By grace are ye saved...

This story- about a gospel series our assembly recently completed- ran in The Guttenberg Press. 

(From left are Dan Shutt and David Petterson.)

The Gospel Hall in Garnavillo, 506 S. Washington St., is in the middle of hosting a two-week evangelical series which began Sunday, Feb. 26, and will end Sunday, March 11.

Visiting preachers Dan Shutt, of Northville, Mich., and David Petterson (pronounced Peter-son), of Lincolnton, N.C., speak at 7 p.m. every night except Saturday.

Though the two men preach a different sermon every night for two weeks, they said that the core message is always the same.

“The gospel is that people have a tremendous need to be saved from their sins,” Shutt said. “God has met that need through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.”

Neither of the men attended a seminary.

“It’s something we learned personally,” Shutt said. “Like Martin Luther, it was not the religious institution that provided peace. It was the discovery that a man was justified by faith, not his work: Romans 1:17 says, ‘The just shall live by faith.’ Justification is by Christ’s work. Luther understood that, and at that glorious moment, he was born again and went on to ‘turn the world upside down.’”

Before he became a preacher, Shutt, 57, worked at IBM but was also active in his local church, evangelizing, teaching and working with younger people.

“There came a point in my life when I couldn’t do two jobs well and had to let one go. The unimportant one did,” he said. He explained that in his work at IBM, he helped money move back and forth from person to person. As a preacher, he believes his work has a longer-lasting impact.

“Our profoundest conviction is that people are creatures of eternity. The souls of men and women are going to live in heaven or hell forever,” he said.

Petterson was in college studying Spanish and finance but spent his summers helping men who were preaching full-time.

“I was reading the Bible to discern God’s will for my life and became convinced that God was calling me to do this,” Petterson said.

Petterson was working at Bank of America, and he and his wife Alison had their first child before mutually deciding that Petterson would preach full-time.

“I feel strongly that Alison had to be called to this as well. I wanted to be sure that was the case,” he said.

Most of what Petterson does is close to home. His home church is in Denver, N.C., but he is involved in a new church in the nearby Crandon, Virginia. This church is made up of formerly Amish families who were saved and had the desire to meet in the same way that they saw in the Bible. 

“I want to be there as much as possible,” he said.

Shutt has visited Garnavillo since he was in his teens, but Petterson had only ever been to Marion, Iowa.

“This is my first visit to the ‘Gem of the Prairie,” Petterson said. “I’m enjoying the people, the stories they tell and the experiences they’ve had.”

Shutt explained that meetings are held nightly because even those with busy schedules can find one night to come.

“We want to give people in the community as much of an opportunity as possible to come hear about the Bible,” Petterson said.

“It’s a focus on what God says, not about different religious philosophies,” Shutt said.

“By grace are you saved through faith and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works lest anyone should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8)

“It’s good to be good, but it’s not good enough,” Shutt said. “Our disobedience to God, even in areas that we consider to be trivial, is a serious offense. God is our creator, and we owe him perfect obedience, but because of our broken, fallen nature, we can never attain to that. God’s standard for heaven is absolute, perfect righteousness; unattainable by mere man, but fully attained through Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.

The two men said that their work is based on Jesus’ instruction in Mark 16:15.

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

“We are a couple of guys enjoying the daylights out of what we do because we get the chance to preach the gospel to people. It’s not mechanical. There’s an absolute joy in living out something Jesus himself said to do,” Shutt said.