from about 90 to 120. I was fortunate to start in a small church that had a good Christian education program and a strong missions emphasis."

Having completed seminary, he and Ruth, along with their two young sons, moved to Pennsylvania.

In Seminary, Seilhamer had two dreams which seemed to be in conflict.

"Pennsylvania Conference planned to start a new church in Harrisburg to recognize 175 years of service in Pennsylvania, and I wanted to go there." It would be called Devonshire Memorial Church.

"Somewhere in my early years, I got turned on to the idea of church planting. I felt the United Brethren church should be starting new congregations, and the challenge and adventure appealed to me."

His second dream was to go to the King Street Church as associate pastor. From the 1950s through the 1980s, this church hired a young minister for two years, trained him, and then sent him out. Seilhamer is the fourth one of those men to become bishop.

Both dreams seemed beyond fulfillment. He didn't think Pennsylvania Conference would send a 25-year-old to start that new church, and another man had already accepted the King Street position.

But things changed. When the person originally slated for King Street backed out, it was offered to Seilhamer. And then the conference postponed starting Devonshire for one year.

During that first year, superintendents George Weaver, Dale Kline, and C. Ray Miller approached him. "If King Street released you from your two-year commitment, would you go to Devonshire?"

Without question!

King Street poured a lot of money and manpower into getting Devonshire off the ground, and it flourished. "We immediately began training people to do evangelistic visitation, and people became involved in outreach. We also had some very creative children's ministries, and gave our teachers space to try anything that might work."

After five years at Devonshire, Seilhamer left in 1969 to become pastor of College Park UB in Huntington, Ind.

He wanted College Park to start a new church somewhere, so after two years, he began sowing seeds. "It's amazing how soon we were able to pull it off," he says now. They put together a core group of ten families who started a new church, Emmanuel Community, 20 mile up the road on the edge of Fort Wayne. Seilhamer served as founding pastor.

At College Park, he developed a reputation as a skilled counselor, and found himself in high demand that way. He also earned a doctorate in that field.

After twelve very good years at College Park, Seilhamer was ready to move on to something else. And so, in 1982, he became president of Evangelical School of Theology, a seminary in Myerstown, Pa., which a number of UB ministers have attended.

The seminary prospered in many ways under his leadership. Student enrollment hit a high of 150 students. He developed a strong faculty, 100% of whom held earned doctorates. The physical campus greatly expanded, and EST gained accreditation from the Association of Theology Schools and from Middle States. The second time around, ATS did something that's almost unheard of--they granted a ten-year reaccredidation with no interim reports, which means they found no issues that needed to be addressed.

Then the church came calling.

All three bishops were retiring in 1993, and it seemed certain that General Conference would decide to elect just one bishop. A number of people approached Seilhamer about his openness to becoming that person. "I never aspired to be a bishop," he says, "but we began considering whether that is where God wanted to use us next."

The timing was right at EST. The school was on solid footing, just completing a $2.75 million campaign (having already gone over the $3 million mark). So when he was officially asked about letting his name be on the ballot, he consented.

On June 20, the first day of General Conference, he was elected. And on August 16, he began his new duties.

Ray and Ruth Seilhamer are both members of Lakeview UB in Camden, Mich., which is where Ruth grew up. They own a farm and enjoy going there frequently. "That's my therapy," says the Bishop. "When I have a day off, I'll go to the farm. I love working with my hands and getting dirty. It's very much part of my background."

Ruth's sister and her husband, Dick Feather, work the adjacent farm. In November, Ray and Dick started from opposite ends of the woods behind their farms, and both got a buck (Dick's had fewer points but was bigger, so it all evened out).

Ray and Ruth have three children. Rodney, the oldest, lives with his wife Robyn and three children in Crawfordsville, Ind. Rick is associate pastor of Main Street UB in Walbridge, OH. He and his wife, Wanda, have two children. Ronda and her husband, Dean, had their first child in November. Dean is preparing for the ministry.

"The bishop's role of being a visionary and spiritual leader sits well with me," Seilhamer remarks.

"God has given me the ability to go through something and improve on it the next time around. For that reason, I'll be glad when I have completed one year as bishop, because I'll enter the second year with a much better grasp on how to most effectively serve Christ in this position."