LEADERSHIP
Pastor Paul Grossman
A Message From Pastor Paul
Blessings to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! I am Rev. Paul Grossman, but you can always refer to me as Pastor Paul. It is a joy to be serving you as the pastor at Palisade UMC! Before coming to the Grand Valley, I served the good people at Community Federated Church in Thermopolis, Wyoming, and I also previously served as a lay pastor at Hope UMC in Greenwood Village, CO. While originally from Ohio, I have come to love the stunning vistas and landscapes that dot our mountain states and Palisade certainly has no shortage of reminders of our God's beautiful handiwork. Now I serve here in the valley as the pastor at Palisade and Redlands United Methodist Churches as well as the associate pastor at First United Methodist Church. I attended college here in Colorado, graduating from Metropolitan State University in 2011 with a B.A. in history. I met and married my wife, Caitlin, while in the Denver metro area. I also attended the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, obtaining a Master of Divinity in 2020. That same year, we welcomed our daughter, Sophie, to the family, and it has been a joy being her dad. Just recently, I became a fully ordained elder at the 2024 Annual Conference of the Mountain Sky Conference of the United Methodist Church. I am blessed to be able to be a blessing to all of you. I hope to see you on the third and fourth Sundays of the month at 10 am. I would love to connect with you outside of Sunday worship as well, so please feel free to reach out to me at pastorpaulg13@gmail.com or my cellphone at 970-549-0952. You are also more than welcome to drop by during my office hours at Palisade each Wednesday from 9 am to noon for a chat or just to say hello! May the love and grace of our God surround you always!
Larry Beckner, Lay Leader
A Message From Larry
I graduated Grand Junction High School in 1965 and University of Colorado, December of 1969. I then moved to Steamboat Springs and spent the next two winters skiing and working in a restaurant. Through college and my teaching years, I spent 6 summers working for a paving company and I built new interstates in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and Wyoming. I learned what hard work really meant. May 1, 1971, found me marching with 76,000 of my closest friends on the Mall in Washington DC, protesting the Viet Nam War. The fall of 1971 was a quantum change as I shaved off my beard, cut my long hair, put on a coat and tie and began teaching at Orchard Mesa Jr. High. The summer of 1972, I was working construction in Wyoming and ran into a truck driver whose daughter I met in high school. I asked how she was doing and he said she was staying for a week at their home in Grand Junction. That evening, I went to the only pay phone in Elk Mountain, WY, gave her a call and that Saturday night we went out to dinner. Four weeks later, Winona and I got married. In the fall of 1974, we packed up our little family and moved to Tacoma, WA for law school. We returned to Grand Junction and opened my law practice in 1977. I retired from the law practice in June of 2021.
I grew up in the Congregational Church. My Dad was the chairman of the building committee for the new church across 5th Street from GJHS. When I left for college, I stopped going to church but that ended after I married Winona. Her undergraduate degree at DU was in Theology and when we married, she was planning to attend seminary that fall in Dallas. Winona grew up attending First United Methodist Church in Grand Junction (FUMC) so that was the church we attended.
In June, 1978, Sam Day was appointed pastor at FUMC. Sam was one of the most influential people in my life, not just spiritually but in many ways. My style of preaching, including the 3-part title, telling stories, including some humor and stating in many of my messages, “I have good news for you this morning” come directly from Sam. I still keep in touch with Sam, and I could not have done my work on Sunday mornings without him.
On Saturday evening, June 30, 2001, I received a call from the pastor at FUMC. He was quite ill and could not preach the next day and he asked me to fill in for him. Why he called on me, I have no idea. I had never done a sermon. Winona and I stayed up half the night writing a 4th of July message. Since then, I have prepared almost 200 messages. My journey into “preaching” has been a fun and enlightening trip. I enjoy the challenge, and I have grown immensely in my faith. My thanks to Palisade United Methodist Church for giving me an opportunity to meet new people and to play a role in continuing the heritage of this church.
As an aside, my closest friend was the grandson of Forrest Tilton who owned a peach orchard in Palisade. For perhaps 4 harvests, we moved into the basement of the Tilton home, and we picked and hauled peaches. The Tilton residence is the 2-story home located directly east and across the alley from Palisade UMC.