Season 01 EP 02
Guest: Ryan Ahlgrim
Host: Jen Shenk
Date: 10/14/2026
Duration: 28:00
Jen: I’m Jen Shenk, and this is The Gratitude Letters. Our podcast features letters read aloud by you, our listeners, to someone who’s made an impact on your life. Today’s episode will be a bit different. Our letter was submitted by Ryan Ahlgrim. He’s a Mennonite pastor of more than 40 years. Ryan wanted to thank his mentor and pastor, Joe.
Joe was a funny, warm man of steadfast faith who planted the seeds of belief in a young boy and shaped the pastor Ryan is today. Unfortunately, Joe passed away many years ago. So rather than our usual format of an interview, today’s episode will be just Ryan sharing his letter to Joe, along with memories that shaped him.
Through Ryan’s stories, we get to watch a pastor being made. Here at The Gratitude Letters, we truly believe that it’s never too late to say thank you. As you listen to Ryan remember Joe and express his gratitude, you may feel what we felt in the recording studio, that somehow this letter has already been delivered. Here’s Ryan.
Ryan: I’m Ryan Ahlgrim, and I’m the pastor of First Mennonite Church of Richmond in Virginia. I’ve been a pastor for, well, a credentialed pastor for over 40 years. When I was 10 years old, I know that my church was without a pastor. I remember on Sunday afternoons I would ask him, “Well, how was the guest preacher today?”
And I remember my dad kind of assessing the candidates and, and I was interested in that. I remember him making the comment that they get a free house, which appealed to me. “Oh, you get a free house. That sounds good.” And the concept of God that- that’s over us, uh, is the source of all goodness, of love, of creativity, and again, you’re helping people, and I wanted to be good, you know?
So what could be more good than being a pastor who speaks with God and God speaks with them, and then they tell the congregation what God is saying? That was my childish understanding of how sermons work. And so it was like, “Wow, this is the most incredible job in the world would be to be a pastor.” At 10 years old, I do remember telling God, you know, “I promise that when I grow up, I’m going to be a pastor.”
And that lasted about a year, and then, you know, after watching a, uh, James Bond movie at the theater, it was like, “No, I think I want to be a spy.” Being a spy just seemed a lot more exciting now than being a pastor.
And by this time, the church had a new pastor and his name was Joe Richards. I remember one day, I was 11 years old, after Sunday school class, I approached him and, uh, I addressed him as Reverend Richards, which is actually not a very Mennonite way of addressing your pastor, but that’s how my mother said I should speak to him, Reverend Richards.
I said, “Reverend Richards, let’s just say, for instance, let’s just say, oh, I promised God that I’d be a pastor, but I don’t wanna do that anymore. What will God do to me if I don’t do that?” My memory is that there was just this little bit of a smile on his face, uh, you know, certainly a gentle countenance on his face, and he said, “Well, I think God will take your age into account,” which was a great answer, and I felt very relieved.
“Oh, okay. I- I’m gonna be a spy then.”
Dear Joe, that was the beginning of my relationship with you, and through you, a relationship with a loving and merciful God. That relationship deepened in 1971 when I was 13, laid up in the hospital with a severely broken leg. You visited me and you gave me a book, The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, about an injured boy who explores his Jewish faith and traditions.
The meaning of the book was beyond my comprehension, but I remember how the boy studied the Talmud more intensely than all the other students in his class, arriving at an interpretation that challenged what was considered safe and acceptable.
Uh, Joe was a, a short man, kind of rotund. We don’t use the word fat anymore, but he was, he was on the heavier side, I’ll put it that way. Balding, but he had kind of this jolly face, always beaming warmness. And I always liked Joe. I just thought he was such a gentle and nice man. I remember Emma, his wife, who then later became a co-pastor with Joe, was a little bit more rule-oriented.
You know, “Let’s get in line here. Come on, let’s do this the right way.” I never heard Joe ever raise his voice or anything like that. Uh, he came across to me as being an intelligent man. He was a man of vision. You know, he was always coming up with ideas. I remember one time he played a record during his sermon.
The sermon had something to do with a, a song or music or whatever, and the pulpit was such that he had a, a phonograph hidden in the pulpit, and he put on this record and, and then a song started playing, and he just sort of closed his eyes and, uh, swung his arms a little bit like he was directing an orchestra.
And it was just creative.
13, 14, I guess I was 14. I was on a, a trip with our youth group to Germany and surrounding countries, uh, for a month, uh, studying Mennonite history, Anabaptist history, and Joe came along on that trip. And so that’s where I really got to know Joe on a more personal basis. Well, during that trip, as a 14-year-old, I had lots of questions, mostly about sex and ethical issues.
You know, what, h- how much sex can you have, you know, before you’re married, and those kinds of things. And I just became very uninhibited during that trip, and I think it was really startling to Joe. His son, uh, Evan Richards, who- and was also on that trip, uh, Evan later told me, uh, back when we were in college, Evan said, “Yeah, uh, when we came back from that trip, I remember Dad saying, ‘Yeah, there’s Ryan one and there’s Ryan two.
They’re two different people.’ Ryan one is quiet and reserved, you know, nice, and, and then Ryan two, who knows what’s gonna come out of his mouth.” During my high school years, at least I got closer to Joe. And, uh, I remember calling him up one time and just saying, “Joe, could we get together? I just wanna talk about me.
You know, who am I, and, and, and what I’m going through in my life.” And I remember we, we, he picked me up, I think, and we went out to a pizzeria, and, and while we’re eating pizza, you know, I just sort of poured out the, the questions and problems of my life. And, and he listened. And, and so to have this adult that I could feel f- comfortable being with and talking about things that I couldn’t really talk very easily with my parents about, and, uh, I just knew that here’s someone who’s, who’s willing to do this, and I can do this with complete comfort.
And so I think that’s when I really started becoming very close to him.
Dear Joe, as a teenager, I became very active in the church’s youth group, and I turned to you with my questions about God and about my identity. I’m embarrassed now by my immature behavior at the time, but you saw the future pastor in me before I did. During my sophomore year at Goshen College, after I told you I was gonna be a Bible major, you wrote me a surprising letter.
“Don’t,” you advised. “As you go to seminary, you’ll only have to repeat a lot of it.” And then you recommended a different direction. You wrote, “Why not major in communications, speech, journalism, et cetera? You have real gifts in these areas. You need to get a broad basis now while you can. I majored in Bible in college, and I believe it was a mistake.”
Well, as a result of your letter, I chose to become an English major, and not only did I love it, but it proved to be a rich grounding and resource for future ministry. Because of your advocacy, Lombard Mennonite Church hired me as its first youth mis- minister after I graduated from college. During that year, you taught me important lessons about how to be a pastor.
He still did some pastoral care and one time he asked, you know, “Would you come with me? We’re gonna go to the hospital and visit a, a young woman who’s, who’s dying of cancer.” And, uh, so we went to this, to the hospital, and so I got to see him doing pastoral care with this young woman who was slowly dying of cancer, uh, speaking with her, reading scriptures with her, having a prayer with her.
And I was just so struck by the comfort that he was giving her, and I thought, “Wow, I could never do this. How in the world would I… You know, I’m completely incapable of doing this. How do I bring the comfort of God into this?” I was really kind of scared of chaos. So just seeing him doing that, I was like, “Okay.
Wow, this is really something.” And then the other thing that I saw him do that year, the church had a party for him. It might have been a birthday party. It might have been something else. I can’t rem- It was something in his honor. And then after everybody left, there was lots of crumbs on the floor and things like that, and he pulls out a, a carpet sweeper and starts cleaning up.
And he said to me, “Yep, this is ministry, too.” You know, in other words, you can’t, uh, see yourself as being above it all, you know. No, you’re still a part of it all, and ministry is a, is a humble profession. And, uh, so again, that was something that I had to learn. I’m not sure I wanted to be humble. There i- there was this tension early on in my ministry, at least I certainly perceived it that way back into my 20s.
How do I be myself and be a Mennonite pastor? Because Mennonites can be a little bit on the, on the stodgy side. Joe and I had some theological disagreements. You know, Joe and Emma, actually, at that time, they were very staunch, “No, no, you’ve got to be a pacifist in order to be a Mennonite because that’s what makes the Mennonite church so distinctive.
And so if we don’t wanna lose that distinctiveness, then we really need to make that a requirement for membership.” And I understand that. That makes, actually that makes perfect sense, except that the church, the Mennonite church, is not a club. It is not a, an exclusive religious club. Then it has to be open to anyone who is searching.
When I became a pastor and in my first pastorate, I got to know a, a lesbian couple. They started coming to my church, and I, my position was there’s no reason why they can’t be members of the church, which was also at the height of the AIDS crisis. But that really gave people attitudes toward, uh, homosexuality became much more negative in the ’80s.
So anyway, I had this position that gay and lesbian people ought to be able to be members of the church, and, uh, Joe and Emma were so against that way of thinking. I was surprised. I had never experienced Joe as being exclusive before. And yet now I was learning, oh, okay, no, there are these firm boundaries for him.
And, and I realize now that Joe grew up in a culture in which gay relationships, all gay relationships, would have been viewed as a mental disorder. But of course, our knowledge of homosexuality has changed quite a bit. And, uh, you know, we got a lot different data now than what we had then. And, and Joe, before he died, he told me, “You know, Ryan, I’ve, I’ve changed my mind.
I now believe that, uh, gay people who wanna join the church, they ought to be able to join the church.”
It was painful to have such strong disagreements with Joe and Emma. But I mean, I knew that they still loved me. They still thought I was a wonderful pastor. They wanted me to continue in ministry. I always had their full support, and I was always grateful for what they had given me. So that was never affected.
Well, the other issue that came up when I was in seminary, I started dating a woman who was divorced, and Emma said, “Oh, Ryan, you’ve got to get out of that relationship. You know, there’s- you’re committing professional suicide.” You know, um, at that time in the Mennonite church, there were no pastors who had been divorced.
I mean, divorce just disqualified you from ministry, period. To marry somebody who’d been divorced also disqualifies you because in the Gospels, Jesus, uh, takes a stance against divorce and against remarriage. And it’s like, you’re a pastor. Well, then you gotta, obviously, you’ve gotta follow those teachings.
Now, I understood Jesus differently, and I did not think that it was wrong for me to be dating a divorced woman or to marry a divorced woman. A- and in fact, Emma even said, “Oh, I guess it’s true what they say, love is blind.” You know, those of us who came of age in the ’70s, there were such giant cultural changes in the ’60s.
Attitudes on all kinds of things changed so drastically in the ’70s, and those things affected the Mennonite Church. We just came with a- an entirely different set of assumptions than the pastors that would have come the generation before us. I, I happened to become the, the chair of the Faith Life in Practice committee of the Illinois Mennonite Conference, which was a committee that was supposed to resolve theological issues that we were dealing with.
And the first issue that we- that came up was there was a- an ordained minister from another denomination who wanted to transfer into the Mennonite Church and become a pastor in the Illinois Conference. But he was divorced and remarried. And so I then helped to design a study done by the entire Illinois Mennonite Conference on this issue, and then the delegates came together to vote on it, and they voted to say pastors can be called by churches based on their giftedness and, and that this issue will not be decisive for that.
And I was in the right place at the right time to be able to give input in a new direction
Well, for many years, he, uh, and Emma would invite me back to Lombard Mennonite. The last Sunday of, of August every year was an ice cream social followed by a, um, a square dance in the parking lot of the church, and I was always the caller for the square dance. I had learned square dance calling when I was in college.
And then when they learned about that, they said, “Oh, we need to, we need to have a square dance here at our church, and we’ll make you the caller.” So while the music’s playing, a little band playing banjos or, or guitars and fiddles and all that, uh, the caller is saying, uh, “Allemande left, and, and, uh, you know, all join hands and go to the middle.
And with your big foot, keep time to the fiddle. And when you get back, remember my call. Swing on the corner and promenade all.” You know, so you’re, you’re calling out the directions during the song, and so people know what to do. And I did that all through my first pastorate and, uh, until they retired. And then after they retired, they retired to Goshen.
Whenever I was in town, for whatever reason, I would always make a point of coming over to visit them, and they would always make some ramen soup, and, and we would, uh, a little meal together, and then we would talk for hours. They were always so interested. You know, “Tell us everything that’s happening in your ministry, everything that’s going on.”
And they were excited when I got married, and then it was bringing my wife to meet them. And every time I was in Goshen with my wife, we would drop in and see them. And, and Joe was always, again, being very generous. He was always giving me something, some project he was working on. “Here, take this,” or whatever.
And, and one time, I was admiring some, uh, figurines, uh, from, uh, Ten Thousand Villages, which was a, a fair trade organization that, that, that sells items, uh, crafts. And he had all these carved animals, and, and then there was a water buffalo. And I, I remember pointing it out, “Oh, that’s a really neat, uh, sculpture there.”
We stayed overnight, and the next day, he gives me a, a brown paper bag and says, “Well, here, I packed a, a lunch for you guys. Uh, there’s a, a beef sandwich inside.” Well, we get in the car. We drive off. We stop for lunch. I open up the paper bag. Well, there’s the water buffalo. The beef sandwich is a water buffalo.
Dear Joe, when I became pastor of my own congregation in Peoria, Illinois, you took great pride in me. I visited you as often as I could, and each time I did, you wanted to hear everything I was doing. I felt like I was your own son
One of my most fortunate opportunities was when we were roommates on an educational tour in Israel and Egypt. Together we explored the old city of Jerusalem and the sacred sites along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. And one morning you were gazing at the hills surrounding Jerusalem and you said, “Now I know what the psalmist was picturing when he said, ‘I lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help.My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth.’”
Yeah, so as the years went by, I could see, you know, both of them physically deteriorating. Emma was in a wheelchair. Joe then, uh, told me one day that he had Parkinson’s disease. Yeah, you realize the, the time is coming when they will not be here. And, um, you know, Emma died first. At the funeral, which I preached at, Emma had specifically wanted me to preach her sermon for her funeral.
And, and Joe was there. And Joe, Joe by that time was also then in a wheelchair. Uh, the Parkinson’s was pretty advanced at that point. And he could barely speak actually at that point. And so, yeah, it’s very hard. And there was, during those last few years, I was really wanting to get alone with Joe so that I could talk with him about, you know, “How do you feel about dying?
And, you know, what are you going through now?” Because of circumstances, I was never able to have that time alone with him where I could just ask him those questions. And that’s one of my regrets. I, I sure wish that I had been able to ask him those, those profound questions that need to be talked about, where I could have been a pastor for him instead of him always being a pastor for me.
I think he was looking for someone who could be his pastor, and, uh, and I regret that I was not able to do that.
It may have been his son, Evan, who called me, uh, to tell me that he had passed away. I think that’s probably how it was. Well, I knew that I’d have to go there for the funeral, and in fact, I had just started at Richmond when Emma had died. It was like a, a year later or something like that, that Joe died, and I, I said, uh, “I need to, again, I need to be released for the weekend.
I need to be there.” And there was a time for telling stories. Uh, one of the things that I shared was about my wife, who found out that she had breast cancer, and, uh, and she was very upset about that. We had two very young children at that time. Uh, they were like one year old and three years old, something like that, is when she found out she had breast cancer.
And, uh, and my wife, Laurie, uh, her prayer to God was, “Let me live five years so that my children will remember me.” And, uh, we, uh, we went to, uh, went to Goshen. We, we visited with Joe and Emma, and Joe just had the most beautiful prayer with her, just a really beautiful prayer. And, uh, and when we got back in the car and we were leaving, my wife said to me, “That prayer, boy, if God ever listens to any prayer, that, that was it.”
And, uh, my wife just really felt like, “Now, that, that, that was a prayer. That, that will do it.” And, uh, and she did survive, and she’s alive today, and she was, you know, deeply moved by Joe’s presence and, uh, and his, his prayers and his love.
Dear Joe, in 1980, a couple months after I began my seminary education at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, you sent me a card responding to a letter in which I had told you all about my new experiences in seminary. Noting the time on your card, it said 2:15 AM at the top, and you wrote, “For some reason, I was awakened at this early hour.
I prayed for a person, I have no idea who, but I felt my prayer was needed and I have peace. Does that happen to you? I find it happens occasionally.” Thank you, Joe, for that image of a pastor whom God awakens to pray for strangers.
Yeah, at this point in my life, and I’m, you know, coming near probably the end of my pastoral ministry, you know, I want to lead other people into ministry. I really believe in pastoral ministry. I just think it’s, uh, it’s, it’s the most meaningful work. It’s very important work. It’s the best thing somebody can do.
About 20 years ago, I, I wrote an article on, uh, the greatest job in the world. I was at a conference at my seminary, and somebody came up to me and, and said, “Did you write an article about 20 years ago about pastoring being the greatest job in the world?” And I said, “Yeah, I did write that.” And he said, “You know, when I was a teenager, my pastor gave me a copy of that article and, and I became a pastor.”
I’m not as good at it as, as Joe. I, I’m not as good at, at leading people into ministry as Joe. I wish I had 19 people that I could point to and say, “Oh, yeah, they’ve all become cred-credentialed because of my influence.” But, but I have had an influence on some people.
Dear Joe, you passed away many years ago, but your gentleness is with me always, as well as your deep faith, sensitive prayer life, incredible generosity, and visionary leadership. I am the pastor I am because of you. And throughout my ministry, whenever I’ve been in a difficult situation and I haven’t known what to do, I always ask myself, “What would Joe do?”
And that never steers me the wrong way
Jen: What a touching tribute. It’s clear that even though Joe wasn’t able to hear these words from Ryan in person, his impact lives on. Ryan also brought letters, cards, and the gifts Joe gave him over the years. If you wanna see those and hear the stories behind them, follow The Gratitude Letters on Facebook and Instagram, and we’ll be sharing a short video there soon.
And now, how about you? Is there someone you wanna thank for making an impact on your life? Maybe someone who’s been a mentor to you or influenced your career path somehow. We would love to hear from you. Visit our website at thegratitudeletters.org, where you will find everything you need to send us a letter of your own. The Gratitude Letters is a brand new podcast about the people we are grateful for and taking a moment to let them know.
In each episode, someone writes a letter of thanks and we bring it to life. New episodes drop every other Thursday. Search The Gratitude Letters wherever you get your podcasts, and go ahead and hit follow so you never miss an episode. If you liked this podcast and this episode, we’d love it if you’d share it with a friend.
And if you take a moment to review it and let us know what you think, we’d love to hear that too. Today’s show was produced and sound designed by Yebu Ji. Sound engineering by Alex Dugger. Original music by Hannis Brown. Our marketing manager is Melissa Troyer, and our audience engagement manager is Courtney Dobrzkowski.
Duane Stoltzfus is our executive producer. The Gratitude Letters is part of More Than Just Stories with funding from Lilly Endowment. Thanks for listening. And until next time, I’m your host, Jen Shenk, with a reminder that it’s never too late and it’s always a good time to say thank you.