BUTLER TWP — New Year's Eve will take on an added significance for Pastor David Fisher of Homeacre Chapel, 340 Whitestown Road.

Dec. 31 will mark the 60th year Fisher has served as pastor of the independent, nondenominational church.

“My first service was a New Year's Eve service in 1956,” said Fisher, 86. “The welcome we got for my wife and three girls was great at that time.”

Fisher joined the church when it was known as Grace Bible Church and its members were meeting in rented halls.

“When we came to Butler, there was not a church here,” Fisher said. “We were looking for a place. We had an option on a lot, looking to build.”

But Fisher said, the local economy soured and it wasn't until 1957 when the American Sunday School Union was ready to close the former one-room schoolhouse it was using at the Homeacre Chapel's present location, that Fisher and his church found a permanent home.

“They asked us to take over,” Fisher said. The church's name was changed to Homeacre Chapel to reflect its location in the Homeacre neighborhood, he said.

Tim Boden, the associate pastor who joined the church in 1973, said, “The church was built back here in 1967 and the school (Homeacre Christian Academy) was added in 1973. We expanded the church and the church congregation.”

Today, Fisher said, “We have 50 members in the congregation. Homeacre Christian Academy has 12 students now in grades kindergarten through 12th grade.

“It's the only school, except for Portersville and St. Luke's in Cabot, to offer a controlled, motivated curriculum of accelerated Christian education,” Fisher said.

Fisher added in the early years he wore a lot of hats in addition to serving as church pastor.

He worked as a Fuller brush salesman and “did a lot of other jobs.”

He grew up in Akron, Ohio, where he met his future wife, Zelma, at East High School. On Feb. 14, they will have been married for 67 years.

He finished his high school education at Bob Jones Academy, graduating in 1948.

He had one year of college at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., followed by night school at Akron Bible Institute.

“I went to Davis College in Bingham, N.Y., taking night classes,” he said, and was pastor at Dundee Bible Church until 1956, when he came to Butler.

“My heart at that time was starting a new church. How did I do it? The Lord was leading me. I began to get requests to be a candidate, a lot of requests,” Fisher said.

“Grace Bible Church in Butler, they asked for me. I felt this is what the Lord meant for me,” Baker said.

“This is a church that is really missionary-minded,” said Fisher of Homeacre. “That's one of the reasons we are blessed so greatly.”

“My wife and I went on a special ministry to Kenya five or six times,” he said.

“Students that graduate here go into the missionary field,” he said, some in the United States, but mostly outside the country.

Boden said, “I'd say there's about 20 missions, might be more than that. I sign the checks for 30 some every month.”

Closer to home, the church supports the Little Mahoning Bible Camp in Smicksburg, and Fisher is on the board of the camp.

The church has 9:45 a.m. Sunday school, an 11 a.m. morning service, lunch and then a 1 p.m. worship service every Sunday.

Fisher credits everything — the church, the academy, his long career — to God.

He said, “Anything I have is because of Him.”

The congregation will recognize Fisher at a special dinner at the church at 1 p.m. Jan. 1.

Fisher said, “We've got some pastor friends in the area that we are expecting to be here.

The Fishers' six children are now scattered to Texas, Arizona and Virginia. The family includes 13 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

“If they all came here, I don't know which church could hold them all, ”he said.

“I guess I've got a few years of ministry yet, God willing,” said Fisher.

“I guess some of the things that excite me is the opportunity to marry people, hold their children. Their parents went to school here, their children go to school here,” Fisher said.

The church's mission hasn't changed during Fisher's tenure as pastor.

“Our greatest desire is to reach people for our Lord Jesus Christ,” Fisher said. “We believe this old world is winding down. There's more and more signs that the end days might be coming.”

He listed more drug use, violence, immorality and unnatural phenomenon as signs “all of which were predicted in the Scriptures.”

“So we would like to see more people become part of God's family. Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty of sin, and it's a tragedy that more people have not accepted the gift of God which was paid for by Christ on the cross,” Fisher said.