PASADENA, Texas — Providence Baptist Church has an elder making a mockery of the term “remote work.” Over the last several months Barry Wilmore has proven that long distances shouldn’t keep one from being an active church member.

And we’re talking looooong distances. About 250 miles above your head.

To most of the world Wilmore is known as Butch, his Navy pilot call sign while flying A-7Es and F/A-18s from aircraft carriers. On June 5 he and fellow astronaut Suni Williams launched to the International Space Station aboard the Boeing Starliner. However, issues with the spacecraft’s thrusters have left the two stranded at the ISS until February.

NASA announced on Aug. 30 that Starliner would return, unmanned, on Sept. 6.

Wilmore and Williams will continue to work informally as part of the crew scheduled to return in February. In the meantime, Wilmore has reunited with fellow Providence Church member Tracy Dyson, flight engineer for Expedition 71 who has been at the ISS since April and is set to return this month.

Wilmore has been a member of Providence for 17 years, said Pastor Tommy Dahn; Dyson and her husband George, a military chaplain, joined about a year-and-a-half ago. Much of her time since then has been spent training for her current mission, but she has stayed active any way she can, including spending a church workday leading out in updating the building’s wiring.

As someone who has designed, constructed and implemented electronics and hardware for the purpose of withstanding the unforgiving, impenetrable vacuum of space, it would stand to say she was qualified.

“Tracy has spent a lot of her time in Russia training to go up in the Soyuz,” said Dahn, “so we’re still getting to know her. Her dad owned an electrical company. She came in on the workday and said our wiring was in bad shape and needed to be fixed.”

Connectivity with their church home has remained. While Dyson still has her mission responsibilities, Wilmore’s unexpected stay has placed him in the role of an extra hand available to assist in areas like deferred maintenance on the ISS. And even though he may have some more downtime, twiddling thumbs is not in his nature.

“Barry doesn’t waste a minute,” Dahn said. “He’s a minister extraordinaire, a worker who cares about people and the elderly.”

Providence averages 265 in worship, so it’s crucial to have volunteers pitching in on different ministry responsibilities. It’s just a little unusual for them to do so from space.

That includes calls from the ISS to shut-ins, like the one Wilmore made to Dahn’s mother-in-law on her 93rd birthday. After learning his stay at the ISS would be longer than expected, he signed up for the church’s newsletter. He livestreams the service and on the second Sunday at the ISS even delivered a short devotion and sang “Amazing Grace” alongside the rest of those aboard the space station.

“We had a true international choir that Sunday,” Dahn said.

Another time, Wilmore recorded a devotion for Providence’s Sunday prayer service. With a view of the world behind him as he stood in the Cupola of the ISS, it was a backdrop that literally no pastor on earth can replicate.

Dahn and church members help Wilmore’s family while he’s away. For his wife and their two daughters, though, it’s not something they aren’t used to.

“Ever since he and Deanna have been married, he was either deployed on aircraft carriers for the Navy or an astronaut,” Dahn said. “The least five years he’s been training here for the Boeing flight, but they’re accustomed to him being gone.

“Deanna is an integral part of the church and very involved in the women’s ministry and scheduling our nursery volunteers. That’s a big job and she takes care of it. We pray for them on corporate prayer nights and make sure his girls – one is in college and the other a high school senior — are doing well. When Hurricane Beryl came through I helped Deanna find a roofer for some minor damage.”

Dahn expects Wilmore to hit the ground running the first Sunday he’s back in church.

“He’s a very zealous evangelist and defender of the faith,” he said. “He’s been to the Philippines, where they love anything about space, and into Ecuador. He goes into rough prisons in Central America and has traveled along the Amazon River to share the Gospel.

“I emailed him, and Barry told me he hasn’t learned anything new about God from being in space. It has only affirmed what he already believed. God’s Word is sufficient.”

This story has been republished with permission from Baptist Press.

Scott Barkley is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press.