Aflame for God 10 – Fire In The Church

“The church of our times needs the apostolic spirit. She needs so deep a baptism with those fires of Holy Ghost that she can go out and set the world on fire by her zeal for the souls of men. Till then the generations of our race must go on, thronging the broad way to hell because no man cares for their souls.” – Charles G. Finney

Read the beginning of the series HERE

Teens Unlimited, Roswell, New Mexico

In March of 1986 we packed up and moved to Roswell 200 miles southeast of home and moved into a little old parsonage. My first day on the job as the new youth pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, the former youth pastor, who sadly was leaving the ministry and his wife for another woman, was directed by the pastor to take Lisa and I around and show us the city. I’ll never forget how he took us by both high schools and when we mentioned how we had Bible clubs at our respective high schools and how we had started them at Teens Unlimited in Springfield, Missouri he said, “Oh we’ve tried all of that here. You won’t be able to do that in Roswell.” Lisa and I just looked at each other and smiled. We had seen what God could and would do when His children meet the kingdom prerequisites of heart hunger, sacrifice, bold faith, and radical obedience to His word. He spent several hours driving us around telling us what we couldn’t and wouldn’t do. He told us how the youth ministry consisted of 30 spoiled, rebellious church kids who wouldn’t listen to us especially since we were only 19 and 20 years of age. Thankfully we had been living in the daily presence of God long enough to know that the roaring enemy had consumed this man and we felt only compassion for him but determined that we would not let God’s name and power be so defamed among this little church and this little youth ministry if we had anything to say about it.

We launched into this new Teens Unlimited ministry with all the passion and fervor and faith that we had and in just a few weeks God began to open doors and began to turn the hearts of the teens and their parents and the church to us. We were loving on the church families and praying and witnessing on the streets to teens and cleaning the church and anything else that was asked of us. We quickly began to learn about the awful truth of church politics and how churches are ran (often by people who don’t resemble Jesus in the least). That was very painful but we kept our eyes on the young people and God began to bless our efforts. We fell in love with those kids and they fell in love with us. One of the first things that I felt needed to happen was that we needed to make following Jesus as attractive as it truly is. Christianity is the greatest high, trip, hit of all time. It is not a duty or a drudgery to hang out with and work for the God who keeps planets spinning and births and kills stars and who is the most amazing Person in existence. Jesus is better than anything! His way is the path to true joy and excitement and adventure. Those who think different don’t really know Him. We showed those teens that everything they were looking for was ONLY to be found in Jesus Christ. Teenager after teenager began to turn their life over to Christ and start reading their Bible and witnessing to their friends. Their parents by and large immediately became concerned and started putting pressure on the pastor to make sure that I knew that I was there to keep their kids from getting pregnant, on drugs, and cursing too much. They made it clear that I was not there to turn their kids into radical followers of Jesus. Thankfully, I was just too young to listen.

I was preaching every week in that youth ministry like it was a city-wide evangelistic campaign and young people and adults were coming and getting saved and committing to be followers of Jesus. I had recently read David Wilkerson’s book The Cross And The Switchblade which touched me more deeply than I can express and I remembered how the members of the Mau Mau gang in the book wore red satin jackets with white lettering to identify themselves with the gang. I got the idea that we could do the same to identify with Christ and with Teens Unlimited. We taught a Bible study on reaching the world for Christ and then presented each teen and adult that completed the class a red satin jacket with the Teens Unlimited logo emblazoned on the back. I wrote and printed a gospel tract directed at teenagers with our logo and contact information on it and the young people started wearing their jackets to high school and handing out the tracts. Within a few months of our arrival the whole church was buzzing about Teens Unlimited.

I did some research and found out that the largest attendance that youth ministry had ever seen in the church’s 100 year existence was 60 teens. I thought it would encourage and excite the class to break that record and so I promoted to the young people that if they would bring their lost friends and have over 60 young people on a certain Sunday that I would allow them to honey and feather me in my suit that Sunday after the service. It worked only too well and on the given Sunday we had 63 teenagers and since honey moves too slow the kids brought two gallons of restaurant pancake syrup and two feather pillows. The whole church gathered out in the parking lot as I was doused in syrup and then covered with the feathers. It was all fun and games until the bees from the clover field next door to the church got a whiff of that syrup! Within a few moments I was a howling swirling mass of bees. Fortunately our little parsonage was right across the street from the church and so I made a beeline (pun intended) for the water hose in our front yard and doused myself with water as I stripped off my suit and shirt and then tore into the house leaving the bees swirling over my clothes on the front porch. It was hilarious to say the least.

Another wonderful thing was that I regularly filled in preaching when the pastor was away. One of my favorite sermons that I preached there was Fire In The Church (audio of the actual sermon below) on the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Preaching on the Holy Spirit in a baptist church? Wow, did I get in trouble for that one.

Another of my favorite sermons from that period was Impact the World for Christ (audio of the actual sermon below).

We had many adventures as God began to change the young people of the church and impact the youth of the city. It wasn’t long before we had established Bible clubs in both high schools and teens were being saved and getting on fire for Christ. We were interviewed by radio and television and the young people and most of their parents were excited to be a part. About this time a young newly married couple named Scott and Jaime Gurule asked us if they could join our team. The pastor warned me not to allow them because they had a shady past and he didn’t care for them but I really liked them and they were passionate about Jesus and about teens so Lisa and I said, “We would love to have you!” in spite of the pastor’s ire. We became fast friends after that and today Scott and Jaime are internationally known pastors of Covenant Generations Church in Tucson, Arizona and have been greatly used of God. Also about this time we found out that a Baptist church across the street from the largest high school in town was shutting its doors and their 200 seat auditorium was for sale. We began to pray that we could start a youth center there and within a month or two it was ours and Lisa and I would go there every night after working at the church and paint and remodel.

We painted red, blue, and yellow racing stripes along the walls of the auditorium (It was just this year that I realized that those are the colors and almost the configuration of the Colombian flag). They terminated at the front with a big flame and the words where there is no vision the people perish. We turned the previously unfinished Sunday school area of the church into a 50’s diner and game-room and we would hold a mini-revival there every Friday night much like the Monday night Youth On Fire meetings that my brother and I held when we were in high school.

As my 7 months pregnant wife was setting up for one of these Friday night revivals and I was out in the church van picking up teenagers her water broke and we had to take her to the hospital. The doctor’s said that our baby was coming 2 months premature and the hospital in Roswell couldn’t handle a baby that small so they were going to fly us to Albuquerque to the hospital there. Here we were. 19 and 20 with a baby coming this early and neither of us had ever flown on a plane before. Yet I remember so clearly that we were at perfect peace. We knew that our lives were a miracle, that we were called of God, and that He would take care of us. We got on that little medical plane and took off and our little 4 lb. 8 oz boy, Luke, was born the next day. Today he is a fine man of God with his own family. Praise the Lord!

The next spring, to celebrate our first anniversary with the ministry, we decided to have a city-wide youth evangelistic campaign with a pizza blast like we had done in Springfield. Scott set up TV spots and billboards and radio spots and we put up posters and flyers all over town. We packed out the church gymnasium and I preached my heart out. Many teens from all over the city and of varied race and societal status were saved that night.

Shortly after the pastor called me in and told me that he and the deacons were concerned about the “type” of young people that I was bringing in. He let me know that they didn’t want “those people” in the church and that those kids parents were never going to come and were never going to tithe anyway. He wanted me to “bring in the football players and the cheerleaders.” I was stunned and sickened. I had received quite a bit of resistance all along from the established hierarchy of the church but because the teens and parents loved us so the politicos were careful about confronting me but now I had gone too far. I was being forced out. We were heartbroken but rejoicing in the year we had shared with this church and the lives that had been changed. We moved back home to Albuquerque wondering what God had for us there.

Aflame For God 11 – Punk Rock Baptist Church