YORKVILLE — Tom Thomas is retiring Sunday after 24 years serving as pastor of the Yorkville United Methodist Church.

He began preaching at Yorkville in 1999.

“Which in the Methodist Church is very unusual. Usually it’s three years, four years, five years and they move you on, so I’ve been very blessed to stay in one place for this long of a time,” he said.

Thomas said his wife, Rosie Thomas, is a teacher in the Martins Ferry City Schools District, which helped convince the church leadership to keep him in place.

“The church accomodated us,” he said, adding he decided he wanted to remain pastor at the Yorkville church on his first day. “I stood up there and I looked out, and I knew all the people. … They know all about me, and this is going to work.”

Thomas, a Tiltonsville resident, said he shares the same issues of the congregation and community.

“We’re local people,” he said. “These are people that I’ve known almost my whole life. … I’m like them, I’m just a regular person. Everybody in both my congregations are like me, just regular, average, everyday people. … I can never remember any friction. … We’ve done things, we agree with what we’re going to do, and then we do them.”

He added his mother, Betty Thomas, attends the church every week.

“My time here was very satisfactory, very pleasant, very meaningful,” he said. “It’s a town where we worked together and did a lot of good things.”

He has also preached at the Rayland United Methodist Church for the last 15 years. He previously preached from Prebyterian, Baptist and Church of God congregations and has participated in a Jewish wedding service.

“I’m very ecumenichal,” he said. “I graduated from Franciscan University, and my grandparents were Orthodox. My wife’s a Presbyterian.”

Thomas began ministering while he was a school guidance counselor at St. Clairsville Elementary School. Thomas said he began developing skills working with people at an early age and continued as a teacher and counselor.

“I would say getting along with people is my best quality, and as a minister that’s what it’s all about,” Thomas said. “Getting things done, being organized. At one time I was working in school and doing the ministry at the same time, and if you’re not organized, then you’re out of luck.”

Thomas recalled the first time he delivered a sermon, when the pastor was on vacation and the congregation members took turns.

“The first time I ever preached was in high school. … I got up there, and I could do it,” he said. He would deliver sermons as needed at other churches. “I got to thinking: maybe God’s calling me to do this full-time.”

Thomas had a memorable last two years during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The last couple years have been the most challenging. I don’t think our church has changed, I think society has changed,” he said. “We streamed for a couple of months and we opened up in June. We were closed for two months. … I didn’t like it, standing in front of a camera with no people around, that’s not good. Being with people, that’s the key.”

He said his last sermon will be titled “My Journey.”

“I’m going to talk to the people about where I’ve been, where I am now, and where I’m going, because my journey’s not over. I’ve still got things to do,” he said.

He thanked his wife for her support.

Craig Closser, lay leader, said the church has been at the Third Street location for 116 years and during that time has had 36 ministers with an average of term 2.5 years each, with the longest other than Thomas preaching for eight years.

Thomas said the congregation’s accomplishments in the last 24 years included food pantries and food distributions, community events in conjunction with other churches in the Tiltonsville and Rayland area and the Buckeye Local School District, and the construction of a new church building to replace the 98-year-old facility.

“We had 92 families that we served” with monthly food distributions, Closser said. “That’s probably around 300 people. The need is great or greater than ever to help those who are the least able to help themselves, so that’s program’s been running for 10 years.”

“We’ve been able to work together, and that’s what it’s all about: working together in God’s name,” Thomas said.

“If you measure what a man’s been able to help and lead and work, you go back 25 years, we had no minister, the building was … 98 years old and didn’t have a whole lot of maintenance,” Closser said. “Even through the pandemic we never closed.”

Instead the church had people pull up in their cars.

“If you measure a man from where an organization was at the low point and where it is today, I think one day Tom will hear, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.’ The Lord has blessed us abundantly, and for whom much is given, much is required.”

In the future, Thomas plans to continue preaching part-time as well as serving as president of the board of the Sedgwick House Museum in Martins Ferry and vice president of the Lions Club.

Pastor Jim Monogioudis will be taking over the Yorkville flock.