A Church Mourns The Death Of Their Pastor Due To A Drunk Driver

Pastor Verlyn Strenge, died after several weeks of intensive care in Sanford Hospital in Fargo. 

Verlyn was killed by a drunk driver, who turned their car into a grotesque mass of twisted metal, and his wife, Merry, was hospitalized in northern Minnesota but survived. 

We bemoan the tragic loss of Pastor Verlyn’s overwhelming Christian witness to his congregation, to his family, and to many others.

Can this loss, however, be a lasting monument or memorial to his life and to our need to praise and honor Jesus for making Verlyn a powerful Christian witness in his churches in Buffalo, South Dakota and in Clearbrook, Minnesota?

His spiritual enlightenment from Twin City Fan in Brookings, through Oak Hills Bible College in Bemidji, to western South Dakota and to northern Minnesota was not easy. 

Was Verlyn just killed by the man doing drugs or was he actually killed by this old and properly taxed recreational drug? How many people must die from alcohol or from the effects of other drugs like recreational pot to even or ever justify our supposed profiteering from governmental taxation to abet and to actually encourage their use and abuse? 

Yes. This is just like our encouragement of gambling (and of gambling addiction) by actively promoting and by advertising video lottery casinos, South Dakota Lottery, or other games of chance in many thousands of South Dakota stores and video dens. 

Our court dockets, jails, prisons, and hospitals and our graveyards are amass with the names of those victimized by alcohol or other drugs. Many of our Christian churches also actually abet and encourage the use of alcohol or ethanol, but that is another issue. But must we now add marijuana to this list of undesirable but taxable recreational drugs? God forbid.

Rev. Verlyn Strenge, 69, of Clearbrook, Minn., died on Dec. 6 at Sanford Medical Center in Fargo, ND, due to injuries from a vehicle accident on Nov. 10. Services will be 2 p.m. Sat., Dec. 12, at First Baptist Church in Clearbrook. Visitation is Friday from 5-7 p.m. at the church.