Wayne Herring was a beloved instructing elder and founding father of the PCA who served as a pastor, church planter, and pulpit provide throughout his 5 a long time of pastoral ministry. He concluded his ministry by serving as a church relations officer with the PCA Administrative Committee (AC).
Since his dying on March 11, 2025, many have joined the AC in thanking God for Herring’s life, ministry, and affect within the church buildings he served and the denomination at massive. Although many mourn his passing, additionally they rejoice the various methods God used him within the lifetime of the church. Those that sat underneath Herring’s ministry keep in mind him as a person who liked God and his church and gave his entire coronary heart to following him.
A local Mississippian, Herring was born on June 13, 1946. He obtained his undergraduate diploma from Mississippi State College and attended seminary at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson. Following seminary, Herring served congregations in South Carolina and Forest, Mississippi earlier than planting Religion Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
He finally moved again to Jackson to show at RTS earlier than serving as pastor at Woodland Presbyterian Church in Hattiesburg and Religion Presbyterian Church in Brookhaven. Herring was then known as to serve on the pastoral workers at Unbiased Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee, earlier than planting St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Cordova. After it was organized, Herring accepted a possibility to function assistant pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville.
The ultimate name of his pastoral ministry was serving as a church relations officer with the AC. On this position, Herring labored with church buildings to attach them with the assets and assist offered by the AC.
Paul Kooistra, a colleague on the AC and shut good friend to Herring, remembers, “Wayne was very energetic. He was all the time shifting quick. He was grateful for the issues God had already accomplished and was all the time anticipating extra and wished to be part of that work. What I respect greater than anything was that each time we obtained collectively, we have been targeted on Christ and the way what we and the establishments round us have been doing would an increasing number of replicate Christ’s kingship”.
Moreover, Herring spent the later years of his life in a consultancy with James “Bebo” Elkin to assist recruit and place pastors in church buildings and ministries throughout the PCA. As Elkin places it, “He liked God, and God liked him. That was Wayne. Wayne was a spiritually-minded man, and pricey to me.”
Considered one of Elkin’s earliest recollections of Herring was when Herring shared his testimony at a seaside bonfire shortly earlier than the 2 males began seminary. Elkin mentioned, “The Lord used him in that second to provide me the boldness to know I didn’t want a radical testimony for it to be an excellent testimony.”
Herring and his first spouse, Joyce, had 5 daughters. After Joyce handed away in 2014, God used Elkin to introduce Herring to a different companion for all times, his second spouse Dena.
Herring leaves behind a legacy as a pastor, husband, father, and good friend marked by love and faithfulness. God used him in some ways, and the fruit of his labor will proceed to be felt for years to return.
