Otto Wegner

Otto Wegner is certainly a man who has served many years faithfully in ministry. Born in the midst of one of America’s greatest wars just days after the landing in Normandy in 1940. He attended Central Bible College and pastored a traditional church until he began planting churches throughout New Jersey. He planted 11 churches in urban areas between 1988 and 1999 and ended up pastoring at Highway Tabernacle, which was the second oldest Assemblies of God church in the world until it closed its doors and led Otto to Wyckoff New Jersey, a very wealthy area. During this time he struggled with what he felt his calling was in urban ministry and where he was, a church with an extremely wealthy congregation in the suburbs.

When Pastor Otto decided to follow that calling on his life into the urban arena and announced that he would be planting churches in the city the church came together and announced that they would pay for him to be admitted into a mental institution. Thus East Global Church Planting was created and allowed upperclassman from Central Bible College to come and be apart as interns for 6 months to be coached first hand in church planting. There the interns learned by being brought to the city and being exposed directly to the community that they would be ministering to and experimenting what worked for outreach and what didn't.

Resurrection Life Church was one project that he took on which was far greater in magnitude than anything else that he had handled before in his life. In the end there was over $800,000 of funds raised and spent in the renovation of that building. Otto was such a great man of faith who took on the project with only $2,500 in his, at that time, current church's bank account but enough faith and determination that he pursued the end product of seeing the community come to know Jesus.

Now he is working with Next Generation Ministries which is geared to take students who are in their latter years of high school and disciple them so that they can be a positive role model in their families as their grow up and become a father figure to their children since 90% of the children in that town are raised by single women.

He shared a great deal of his heart with us and much wisdom in many areas but I grew the most respect for him when he shared with the class about his wife who is suffering from Parkinson's disease and about his faithfulness to her in this challenging time of their lives.