New pastor joins Presbyterian church

PINE PLAINS — From the moment he arrived in Pine Plains, Pastor Ryan Larkin knew he had found what he was looking for. From the local geography that reminded him of his Southern roots to the parishioners who welcomed him so openly, he felt he found his calling as the new pastor of the First United Presbyterian Church of Pine Plains. Pastor Larkin was ordained to the ministry on Sunday, March 1.

Having spent more than half his life in Greer, S.C., Larkin said New York closely resembles the South Carolina terrain. While his family and friends pictured a 1940s version of New York with tommy guns and gangsters, he said they might instead find the landscape to be almost identical to his hometown, from the mountains and farms to the towers and grain silos.

Before his ordination, Larkin worked as a restaurant marketer for The Melting Pot Restaurants Inc., which he said helped inform his work years later.

Remembering the moment of his calling to the day, Larkin was 28 years old when he realized what he was meant to do with his life. Now 38, he said at that time he understood that was exactly “what God has asked me to do.”

Larkin said, “When I talk to God, I absolutely have a sense that I’m being heard. It’s been proven over time that when I pray, the answer that comes is never immediate and never obvious. You can’t draw a straight line to it, but everything I have ever asked has been answered more fully than I expected it to be. When the evidence keeps mounting and everything keeps turning out better and better, then it does start to feel like a dialogue, a conversation.”

Larkin said the title of reverend seems “less spiritually significant and more formal,” and he prefers being called Pastor Ryan. His focus is centered on the scriptures, which helps him stay focused on the main text and allows him the luxury of crafting his words ahead of his sermons. Along with underlining the power of prayer, he said it’s amazing how the scriptures speak to both the daily and world events happening right now.

Following his experiences in preaching in Texas Hill Country and in Palo Alto, Calif., Larkin connected to Pine Plains through both a matching system between churches and preachers as well as through an email from his new church’s search committee. Pastor Larkin said he was originally looking for places with warm weather and sunshine, like Florida, adding that his only experience with New England before Pine Plains was seven weeks in New York City.

“I grew up in a smaller place,” Larkin said, “and I always thought I would need a big city, and then just over the years, I’ve proven to myself it’s not true… I need mountains and open space and quiet. When I got here, it was like “Where have you been all my life?’”