I would have to confess that I am probably not the typical kind of Pastor. I did not grow up in a Christian home. I grew up in a broken home going from one parent during the week to another parent on the weekend. I was about twelve when my I was told that I was going to have to choose which parent I would live with until I turned eighteen. Can you imagine having to choose? This was my life. I did not have the knowledge of the scripture or the challenge to walk with the Lord even though I was part of the Catholic Church. I had never heard what it means to be saved or what it was to be lost.
When my father passed away I couldn’t fill the void it left and turned to a gang lifestyle. My family was unaware that I was drinking, doing drugs, or running with gangs. I was good at hiding it. This was my life. I was on the path to destruction. I was on the path to failing in life. I knew it and didn’t know what I was going to do about it. What I didn’t know at the time is that I was on another path that would lead me to Hell. This was my life.
You see this is the beginning of the story because as I said this “was” my life, but praise God it is not anymore. God sent a wonderful women in my life who didn’t know she would be my wife at the time but was a huge instrument in the Lords hands by just sticking to what she knew was right and got me to come to Church. It was there I heard the good news that I didn’t have to go on the path I was living and could come to know that heaven was my home. I have never been the same. I am a child of the King! This is my life!
It is from this foundation that has paved the way to what God has made me today and why I feel I am an atypical Pastor. Shortly after I was saved, God began to work in my heart about becoming a Pastor. I know my father wasn’t saved and is in hell today, and it is this knowledge that God allowed to resonate in my mind as I thought of the ministry. It is almost as if I could hear him say, “There are Daddies everywhere that are going to go to hell if someone won’t tell them.” I surrendered with a passion for souls.
As the Lord grew me my passion never changed but God certainly expanded it. I started seeing families falling apart, young people not seeing the Lord as relevant, and more importantly believers finding their “Christianity” failing them when the rubber met the road. Why is that? What happened? What failed? We had a mold, but what went wrong? I noticed in college and for some that I had worked for as an assistant pastor that the solution was easy. Push soul winning more, Push dress standards more, push Sunday school more, push Bible reading more, push faithfulness to Church more. Now let me add a disclaimer here by saying that I am not against soul-winning, Sunday school, faithfulness to Church and for sure not against reading Gods word, but the success of a Church hinges on so much more than methodology. And there begins the problem…
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