Throughout his life, Gene Rhodes has been planting seeds of positivity in the people around him. He said he may not see the fruits of his labor in each individual, but whether it was a fellow airman during his 21-year career in the U.S. Air Force; a church member at Evangelistic Ministries Church, where he serves as one of the assistant pastors; or just someone he meets when he is out and about in Jacksonville, he tries to bring a smile and encouragement to everyone.
“You never know what impact you’re going to have on people’s lives,” he said. “Sometimes it comes full circle. I’m now hearing news about guys I trained [in the Air Force]. Some of them were good and some of them were borderline, but they straightened their lives out, and now they’ve outranked me. They come to me and thank me.”
Rhodes was born in Marion, but his family soon moved to Jericho. They moved again when Rhodes was in middle school, to Blytheville, and he graduated from Blytheville High School. He jokes that being raised in the country before moving to Blytheville, he lived in the only house in his community with “running water” yet had no indoor plumbing.
“I’d pump the water, and my brother would run it to the house,” he said with a laugh.
After graduating from high school, Rhodes joined the Air Force. He started his duties in 1977 and had 21 years of service.
Most of his Air Force career took place in the United States. He was first assigned to Blytheville Air Force Base (now Eaker Air Force Base), then Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he stayed for 10 years.
“Three quarters of my career was done, and I had only been to two bases,” he said. “I really didn’t want to go overseas a bunch, but after I left Andrews, they sent me to Korea. I spent 14 months at Osan Air Base in Korea. I came back here in April 1993 and spent five years being in charge of the pharmacy [at Little Rock Air Force Base].”
Rhodes retired from the military in 1998 as an E7 master sergeant, but he said he still hears from airmen he worked with while he was in the service. He calls a lot of them his “military kids” and has enjoyed watching them grow in their careers.
“One young man is the command sergeant at Lackland Air Force Base [in Texas],” Rhodes said. “He’s one of my top troops. I mentored him and tried to keep all of my guys out of trouble. Now he’s retiring in November, and he wants me to go out there. It’s like your children are growing up.”
While he was still in the Air Force, Rhodes said, he started to get interested in ministry in 1981. Aug, 10, 1986, was a special day for Rhodes because he preached his first sermon, and he has received mentoring and encouragement from other ministers over the years.
Rhodes started attending Evangelistic Ministries Church in Jacksonville in 1997, and during the past several years, he and his wife, Elnora, have moved into assistant pastor roles in the ministry.
“We make sure that we support and lighten the load of our pastor as much as possible,” he said. “We wear many hats. … We’ve gone from cleaning, vacuuming carpets, doing whatever needs to be done in ministry to counseling. The latest thing has been premarital counseling. We’ve done three marriages in the past month. At different times we teach or minister, and we have some fellowship churches we go out and check up on — two are in Illinois; another is Colorado and another in Missouri.”
The Rhodeses work with the singles ministry, the prayer warrior ministry, the new members class and the new converts class at Evangelistic Ministries Church. They also help with H.O.P.E. — Helping Out People Everywhere — which supplies people with food and clothing, in addition to hosting various events like the recent back-to-school summit, where children were given backpacks and school supplies.
“When you get hooked up with the different ministries, it is a lot,” he said.
Evangelistic Ministries Church was established 20 years ago, and members have been celebrating with various events all year. Oct. 16-18, the ministry will hold a celebration of the anniversary.
Throughout his ministry, Rhodes said, his wife has been a tremendous source of encouragement. Recently, that encouragement resulted in Rhodes turning some of his notes and research into a book called Satan: The Great Identity Thief.
“I was doing research for a class,” he said. “After doing research and writing everything up, we looked at it and thought it was good. My wife said, ‘I think you’ve got your book.’”
Rhodes said he had been thinking about writing a book for a while, but he had procrastinated on some other subjects. In Satan: The Great Identity Thief, Rhodes said, he aimed to put a spin on the secular concern of identity theft by talking about how Satan can influence negative behavior in a person’s life.
“I wrote it for everyone,” he said. “It’s been a labor of love. We just wanted to get it out to the world.”
Aside from working in ministry at the church and writing his book, Rhodes said, he doesn’t have time for much else. He is a husband, a father to six children and a grandfather to 11 grandchildren, and he said he enjoys spending time with his family whenever possible.
In what little spare time he does have, Rhodes is working on a doctorate through EMC Midwest College of Theology.
Rhodes’ book is available at www.xulonpress.com, www.amazon.com and www.barnes
andnoble.com. For more information about Evangelistic Ministries Church — including details about the upcoming 20th-anniversary celebration — visit www.emc101.org.