Contending For The Faith

St. John 4: 10-14, 21-24 When I was a little boy growing up in the 1970's, I loved the show "Little House on the Prairie." Based on the true stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder during the 1870's and 1880's it depicted life on the small American frontier towns. Besides the Ingalls home one of the most recognizable buildings on the show was the Walnut Grove Church and School. After watching the show for sometime it became clear to me that the small Protestant church had a positive affect on the rugged America frontier by promoting righteousness, simplicity and hard work.      Now the megachurch dominates the so-called evangelical landscape and has a negative affect on the community by promoting sin, extravagance and ease. If the small Protestant frontier churches such as the Walnut Grove Church and School could be transported from the past to today, how would it fair vs. the megachurch in a head-to-head match up? How would a Rev. Robert Alden (the pastor of the Walnut...

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thu...

There was a well known song written by Gene Autry and Ray Whitley back in 1939 called " Back In The Saddle Again." The song describes my situation to a tee. Let me explain.      In 2007 I was a COGIC minister pastoring a small mission church in Winston-Salem, NC. I was a full-time student, supporting my family and the church on my disability check from the VA. I was also caring for my wife who was ill and constantly in and out the hospital. During this time the Lord started dealing again with my wife and me concerning our continued membership in the COGIC. The Holy Spirit would eventually use two incidents to finally motivate us to leave.      The first incident was a radio interview that I did with a good friend of mine named John Coleman in Los Angeles, CA, after listening to his Azuza Madness Series. As I prepared for the broadcast on his website,  Into The Word...