Complimentary Story
August 2026Picture Lake City, Wisconsin. You’ll see that in one way or another, it’s similar to your hometown. Sure, there are two lakes surrounding this mid-state town, both of which draw fishing enthusiasts from around the state plus Illinois and Minnesota. Substantial numbers of old-timers have lived here for 3-4 generations. Lake City is anchored in the midst of the Badger State.
A couple small paper mills remain, but the leading edge of the economy is dairy and transportation. Two-thirds of the town’s 13,000 residents are either drivers, mechanics or tech people for the state’s bigger dairy companies. They make the town known throughout the Midwest, but Lake City doesn’t know itself like it used to.
There is no longer the energy of high school basketball championships, or 4-H fundraisers. Regional technical colleges have passed the town by as they’ve opened new campuses, and young people who want to get ahead now drive 60 miles for an economic future.
Churches remain: Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic, and Baptist, along with two independent congregations. Praise bands now outnumber traditional organs, but spiritual energy seems to be missing. If you asked most Lake City people, “Is God alive in your town?,” they would be hard-pressed to come up with any event or growing enterprise.
Needs? Sure there is a sense of hopelessness and a feeling that God doesn’t really care about “our town.” Too many divorces, too many young people strung out on crack cocaine and fentanyl, too many people depending on government aid for food.
But in January of 2026, two things happened at the 8-year-old Grace Chapel. First, six guys at the Men’s Breakfast Fellowship got disgusted with the direction things were going. Charley Peterson grabbed a blackened too-ripe banana from the middle of the breakfast table and held it up for the other five attenders to make a point. “This banana is a lot like our town,” he said. “It’s ugly and unattractive, nobody wants to eat this kind of fruit anymore. It used to be good, very good! But we’ve let it go to waste.”
Bill Whatley found a broken can opener in a kitchen drawer and held it up. “And this is like our Grace Chapel,” said Bill. “What was a good implement five years ago is rusty and won’t be used again.” Isaac, Stan, Mike and LeRoy joined in agreement on their assessment of both town and church. What was once healthy was now broken. The Men’s Breakfast Fellowship was determined to change their church in order to change Lake City.
In planning his 2026 sermons, Pastor John Dinkens felt disgust as well. Feelings are tricky factors, but at this year’s outset it was different. He’d been at Grace Chapel for two years and he was more than a bit tired of the town’s easy acceptance of sin, and his own church’s complicity in that matter. He knew that change had to start with God working in the hearts of Grace Chapel’s men. John Dinkens began to take his own preaching seriously and he decided to focus on repentance and salvation with each Sunday sermon.
On February 12th, Dinkens and the Men’s Breakfast Fellowship, discovered they were both on the same spiritual wavelength for 2026. Rather than avoid the Saturday morning Men’s group (as he had previously) Dinkens made a point to get there early at 7 am each Saturday. Before breakfast, he “practice preached” his Sunday sermon. What had been a bunch of old critics turned into a cheerleading corp for Pastor Dinkens. Not only did Pastor Dinkens hate divorces and drug overdoses in Lake City, but so did a growing number of men each week. Saturday mornings grew from 6 to 16 to 36, and Sunday worship numbers grew from 46 to 65 to 95 — all before Easter! God was doing something as the men turned out to eat and study, and people in Lake City turned out to be saved and baptized.
Did John Dinkens become a new kind of preacher? Or did the men of the church all of a sudden get revitalized by the Holy Spirit? Not exactly. Pastor John Dinkens did pray, prepare, and preach harder; and it came not by miracles, but by his own decision to follow Jesus basically and closely in his preaching.
The men of the Breakfast Fellowship – Charley, Bill, Isaac, Stan, Mike and LeRoy – got more intentional about setting goals for their town and their church. They men started doing things! They re-painted the kitchen where they met. They put up brighter lights and signs on the church’s corner. They printed fliers and business cards and got announcements out to their family and friends who lived way out of town. The guys let people know that the Grace kitchen was the place to be at 7 am Saturday mornings, and the Grace Chapel sanctuary began to fill at 10 am Sunday.
Preaching each Sunday became a delight, a joy and a real event for Pastor Dinkens. His growing delight through February’s theme of Israel’s sins under Old Testament Prophets, to March’s theme of the promised and coming Savior gave way to a spiritual explosion of the forgiveness that Jesus brought to all people during April 2026.
The men of the church saw what was happening and caught hold of Pastor Dinkins’ fire and ran with it, setting a goal of 60 men for the Saturday, April 14th Men’s Breakfast Fellowship, and 120 attendees for April 15, Easter Sunday.
Only three months back those goals would have sounded outrageous and fanciful to Lake City. But by April 1, new expectations were built and these goals were entirely reachable.
The men bought six new tables and 50 new chairs for the church basement. Pastor made sure extra chairs would be set up behind existing pews for Easter, and out in the hallway as well. He also did a crash course in ushering, expanding his normal two ushers each Sunday up to 12 ushers available for Easter.
So Lake City’s Grace Chapel packed in 139 people for Sunday worship on April 15 — nine more than the auditorium’s legal limit. The pastor and the men’s fellowship were delighted, but they immediately knew that their commitment to the people of Lake City was not over. They saw that they had been working with the Holy Spirit’s direction, and they realized they had to become strategic with their future evangelism and outreach.
Typical of newcomers to Grace Chapel this year are Brian and Lisa Silvensky, along with their kids: Michael, Jenny and Jessie. The Silvenskys are neighbors to Bill Whatley, so it was only natural for Brian to join the Men’s Fellowship when Bill invited him. Soon he and Lisa came on Sunday morning and saw that Grace was a good place to bring their kids. After Easter Sunday, the Silvenskys knew Grace was their church home.
Brian and Lisa said “Yes” to Jesus back in February. Soon after, the kids each began following Jesus and were now part of the pastor’s youth discipleship. The entire family was baptized in August.
What’s next? Committees and Fellowships, like the Men’s Breakfast, have become Task Forces, with specific roles and goals for each member. Pastor Denkins has assumed the role of Evangelist-in-Chief, as he preaches Gospel basics and coaches a growing group of 15-20 Lake City Evangelists.
Over the past seven months, Grace Chapel’s attendance has already grown by more than 30 percent. They are not yet Lake City’s largest church, but they probably will be by October. Plans are underway for beginning AWANA Clubs for both boys and girls. Numerous kids in Lake City will soon hear the gospel as their classmates invite them to weeknight “fun and discovery” events.
November is designated as a month of gratitude and coming to Jesus. A three-day evangelistic crusade is planned for the weekend prior to Thanksgiving. Then Grace Chapel will invite the entire town to discover Jesus through his birth in December.
Grace Chapel is a changed church. And Grace Chapel is now serving an awakened population of Lake City, Wisconsin. The town will never be the same. The town is made up of the same people and families as a year ago. But now the citizens are paying attention and discovering a new Christian life for themselves and their families. They know the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
Roger Johnson is an evangelist, writer and teacher from Kenosha. He served for nearly 40 years as an urban evangelist in Chicago. A graduate of Wheaton College and North Park Seminary, he completed the M.A. in Evangelism & Leadership at Wheaton Grad School in 2012.
