DORSET TOWNSHIP — For parts of five decades, Ed Pickard toiled in various athletic fields around the area, either as a boys basketball or golf coach or a softball coach at Jefferson High School.

But the 66-year-old Pickard has never been happier than the work he has taken on full-time over the past three years, working in a field that is even more challenging,. Over those five decades, he had heard a still, small voice in his ear calling him to the full-time ministry, but he finally yielded to God’s call, or the tugging at his heartstrings, in the spring of 2005 when he answered the call of the Dorset Baptist Church for the second time in his life. He has come to realize that was truly his calling all along.

Pickard is not a very demonstrative man, speaking in a quiet voice and rarely laughing, although he has a slight smile almost always tugging at his lips. But it is clear he is completely content trying to seek and save the lost in the tiny church in the small community surrounding Route 193 in central Ashtabula County.

When he and his wife of 44 years, Jerie Leigh, agreed to take over the pastorate, the church was barely hanging on, numbering roughly 10 members. But a new sense of vitality has poured back through the doors since the Pickards agreed to take on the task.

“We usually run between 30 and 40 people a Sunday now,” Pickard said with that slight smile. “These are very faithful people. Things are happening here among people who need Jesus.

“We baptized seven people out at Camp Koinonia (the American Baptist camp in Harpersfield Township that serves churches in Ashtabula, Lake, Geauga, Trumbull and Summit counties) last summer. We also completed a remodeling project that cost between $25,000 and $27,000 that has brought the whole building together as one unit.”

Not that Pickard is satisfied with stopping there. He knows there is much work to be done in the field in which in he now labors.

“There are 900 people living in Dorset Township and 700-800 are unchurched,” he said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done. We live in a mobile society where people want to be where things are happening, so it’s difficult, but we’ll keep on working.”

It may seem the truths Pickard tried to communicate to those he worked with from 1964-2003 at Jefferson High School and those he uses with his congregation now are at polar opposites, but he has found they are much the same. The athletes he coached at Jefferson or the students he taught in roles such as advisor for the J-Hi Life school newspaper, in the many English classes he instructed at Jefferson from 1965-1996 or the students and teachers he tried to assist in another seven years as the computer technology coordinator at the school before his complete retirement from the school needed the same elements his flock needs now.

“Being a coach was like being the pastor of a church,” he said. “In athletics, you’re trying to teach the boys or girls you are working with to be as good a player as they can possibly be and how to work together as a team. In the church, you’re trying to teach the people to try and grow as much spiritually as they possibly can, to try to be the best witness for Christ they can possibly be and how to work together as a congregation.”

He believes all Christians have their own unique ministry.

“I believe we’re all called to the ministry,” Pickard said. “The pastor isn’t the only one called. We’re all called to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.”

Not the plan

It certainly wasn’t Pickard’s plan to become a minister when he began his college education after graduation from Ashtabula High School in 1960, even though he attended Eastern Baptist College (now Eastern University) in the Philadelphia area, a training ground for many ministers in the American Baptist Church. If anything, his goal was to become a teacher and get into coaching.