YOU won’t get through a conversation with David Levandusky without hearing at least one quote from Scripture.
The 65-year-old became a Christian 53 years ago, of his own volition when he was just 12, and has loved reading the Bible ever since.
“I used to have my mother help me memorize passages when I was a kid,” said Levandusky. “That’s how she learned, though she didn’t become a Christian until I became a minister.”
This year, the slight man of average height, whose voice is soft and soothing, celebrates 25 years as the pastor of Living Waters Assembly of God church at 450 Davis St., and it appears he may be there for another 25, if he has his way.
“Ultimately, it will be up to the members, but I’m hoping to be here a lot longer,” he said.
Levandusky said he knew from the moment he “accepted Jesus” when he was a child that he would some day become a minister.
He said his long career as an evangelical pastor with Pentecostal roots started shortly after he left Zion Bible College in East Providence, R.I.
Levandusky had attended the college for two years when he was asked to serve as pastor in a church in northern Vermont. He stayed there for five years.
He said after that he returned to college at Faith School of Theology in Charleston, Maine, and graduated a few years later. Then, he became pastor of a church in New York and stayed for two years and from there spent nine years in Rochester, N.H., before being called to Living Waters, where he began his ministry on Sept. 1, 1989.
Levandusky credits his wife, Carol, for staying in Greenfield for so many years. They met when he was at Zion Bible College.
“I certainly could not have done this without her faithfulness and participation,” he said. “Her ministry to our home, to me as her husband, to our family and children and to our church family has done a lot to keep us here in Greenfield for 25 years.”
He said he has grown to love the area and the people even more than he did when he got here.
Levandusky said he has never believed his ministry begins and ends within the confines of the small church that sits on the corner of the Davis Street extension.
Throughout the past quarter-century he has worked with county towns, town officials, social services agencies, other churches and anyone else who has asked for help.
Levandusky has advocated and worked for the poor, the hungry, the abused and has even organized an annual reading of the Declaration of Independence on the Greenfield Town Common every Fourth of July morning for the past few years.
“I plan to keep doing the reading and extend it to other towns,” said Levandusky. “It’s very popular now to separate church and state, but in my mind you really can’t — and I don’t believe that was the intention of the authors of the Declaration of Independence.”
He said he enjoys helping others, especially those less fortunate.
Levandusky said he has a special interest in domestic abuse, because his father was an abusive alcoholic and his mother left with her three children when Levandusky was just a toddler.
“I’ve never been able to understand why women stay in those situations,” he said. “No one should have to endure abuse. I preach against domestic violence a lot.”
Levandusky ran for a seat on the Greenfield School Committee three times in the 1990s, but was defeated each time.
“That was OK,” he said. “I was able to work with kids, their parents and schools in a different capacity.”
Levandusky is a member of the town’s Republican Committee, though he said he is an independent who believes more like a Republican.
“My faith is my politics and vice versa,” he said. “The Republican Party comes closest to my faith and how I think about different issues. I lean more toward being conservative, but I have a lot of friends who think differently.”
Levandusky considers himself very patriotic and tries to serve U.S. veterans whenever he has the chance.
He also does pastoral work at the jail, in area hospitals and in nursing homes.
“Wherever I’m needed,” said Levandusky.
He said he brings speakers to the church whenever he can and would eventually like to host a community meal there — all of that while holding weekly services, prayer meetings and classes.
He’s had a television show on Greenfield Community Television, “Living Waters,” for the past 24 years and for the past nine has been the disc jockey for 107.9 LPFM, “The Light of the Pioneer Valley,” which is on 12 hours every day from midnight to noon the next day.
Levandusky points to a small closet in the basement of the church.
“That’s our food pantry,” he said. “People can come and take food or members can take food to people they know need it.”
He said he and church members stock the small pantry when it starts to run low.
Levandusky is one of the few religious leaders in the area who touts an increase in membership over the past few years.
“We had about 55 members two years ago and we have 80 today,” he said. “We’ve actually outgrown the building.”
Levandusky said the friendly atmosphere, music and philosophies are some of what keeps people coming back each week.
He said if he has one challenge or obstacle to overcome, it’s that he needs more help.
“I’m doing a lot of this on my own,” he said. “As I get older and the church grows, I’m going to need people to step up and help with ministries and visits to people in the community.”
He said he is the only full-time employee of the church. There is a treasurer who works 10 hours a week, but Levandusky is hoping that someone else can be hired somewhere down the road when the church has enough money to do so.
“I think we’re growing because there’s a spiritual hunger here in Greenfield and the surrounding area,” he said.
Levandusky said this is the time for pastors and priests to be there for those people.
He said Living Waters focuses on worship, evangelism, including Bible study, discipleship and compassion.
“There’s a new evangelistic thrust and we need to keep it alive,” he said.
Levandusky, who said he loves to pray, said he will be doing a lot of that to find out what his and the church’s priorities should be over the next several years.
“I think a bigger church will be one of them if things keep going as they are,” he said.
Whatever is next for him, Levandusky said he has had a tremendously fulfilling run in Greenfield.
Levandusky said he walked into a church one night on his way home from the Boys Club in North Tonawanda, N.Y., invited Jesus into his life and never looked back. He said since, he has lived that dream that began that night in 1961.
“I wanted to be inside that church every time its doors were open,” he said. “It was a vibrant and enjoyable place, just like I hope members think of Living Waters.”
Donald Churchill, a member of Living Waters who lives in Shelburne, said Levandusky is an unbelievably caring pastor.
“He’ll travel miles in the middle of the night to help someone,” said Churchill, who has been a member of the church since the 1950s. “He brings people together. He has brought pastors from all over the county together numerous times to work together.”
Churchill said Levandusky tells visitors and new members that if at least five members of the church don’t shake their hand while they are there for a service, he will take them out for a steak dinner.
“I haven’t had to yet,” said Levandusky. “We have a very friendly church and I try to remind people all the time.”
Living Waters Assembly of God church began on Deerfield Street in 1950 as Glad Tidings Chapel, a Russian Pentecostal church.
In 1983, the church moved to Davis Street, where it was renamed Pine Acres Assembly of God church. Levandusky said it was named so because the church was surrounded by pine trees.
Before Levandusky arrived in 1989, the name was changed again to Living Waters. He said that was after most of the pine trees were cut down and people thought Pine Acres was no longer appropriate.
The Assemblies of God church is a group of more than 140 autonomous, but loosely associated groups, of churches that form the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. There are about 66.4 million members worldwide. Anita Fritz / Recorder
