Re-Fired, Not Retired

At 77 years old, Ruth Myvett is
thriving in her ministry and believes that she has not been called to be
retired but re-fired.

After her salvation at 12 years of age,
Myvett knew that God had a unique call on her life and had gifted her in the
area of teaching. At 16, she started teaching Sunday school in her local church
and continued to serve until she went to Bible college in Chicago, Illinois.

Although she had not known about the
Assemblies of God before starting college, while attending university, she started
going to an AG Church, Southside Tabernacle, in Chicago, Illinois. While there,
Myvett met her husband with whom she would share her life and her ministry for
the next 35 years.

Ten years into her marriage, after
doing youth ministry with her husband, Myvett started the credentialing process
through the Assemblies of God and obtained her certification in 1984. Despite being
fully dedicated to the ministry, she states this is when “life happened.”

Beginning in 1990, Myvett would face a 15-year
stretch of intense health battles which included lupus, scleroderma,
fibromyalgia, diabetes induced blindness, and serious blood clots. Additionally,
other life circumstances affected her marriage and caused her to let her
credentials lapse. She stayed out of ministry for many years. Seven years into
her illnesses, she states that God gave her a vision in which He encouraged her
to continue speaking life, just as she had done when in the prime of her
ministry. “Although I really didn’t have the energy, I continued to speak over
and minister to myself and others and that is when my healing began,” she says.
Although it took several more years for Myvett to return to complete health,
she remained steadfast in her faith and in prayer and eventually found herself
on the other side of every single illness that she had battled.

“This is when I knew I had been
re-fired for God,” she says.

As Myvett got back on her feet, she
found herself moving to Missouri to be near her son. While settling into the
Kansas City area, Myvett began attending Bethel Church in Liberty, Missouri.

Having only been at the church for a
year, Bethel Church’s senior pastor, Les W. Clark, states that he came to the
church with a desire to steward people in their callings and their giftings.
“When Ruth came,” he says, “I told her that I really thought she was supposed
to use her giftings to shepherd the people around her.”

Myvett began to
reflect on Clark’s words and eventually felt that God was calling her to be a
pastor to those in her retirement complex. As she and Clark journeyed down the
path of starting the church, Myvett met with building administrators who
granted her permission to hold services on Sunday afternoons.

Services were an
instant success but soon came to a complete halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although they could no longer meet in person, Myvett was determined to continue
ministering to those to whom she had been called. “That’s when she started
doing call-in church,” says Clark. Call-in church, a term Myvett used to
describe her new method of ministry, was a conference call during which people
could phone in and still hear the gospel each week. “She did this for two whole
years until she could re-open her in person services,” Clark says.

Today, Myvett
continues to pastor her complex’s church, is serving her third term as an elder
of Bethel Church, leads a Bible study on Wednesday evenings, and receives
invitations to preach both at Bethel and in the community. Clark recalls
telling Myvett that God is restoring everything the enemy tried to steal from
her all those years ago.

Myvett has
continued to advance her ministry and at 74 years old, in April of 2021, became
fully ordained by the Northern Missouri District of the Assemblies of God. Her ordination journey is one which
Clark says he was able to walk with her and was honored to be the one who
prayed over her at her ordination service.

“My whole life
feels like a dream because I know I am right in the middle of God’s will for my
life,” she says. Myvett’s prayer is for everyone to experience the blessing of
God and His “re-firing” in their life no matter their age or current
circumstance.