Forty years is a long time. Long enough to see marriages saved, addicts set free, children raised in the faith, and a city changed by the power of the gospel. We gathered to celebrate four decades of ministry and welcomed Pastor Denny Duron as our guest speaker.

A pastor and football coach from Shreveport, Louisiana, Pastor Denny brought a commissioning word to City of Life that gave us hope and vision for our next season of ministry.  

An Already-Finished Work

Pastor Denny opened by sharing something the early church understood innately. In Acts 4, the disciples had just been arrested, questioned by the highest religious authorities in the land, and told to stop preaching Jesus of Nazareth entirely. Their first public outing had been shut down. They were threatened. They were watched. And yet, when they returned to their friends and lifted their voices to God in prayer, they didn't ask for protection. They didn't ask for comfort. They asked for boldness.

Why? Because they understood that what God had set in motion was already finished. They prayed from Psalm 2, recounting how Herod, Pilate, and the people of Israel had all gathered against Jesus, only to do exactly what God's hand and purpose had predestined. The opposition wasn't a surprise to God. The opposition was part of the plan. And the plan was already complete.

This is the nature of God's work: it has always been, and will always be, a finished work. "We have begun well," said Pastor Denny, "and these 40 years have been epic.... But we are called to continue."

The Preacher Who Made a Deal with God

Pastor Denny Duron is bold and unapologetic, but at one time, he could be described as bashful.  

He grew up as a preacher's kid in Shreveport, Louisiana, in a home where the gospel was simply the air everyone breathed. And while he loved God, the idea of standing behind a pulpit terrified him. He was so shy that his school newspaper once ran a feature called "The Perfect Boy," listing the best attributes of each student. For Denny, they chose bashfulness.

So he made a deal with God. He'd sing. He was a natural singer, and the arrangement felt reasonable enough. He would give God his voice, just not his words. "I will sing for you," he told the Lord. "Don't make me preach."

But God didn't agree to that deal.  

One night, while singing at a revival in a small church outside Shreveport with his father, Pastor Denny stood up to give a short testimony before his song. And something happened. The Holy Spirit came on him so powerfully that he couldn't stop speaking. Scripture he hadn't memorized rolled off his tongue. He preached for 20 minutes under what he could only describe as a prophetic anointing. People came forward and gave their lives to Christ.

He figured it was a one-time thing. The contract was still in effect.

The next night, the same thing happened. The moment he stood at the pulpit, the Holy Spirit moved. He preached again. More people came to Christ. And that was that. At 17 years old, bashful Denny became what he described as "bold preacher boy."

He shared how, at the altar that second night, a large communion table Bible fell open to Jeremiah 1, where God spoke to a terrified young prophet and said: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you came out of the belly, I sanctified you and ordained you a prophet to the nations." Denny's protest echoed the prophet Jeremiah's: I can't speak. I'm just a teenager. God's answer was exactly what Denny had just experienced: you will go to everyone I send you, and you will speak whatever I give you to say.

The call wasn't Denny's idea. It was an already-finished work.

12 and 0: When God Calls the Play

If the preaching call wasn't Denny's plan, the football call was even less expected.

He had fully surrendered to ministry and was ready to leave athletics behind when a recruiter from Louisiana Tech University showed up at his family's home. Denny told him he wasn't interested. He'd been called to preach and wasn't going back. But his mom convinced him to at least visit campus. One visit became a scholarship offer. And in that stadium, watching thousands of students walk past with no one to tell them about Jesus, God spoke to him again.

"I've called you to play football for my glory."

There were no Tim Tebows in 1972. The idea of a college quarterback openly preaching to his teammates was not a cultural moment. It was a peculiar call. But Denny accepted it. He put a prayer meeting sign on his dorm room door every night. He secured a park bench in the campus quadrangle and preached to students passing by on their lunch hour. He built a Bible study with his roommate and whoever else would show up.

When his coaches moved him from wide receiver to quarterback, a position he hadn't originally been recruited for, he went to his coact and made a declaration that nearly got him dismissed: God had ordained him to be the starting quarterback, and they were going to go undefeated that year.

His first game, he went 3 for 16. They barely beat the weakest team on their schedule, 7 to nothing. But Pastor Denny walked back into his coach's office and repeated his declaration. "Don't move me. We're going to go undefeated."

Louisiana Tech went 12- 0 that season, winning the Grantland Rice Bowl over Tennessee Tech. A reporter asked Denny afterward if he ever thought it could happen. His answer: "I asked God for an 11- 0 season. He gave us 12-0. That just shows you what Jesus can do."

Dozens of his teammates came to faith during that season. A linebacker named Rick Berlin fell to his knees and gave his life to Christ. Some of those players went on to become pastors. Others planted churches and launched prison ministries. The ripple from that football season in the autumn of 1972 is still being felt today.

Every game, Pastor Denny said, he stepped under center with one understanding: his job was to complete an already-finished work.

A Cab Driver and the Amazon

Recently, in Scottsdale, Arizona, Pastor Denny struck up a conversation with his Uber driver, as he always does with everyone he meets. (He shared a rule for life: the most important person you'll ever be with is the person you're with right now.) The driver told him he swims rivers. Not casually. He swims them. He handed Denny a book. The man had swum the Amazon River at age 52, covering 3,000 miles from its source to the ocean in 66 days. He had already swum the Mississippi, the Danube, and the Yangtze. And now, at 62, his next goal was to raise $27 million and swim around the world.

The Amazon swim was not a comfortable endeavor. Doctors told him his blood pressure was dangerously high and that he could suffer a heart attack or stroke. He experienced restless nights, nausea, cold sweats, and a brain virus that caused convulsions and hallucinations. There were reports of pirates and drug cartels controlling sections of the water.  He swam through piranhas, anacondas, crocodiles, and every bacteria known to man.

Still, he got in the river.

Pastor Denny sat with that image for weeks after that Uber ride and felt something shift. "If a 62-year-old  Uber driver can raise 27 million to swim the world," he told himself, "I can raise millions to pay off this church, to build a great high school, a school for children with autism, and win my world." And if that man could embrace disease and danger and threats of every description and keep showing up to the river, then those empowered by the Holy Spirit can embrace their pain and keep getting in too.

The message is clear:  You have everything you need. The work was already finished before you ever arrived. But the river won't swim itself.

The Next 40 Years

Pastor Denny affirmed the generational anointing that flows from leadership to those who gather under it, drawing from Psalm 133 and the image of oil running from the head of the high priest down to those assembled. "That same generational anointing that is upon your senior leadership is upon you," he  said. "You have positioned yourself in this house so that you might receive not just information but impartation."

Then he turned to the dreams sitting on shelves. The prophetic words not yet walked into. The deferred plans, the deep desires suppressed, the books started but never finished. He named them, and he called them back.

"The first 40 years have been amazing," he said in his closing prayer. "But oh, the next 40 are going to be glorious beyond our wildest comprehension."

For City of Life, our 40th anniversary is not a finish line. It is an opening. A new chapter. A starting gun. And the word that rang out over Founder's Month was the same word that sent 120 people in the book of Acts out of an upper room and into the world with fire in their lungs.

Get in the river.

It's time to swim your Amazon.