Church & Ministry

In 1982 my wife and I planted our first church in Philadelphia – Faith Independent Baptist Church. The long church name seemed awkward back then but I wanted to be sure people knew up front where I stood. Fresh from eight years of ministry training at fundamentalist schools, I was a committed independent, fundamental Baptist. As extra insurance to validate my IFB credentials, I often added “militant and separatist” as well. The church’s doctrinal statement enshrined a dispensational hermeneutic essential for correct interpretation, the pre-tribulational rapture as the next event on the prophetic calendar, and the King James Version as the official translation. As a church we were known more for what we were against than for who we were.

Fast forward to 2011 where in the same city I am now working with a team of elders to plant another church in a spiritual wasteland where we parachuted in with a few families but without a significant core group. After thirty years of church planting I claim no special expertise, offer no guarantees of success, and sense an even greater dependency upon the Lord to build His church. Similar struggles, resistance to the gospel remain.

This one-year-old church is elder led, non-denominational, non-dispensational, and uses the English Standard Version. Much has changed. Most remains the same. I would venture to add that what is essential has not changed. In areas where change has occurred, thirty years of ministry, of study, of relationships, and of experiences have conspired to bring me to the place I am today. For many years IFB was all I knew or cared to know. Now I find myself rarely at home in this fragmented movement of competing networks. I find myself increasingly on the outside looking in. This is my journey, but I’m glad I was not alone.

After planting a church in Philadelphia from 1982-1987 my family and I went to France and then Romania in church planting and pastoral training ministry. Those years spent overseas provided opportunities for fellowship with believers from different horizons and spared me the need to engage in many of the needless conflicts being fought in the States. There was less need to conform to others’ expectations of what it meant to be safely within the fundamentalist orbit.

Republished, with permission, from Voice magazine, May-June, 2011.

It was a difficult telephone call to receive. It was 1983 and I was graduating with my Master of Divinity from Capital Bible Seminary. I had sent my resume to various IFCA members with whom I had become somewhat familiar, asking them if they would be willing to send it to churches they knew were looking for pastors. Pastor Bob Gray from Westchester Bible Church, a former President of the IFCA, was calling. I had sent him one of my resumes. He said, “I received your resume last week and I am sorry to tell you that I cannot send it on to any churches.” I was dumb-founded. I asked him what was the problem? He said, “I can’t send it along because I believe that it is God’s will for you to come to Westchester and serve a residency here for three years.” I was immediately relieved and amused!

But my immediate attitude was “Thanks, but no thanks!” I had already served in a variety of internships: at Limerick Chapel, I had served for three consecutive summers; at Bob Jones University, I served an internship with Dr. Tony Miller in a church plant at Clemson University; at Capital Bible Seminary, I had served as an intern to Pastor Sam Martz in the church plant at New Carrollton Bible Church. I had grown up in a pastor’s home and thought that I had had enough “mentoring.”

I thanked him, but told him that I felt called to preach and that I was looking for my own pulpit ministry. He asked me to at least pray about it. I half-heartedly told him that I would. As soon as I hung up with him, I called my father who hesitated not and declared, “Do it!” I said, “But Dad…” and he interrupted and said, “You won’t regret it.”

It was such a powerful time in my life, that as soon as I finished my residency with Pastor Gray, and took the ministry at Byron Center Bible Church, I purposed to begin a residency program for young men coming out of seminary. From 1986 to 1998, I prepared myself to serve as a mentor to young men who would be able to come and serve with me. During those twelve years, there were four areas of priority that I sought to develop at the church: personal maturity, leadership vision, congregational maturity, and financial support.

First appearance at SharperIron posted 2/12/09.

In many conservative gospel-preaching churches, the only thing rarer than drums is Psalms singing. This seems particularly odd in view of the fact that most of these churches insist on musical worship that is biblical, that is deeply rooted in history, and that has stood the test of time. What songs are more biblical, more historically rooted, and more timeless than the 150 songs that God Himself breathed out more than 2,000 years ago?

Why sing Psalms?

Every worship leader should serve with the conviction that the flock he leads needs to be singing the psalms regularly in corporate worship services. This conviction is rooted in three realities.

First, the psalms are songs. In other words, they were originally written as poetry to be sung. As songs, then, these compositions cannot be fully appreciated or experienced as God intended them to be apart from singing. Experiencing the psalms in a non-musical way would be like trying to experience Handel’s Messiah by simply reading the text. So while the psalms need to studied, prayed, and preached, we also need to experience them as worship songs.

Second, the psalms are God-breathed songs. The book of Psalms is the only God-breathed hymnal in existence. That fact should carry some weight when we make decisions about which songs to include in corporate worship!

Third, by example and command the New Testament urges believers in Jesus Christ to sing psalms. Apparently Jesus led His disciples in singing a psalm after the last supper (Matt. 26:30). Worship in the early church included Psalms singing (1 Cor. 14:26). Also, the Bible clearly urges New Testament believers to sing psalms as an evidence of Spirit-controlled living (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16).