RIP Keith Decker, founder and president of Cedaridge Ministries

Whitley County lost a great man this week with the passing of Keith Decker Monday.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

In addition to being a senior pastor at Black Oak Baptist Church, Keith was the founder and president of Cedaridge Ministries, which celebrated its 30^th anniversary last year.

Cedaridge traces its roots back to a fundraising yard sale in 1990 to raise money to buy a youth center for the Mount Zion Association Youth Ministry. On Feb. 18, 1992, God gave Keith the word “Cedaridge” as the name of the ministry.

“We didn’t know exactly what that word was going to mean going forward. We just knew that it was a lot shorter than Mount Zion Association Youth Ministry. That is how it started,” Keith said last year during the 30^th anniversary celebration.

A few months after this, Cedaridge outgrew the associational office basement and moved into a facility next to Family Fitness in Williamsburg where it stayed for about six months before moving into an old warehouse on Second Street next to the RC Cola Bottling Plant.

“That is where we really started getting semi loads of stuff,” Keith said about donations the ministry got through the Christian Appalachian Project, Feed the Children and the Society of St. Andrews among others.

Before Cedaridge had its own forklift, Decker would go in the evenings to W.D. Bryant & Sons to borrow its forklift then drive it to Cedaridge, organize the donations and then get the forklift back to W.D. Bryant’s by 7 a.m. the next morning.

IGA also let the ministry borrow its pallet jack.

In 1996, Cedaridge moved to the old Bailey Brothers store, which was off Exit 11.

Cedaridge did many things at this location, including building dormitory style rooms in the basement where mission groups could stay while doing work in Whitley County and the surrounding areas.

The thing I will probably remember most about the Bailey Brothers building is that nearly the entire time Cedaridge occupied the building it had a leaky basement.

I say nearly the entire time because an Illinois church, which had worked with Cedaridge previously doing mission work in Whitley County, donated $5,500 to get the basement waterproofed. Affordable Waterproofing and Home Builders originally quoted a $10,000 price to waterproof the Cedaridge basement, but decided to do the whole thing for $5,500 because they too wanted to help the ministry.

Ironically, Cedaridge didn’t get to enjoy that waterproof basement very long or the new roof it had gotten put on the building months earlier.

Fast forward to December 2012 when the University of the Cumberlands purchased Cedaridge’s building off Exit 11 for $453,000. This enabled Cedaridge to move into the old Tri-County Assemblies building off Exit 15 near Three-Point. It was nearly three times the square footage of its old facility.

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Keith when I interviewed him in late 2012 about the move. His answer is something that has always stuck with me.

He told me that God spoke to him in February of that year when the ministry celebrated its 20th anniversary telling him that what had been done in the past wouldn’t even be a shadow of what would be done in the future.

Cedaridge currently serves nine counties and over 450 organizations and churches.

Cedaridge receives large shipments of food that it distributes to local food pantries and churches. Food is also stored in an emergency food bank for families, who suffer major loss. Potatoes and other seeds are made available to needy families each spring for planting of a garden.

The ministry uses its shipments to help local residents first then reaches out to others in need with what it has leftover.

To date, over five million pounds of food and over 450,000 pounds of seed have been distributed.

Clothing is provided to poverty-stricken families, and also sold at Cedaridge’s thrift store. What isn’t distributed locally is shipped to Native America reservations and overseas. So far over 1.5 million pounds of clothing has been distributed.

The thrift store provides low/no cost items to many people within the area. Most items are given away free of charge, and when there is a clothing charge it ranges from 10 cents to $2.

Cedaridge facilitates the housing of national organizations and church groups, who come to the area to conduct home repairs, renovations and construction. In the past 14 years, Cedaridge has assisted in the building or renovation of 200 family homes aiding over 5,000 individuals.

Cedaridge has funded over four million pounds of building supplies to needy families and organizations for their homes and places of service.

Before the pandemic, Cedaridge played host to about 40 mission groups each year. The ministry has dormitories where volunteers can stay while doing mission work.

Since Cedaridge moved to its current facility in 2013, it has gone from leading an average of 50 people per year to salvation to average of 300 people annually, Keith noted last year.

So where does Cedaridge go in the next 30 years I asked Keith last year?

“I hope in the same direction, because the Lord has been leading us this way and we just basically follow,” Keith said. “One day someone told me that Cedaridge needs to run more like a business. I told them keeping Cedaridge a business isn’t the problem. Keeping it a ministry is. Keeping the Lord out front and keeping the focus on helping people and spreading the word of Christ is so important to us. Wherever the Lord wants to take it, we want to let him do it.”

I think I speak for many people when I say that I am happy for Keith, who is now in a much better place reaping the rewards he greatly deserves. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him though.

Visitation is 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Thursday at Hart Funeral Home in Corbin. The funeral service will take place Friday at Corn Creek Baptist Church and burial will follow in Corn Creek Cemetery.