Ephesians 4:12-13
“For the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,
till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,to a perfect man,
to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Welcome to Calvary Chapel St. George

Pastor Rick Nerud

“The following is a recent article from our local newspaper that featured Pastor Rick and Calvary Chapel St. George.”

“Pastor Rick Nerud of Calvary Chapel St. George believes in teaching the word of God…”. He believes in teaching the word of God from the book, verse by verse, chapter by chapter. He believes those who study the Bible in that manner become equipped for the ministry. "We read it. We teach it. We make application to our own lives," he says. During his college years it was a different story. While studying political science and public administration at Mankato State University - now Minnesota State University - Nerud says he lived a stereotypical fraternity lifestyle, which he describes as "pretty worldly." One day he had to critique a speaker on campus for a class. He invited along his then-fiancé© with plans to go out for drinks after the speech. What he didn't know that it was an event organized by Christian athletes. The speaker was Madeline Manning Mims, winner of the gold medal for the 800-meter in the 1968 Olympics. She gave her testimony of how she accepted Jesus Christ as her savior. "Both my wife and I accepted Christ as our savior that evening," he says. Nerud remembered that Mims told them to read the Bible every day. So rather than going out to drink after the speech they went home and drank in the word of God instead. From that point on they began their "walk with the Lord." They had regular Bible studies with some friends though they did not attend a particular congregation at first. About a year after accepting Christ as their savior they had a Bible read-a-thon on campus to raise money for starving Ethiopians. "It was a pretty dramatic transformation to say the least," Nerud says.

Finding Calvary

After graduating with his bachelor's degree, Nerud was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Marine Corps. While serving in California he attended non-denominational protestant services on the base. With a traditional Catholic upbringing, Nerud says he was unlikely to walk into a less-traditional Calvary Chapel at that point in his life. But when a friend received an invitation to attend church at a Calvary Chapel in Encinitas, Nerud and his wife, Jill, agreed to go with her. "We walked into a very non-traditional setting," he remembers. The church was in a shopping center a block and a half off the beach. It was a Sunday evening service and people were wearing shorts and tank tops. There was a band on the stage. When the pastor walked up to the pulpit, opened the Bible and began to teach the word of God directly from the book, it "sealed the deal" for the young couple. The Bible-based and spirit-led style of teaching in an environment where everyone was welcome appealed to them. Nerud says Calvary Chapel is an evangelical church but not a denomination. It's an affiliation of like-minded ministries with core values and styles but the freedom to minister as led by the spirit and the local culture. As a result, the St. George congregation is somewhat more traditional than the one Nerud first attended in California. After spending a few years with the Marine Corps in Okinawa, Japan, Nerud resigned his commission as a captain and began to work for Wal-Mart. That job brought him to Southern Utah 16 years ago as part of the management team that got the Wal-Mart Distribution Center in Hurricane up and running. The first local pastor for Calvary Chapel moved to St. George from Southern California the same week as Nerud's family. The pastor started the church in Hurricane as a small Bible study group. The congregation eventually moved to St. George where the members met in West Elementary School and maintained office space in Green Valley. It was during that era that the Nerud family - including son Ricky and daughter Anna - began attending the local Calvary Chapel congregation. After attending the congregation for a year, Nerud quit his job at Wal-Mart and signed on as the assistant pastor for Calvary Chapel. Because it was a part-time position, he also started an office-cleaning business: Alpha and Omega Cleaning. "I would clean offices in the morning, come to minister at the church during the day and clean again in the evening," he says. Less than a year after he became the assistant pastor, the founding pastor moved back to California and asked Nerud to prayerfully consider the full-time position at Calvary Chapel. "After much prayer and confirmation from the word of God, I believe God called me to pastor the church," Nerud says. Having just moved into a new leased facility off River Road, Nerud continued as the pastor of the church as they grew in their relationship with the Lord, in numbers and in impacting the community with the message of the Gospel.  After spending seven great years there, the church was able to purchase land and build the current facility on Pioneer Road at the south end of Bloomington.  Their first services were held on Easter weekend five years ago.

'Called of God'

Ask Nerud what he loves about his job and his first answer is: "I get to tell people about Jesus." That includes telling them about the good news - the gospel - which recognizes that everyone has sinned but that Christ died for those sins in demonstration of God's love. The pastor says he is glad for the opportunity to help people with their daily struggles, temptations and trials. He helps them find strength and answers to their questions. He likes that it's a "meaningful" job. He likes that his job encompasses something that he loves to do. To become an ordained pastor for Calvary Chapel he did not have to obtain a theological degree. However, the ordination process did require plenty of study - reading, writing papers and providing his doctrinal beliefs. "I'm called of God but I'm trained by man," he says. Just like that first time he walked into a Calvary Chapel, Nerud begins worship services by instructing the congregation to open their Bibles as he teaches verse by verse, chapter by chapter. The first time Nerud taught his congregation all the way through Bible it took 10 years. The second time only took one year. Now they are on their third time through the Bible together. Roxanne Leonard, church secretary, says she likes this style of teaching. She believes Nerud is a "man of prayer" who has a desire to do God's will. "I personally read the entire Bible every year," Nerud says. "I started that before I became a pastor. That's where I get taught the most." To emphasize his point, Nerud picks up his Bible and says: "If I say this has the answers to life I better be able to use it to help people." He doesn't believe in being divisive or condemning. He doesn't believe in pointing a judgmental finger at other belief systems. He says he has compassion for other faiths but will not compromise his own faith. Nerud believes the Bible teaches that Christ is the only way to God. He also encourages people to test the Bible to see if that system is true. This is a process Nerud himself has followed. "While I don't have a theological degree, I've spent a lot of time studying a lot of faith systems and comparing them to the Bible," he says. "And I find the Bible to be the truth."

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