GARFIELD - Proclaiming God’s love to the people in the church family at Twelve Corners Baptist Church is easy for pastor Rick Booyer. He’s experienced it himself and loves to tell others about it. Booyer did not grow up in church, but clearly remembers when he surrendered his life to the Lord.
He had been invited to church by fellow hay haulers and they talked him into attending a youth day at Silver Dollar City. Jerry Clower, the keynote speaker, looked at him, asked him if he was “saved” and he said “yes, sir,” but realized Booyer realized he wasn’t.
“He come off that stage right in front of me, pointed at me and said, ‘Son, are you saved?” Booyer said: “That got me to thinkin’ and that night, I asked Jesus to come into my life.”
For the first year or two, his life changed dramatically, then, he yielded to a friend’s insistence that he have one beer. Booyer recalls his steady decline spiritually until he was once again brought to an awareness of God’s love for him and his own need to be obedient. Booyer was dating Carisa,who would eventually be his wife. She told him she would not keep dating him if he wasn’t regularly attending church. So, he got back in church and his love for the Lord was rekindled. The two were married Sept. 21, 1985, in Bethany Baptist Church, Neosho, Mo.
“She’s my hero,” Booyer says, grinning about the love of his life, the mother of their two daughters and grandmother to their granddaughter, who he gladly proclaims to be the most beautiful little girl in the world.
Carisa teaches the women’s Bible study and teaches Sunday school. When Booyer, a native of Neosho, Mo., first came to Twelve Corners Baptist Church in 1994, there were 12 people in attendance for the first Sunday. They were still meeting in the flagstone building constructed in 1842. Within the year, attendance grew to nearly 90 people and the worship center was full.
Booyer encouraged them to add on to the structure which is now a fellowship hall. There are now about 120 members.
As to the name of the church, Booyer said a cross has 12 corners, inside and outside. He said some people say the name came from the original founders who were said to have come from Twelve Corners, Tenn. In addition to his pastoring duties, Booyer plays the guitar to lead worship and leads a worship service every Tuesday afternoon at Autumn Place Retirement Center in Pea Ridge.
“So many of these people don’t get to go to church.
This is the only church they get,” he said of the residents, who came using walkers and wheelchairs, sitting beside some of the Twelve Corners members and singing from the old Baptist hymnals passed out. Booyer worked with meth addicts in Neosho through the drug court system as an advocate for the addicts.
“I would go up there in the day, haul them around and take them to their appointments - parole officer, court dates - minister to them any way I could,” Booyer said, “then come back to northwest Arkansas and work a ‘night shift’ studying and preparing at church.
“That changed my heart tremendously,” he says, explaining that he used to only want “good sinners,” but now focuses on the “bad ones.”
“People want the good ole’ boy who needs Christ, he’s popular in the community, even if he’s a little rough around the edges. Nobody wants the people who are down and out. God changed my heart to pursue and minister to all sinners.” “To lead the lost to Christ and to nurture the saved,” is the theme at Twelve Corners, Booyer says.
So, Booyer ministers 24/7 throughout the northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri area and says: “Everyone is welcome at Twelve Corners.”
News, Pages 1 on 07/17/2013