Meeting Transcripts

Opening Remarks

Greeting and agenda

Good morning! It is good to have all of you here one more time. Thank God for the privilege of meeting together as a group of ministers. One of these meetings will be our last, so we want to order our lives as if this is it.

Turn to the first page in your binders, and you will see our schedule of events for the day. We will try to adhere as tightly as we can to that schedule. At the bottom of the page, you will notice some upcoming dates for camp meeting as well as pastors’ and ministers’ meetings during camp. 

On the next page, you will see the Table of Contents. From the bottom up, you will see that included in your binder are the ministers’ meeting comments of last camp meeting, the ordinance comments of November 2004, and a more current rendering of our structural charts. Then there is a letter that was sent out in January to the Portland saints. It is a letter of appreciation and also of disclosure.

Please turn to page 7. There are two copies of page 7 so that you can fill one out and turn it in. This is for those of you who want to receive website updates. Just print your name and email address and check the boxes to the updates that you want to receive. If you aren’t currently getting the Daily Devotional and would like to, check that box. You can also get news updates—for instance, you could automatically get an email telling you that a recent trip report has been posted. The same thing applies for the Youth Page, Article of the Week, and Higher Way. All of those things are available, as well as the Portland church announcements and Recent Happenings, which is a summary of the week’s activities in the Portland church. If somebody knows something about Portland that you don’t know, it might be because they have signed up for Recent Happenings and you haven’t. Sign up and you will enjoy these updates.

Turn to page 6. If the Lord tarries another year, these will be the dates for the 2006 special meetings and camp meeting. Also, we will hold our 100-year anniversary event to remember the outpouring of the Holy Ghost in Los Angeles. We will have ten days of prayer, which will culminate on that April 9th date—the date in 1906 when the Holy Ghost fell on Bonnie Brae Street. We can’t recreate what happened then, but we can remind ourselves of it. A part of every one of these prayer meetings will be a fifteen-or-twenty-minute history lesson, focusing on the different aspects of what led up to that outpouring. Also, a commemorative event has been scheduled for July 8, during camp meeting. 

Church Policy vs. Legalism

Turn to page 4. When I was a branch church minister and pastor, I found it helpful to know how certain things were being handled. That is why I have attached an email reply that addresses legalism. This is nothing more than pulling together paragraphs from several replies to form an example. We want to be kind and understanding when someone writes to us, but at the end of the day, some arguments that get recycled and come our way, simply don’t hold up. One of those arguments is that of legalism, and this reply addresses that.

Part of the second paragraph says that it is altogether appropriate and necessary for our church to establish some criteria for its participants. Every church does this. It is perfectly acceptable and even expected. In a lot of ways that really should be the only reply that we should ever have to give. But we certainly want to encourage people who have questions.

Another notion that is addressed in this reply is that our Gospel does not appeal to outsiders. That question was addressed to the wrong person because I am an outsider and I found it very appealing. And I could count thirty-eight other family members who are in our churches every Sunday who feel the same way. I recognize that not everyone, even in my family, embraces the Apostolic Faith. I have family members who attend other churches, and I have some that came and then fell by the wayside. That certainly makes us feel bad when our family is impacted, but this does not impact the Gospel or the appeal of the Apostolic Faith Church.          

I will read the fourth paragraph, the longest paragraph, at least the first part of it, because the key is subjection to God:

“The church, with all of its shortcomings, is of divine origin. Those who submit themselves to the order God has established live a rich life within that church order. Those who resist it live in varying degrees of frustration. The deeper issue is subjection to God. Individuals face that issue in any church where they determine to spend their lives. The only way to avoid that issue is to change churches every decade or so, which is what many choose to do. However, in doing so, they set their posterity adrift.”

The last sentence of that paragraph says, “The value of maintaining a heritage cannot be overstated.”

At times, family situations are complicated when a spouse or a child resists submission to God, and certainly that is not something that we are unsympathetic to. That is why we must encourage people who are encountering these personal difficulties. These are personal difficulties that they must deal with, and we certainly pray for them. The bottom line is that people who spend a lifetime battling submitting to God need to just give it up, get the victory, and enjoy the Gospel.

I have been in the Apostolic Faith long enough to observe the people in the church that wrestle year in and year out. All they need to do, really, is just surrender to the Lord and not to the church. God has called them to serve Him in the Apostolic Faith Church, so they just need to give it up and enjoy this good way. Always remember, too, that there is no Bible verse that supports the view they take. That is another recycled argument.

America—Our Mission Field

“But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:36-38).

Introduction

A few words in the 36th verse stood out to me: faint, scattered, no shepherd. I looked at some of the different translations of the Bible, and some associated faint with being harassed, distressed, or weary. Scattered was equated to being helpless and downcast. They were without a shepherd. Of course, you can picture the sheep wandering different ways in a pasture, wandering aimlessly about, with no food or water. That describes our American culture in so many ways. We live in a mobile society where people change jobs more frequently than they did years ago. My dad spent his entire life working for Umpqua Dairy, except for one short period when he was laid off and worked for Roseburg Sand and Gravel, driving a truck. He worked for Umpqua Dairy for nearly forty years. He grew up on the same property where I grew up, and he still lives there. There is a generational difference today. Nowadays, people change jobs frequently, they move more frequently, and they change churches more frequently. This is just the society we live in. The end result is that we can look upon those in our culture and see them faint, and scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.         

Challenging, Local, and Long-term 

The fact that we have a challenging mission field does not negate the fact that we have a mission field that God has called us to labor in. Matthew 9:37 states, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few.” Jesus didn’t say how prolific the harvest was, whether it was a thousand bushels per acre, or a thousand bushels in a thousand acres. He also didn’t describe how many laborers there were; whether there were three, thirty, or three thousand.

What He was stating was that there were simply not enough laborers for the size of the harvest. If we were to go on to chapter 10, which we won’t do today, we would see the great commission. We could break that chapter into five sections: the appointment, the instructions, the warnings, the assurance, and the challenge.

In chapter 11, verse 1, we read that Jesus departed “to preach in their cities.” That struck me. He went to their neighborhoods. He did not go to some foreign land. He recognized that there was a crop to be harvested locally. That is what we want to recognize. We do not need to go to Africa or Romania or the Philippines to work in God’s harvest field. The fields are ripe unto harvest in Portland, Chehalis, Dallas, Roseburg, Tacoma, and wherever God has called us to labor. The fields right here are white unto harvest. They are ready. I won’t promise how prolific the crop is, but there is a crop. That is really our challenge today. We need to be missionaries to America. No one said that it would be easy. In fact, if we were to read chapter 10, we would understand that Jesus made it clear that it would be very, very challenging. Nonetheless, they were to go.

Even on a farm, the fact that the crop is less bountiful doesn’t mean that it should not be harvested; it just means that a person must work harder to harvest what is there. You may have heard the phrase, “short-term mission.” To me, a short-term mission is when the shuttle spacecraft is launched into orbit and returns a week later. Of course, in the religious world a short-term mission is a phrase used to describe an opportunity to go someplace outside of the United States to work on a project and maybe gain another perspective. Certainly, we support that notion in our own church, and we want our young people to gain from such an experience. That is why we have given them opportunities to go to the Philippines, Romania, or the Dominican Republic.

However, in a missionary sense, the term “short-term mission” in my mind fights with itself. How can a mission of eternal nature be short-term? I really struggled with this, even on our recent trip. I told Brother Paul Akazue that missionaries do not leave after two weeks. Missionaries do not have a cook provided for them like we did who knew how to cook Western style food to prevent us from getting ill. When we traveled about, we spent a couple of nights in Abuja at the Hilton Hotel. Missionaries do not stay at the Hilton.

When I think of missionaries, I visualize Brothers George Hughes, Harold Barrett, and Art Allen. They did not go and spend two weeks and leave. Certainly our trips qualify as mission work. I do not want to discount what is done, because it is a missionary endeavor, but I think we have to distinguish between a short-term mission and a long-term mission. A short-term mission is that short trip. The long-term mission for us is to be a missionary in America. America needs us. It needs the message that God has given us to proclaim.

I have had some conversations with those who have gone on these trips, as well as some of the young people. There is something glamorous and exciting about a short-term mission. If we would open it up, there would be a lot of people signing up and willing to pay their own way to go. We have restricted it, in a sense, in that we want those who go to be qualified before they go. We don’t want people to be qualified somehow by mission trips.

The long-term mission is the one that we are really interested in and it is not accepted with the same enthusiasm, is it? That is our challenge and that is the challenge to those who go. We want to take every opportunity to remind them that going is great, but when the trip is over, let’s settle into the long-term missionary work, which is in America.

Let’s face it, it is quite routine going to practice every week, showing up at round table when it occurs, and being early enough to drive the Sunday school van on Sundays. Somehow we have to convey to our people that this is a great missionary field that is white unto harvest, and that we are missionaries to America. The mission field is when you go to pick up kids at eight-thirty or nine o’clock in the morning to get them to Sunday school by nine-thirty. Sometimes they are there and sometimes they are not, but make no mistake, we are certainly missionaries to America. Somehow we have to inspire our workers to realize that. For us to inspire our workers to realize that, we must realize it ourselves.

We Have Something Appealing

We have all kinds of contacts in India who want us to go there. If you are interested in a long-term missionary effort, come and see me. If you are willing to do what Brother Harold and others did—to go and live there, to eat what they eat, and to sleep where they sleep—then let me know. However, God called most of us to labor in America.

I mentioned that I was an outsider. After I typed out this outline, and even made a few comments, I realized that I cannot really claim all my family in this church (nearly forty) as outsiders anymore. My children can’t claim that. However, our family is proof that the Gospel still draws people.

We want to remember that what we have to offer is appealing. Our family found the wholesome environment and the conservative style of living very appealing when we came into the Gospel. It is unpopular and ridiculed in our culture, but since when does our culture dictate how we conduct ourselves? The problem is that it is not only looked down upon in secular culture, but it is also looked down upon in the religious culture. We can’t let that dictate our mission or our message, though.

We have something that is very, very appealing, and there are still those out there who need to be won for the Kingdom of Heaven. Weakening our position to attract more people would be a false premise under which to operate. And who could say if it would attract more people? What we would end up with is a weaker position. I have thought about this, and it is like trying to extend that concentrated orange juice by mixing in an extra half a can of water. What happens? The orange juice just sits in the refrigerator longer, doesn’t it? It’s not as appealing.

Remember, those who raise the loudest objections about our relevance are the same ones who would render us irrelevant if we followed their advice. We can’t please everyone. We must please God. We need one another, and we must stand together. I, personally, appreciate the help of each of you. The fact is that I need you more than you need me, though we need one another. Help may be defined as simply being supportive, saying “Amen,” if there is something to say “Amen” to, working together for a common cause, and faithfully pitching in wherever we happen to find our role. Unity doesn’t just happen. The Bible says that we are to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The fact that we are all sanctified individuals doesn’t mean that unity is automatic. We must endeavor. We must work at it. We must be diligent. If a doubtful comment were to come to us about one of our peers, we would have an instant opportunity to deflate or inflate it, and hopefully we would deflate it. The Bible says that “Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out” (Proverbs 26:20). So we can either stoke the fire or douse it with water.

We Are One Body

Another thing we want to remember is to not think of ourselves in terms of where we live. We don’t want to think of Chehalis, Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland as separate entities. We are one entity. We just happen to live in different places. We also don’t want to think separately of the headquarters church and branch churches. We are one. We can never allow ourselves to become isolated. That is probably one of the most deadly spiritual maladies that can attack a person, causing them to be overcome with a feeling of being unappreciated. We have to realize we are a vital part of the whole body wherever we labor.

Personal Convenience

There are times when we have to set aside personal convenience for the good of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. More specifically, for the good of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Apostolic Faith where God has called us to serve. We have all done that. It wasn’t convenient for me to move my family from Dallas to Eureka, when Brother Loyce Carver asked me to. The Dallas public school system was a very good one. The Eureka public school system was as different as night and day. Our son was a junior in high school and our daughter was almost finished with high school, so in that sense it wasn’t convenient. In all candor, I didn’t think about that too heavily, nor did Debbie. We thought about it, we realized it was there, and we left it with the Lord.

When Brother Dwight Baltzell asked us to move to Portland, I would have liked to have stayed in Eureka longer. Our daughter was in college by then, and in California our income level was such that she received free college tuition. We only paid for books and so on. So moving to Portland certainly cost me more financially. It cost her more too because I didn’t pay all of her tuition. It cost Brother Rob Parker more, but I hope he took that into account when he married her.

I knew then, and I believe it now, that more consideration needs to be given to the one asking than to the one being asked. It’s easy for me to say this now because Brother Bob Downey does the asking. I probably couldn’t say this if I was doing all the asking. I think it is idealistic to expect that if God is in it, everyone would leap for joy when asked to move.

I have noticed that our level of expectation changes over time. When I was asked to pastor in Dallas, I was very happy that I would live in the parsonage without paying rent, and that the utilities would be paid, and that I didn’t have to pay the property taxes or buy insurance. When the call of God came, there was a sense that I was supposed to do it, so I purposed to just do it and deal with it. Over time, though, we learn certain things and then our expectations gradually get higher. We want to be as enthusiastic about our later transfers as we were with the first one. Maybe we need to do a better job of educating the people on the first move. The first one, like a short-term mission, has the level of enthusiasm and excitement that often does not exist later on. We have to set aside personal convenience for the good of the Gospel.

I never expected either Brother Dwight or Brother Carver to confer with my wife. When I assumed this role, I heard that sometimes the wives weren’t asked. At some point Brother Carver and Brother Dwight both sat down with Debbie and me, but I didn’t expect that. I didn’t think that was his problem. I thought that was my problem, if there was a problem, and there wasn’t, because Debbie and I talked about all of this before we got married. Although neither one of us really knew what we were getting into, but at least we talked about it.

I think that it is idealistic to expect that Brother Bob can make everyone happy. Remember, it is more complicated for him than it is for you; it really is! If you think it is just a matter of picking a name out of a hat, and picking a location that also came out of a hat, you are wrong; it doesn’t work that way. It typically gets narrowed down to a very, very narrow set of options, so if it comes your way, express your concerns, certainly, but then pray that God will have His way. We must pray one for another.

Instant In Season and Out of Season

I thought of this idea of a missionary to America. Perhaps one of the most successful missionaries ever to visit Portland was here only seventy-three days. His name was Shadrack Ajayi. He was born the year I moved to Portland, 1996, and he died seventy-three days after he was born. I have Brother Sam Ajayi’s permission to use this as an illustration. He was their baby. In seventy-three days he probably touched more lives than many touch in a lifetime, simply because Brother Sam and Sister Shade determined that Shadrack was called to be a missionary. So everyone who came and went from his room, left with a testimony, a paper, or some word of the Gospel. After he died, two people from the funeral home wheeled him out on a gurney. I was there as Brother Sam stopped them and told them that Shadrack was a missionary. Then we prayed with them. I think we can learn from that example that we must seize opportunities. Opportunities will typically come at the most inopportune times. If we are going to be missionaries to America, we must capitalize on those events.

We Have a Great Gospel!

Working in the harvest field of America reminds me of the story of the parents who had twin six-year-old boys. The parents were really worried because one was a total pessimist while the other was an optimist. So they took them to a psychiatrist. First the psychiatrist treated the pessimist. He tried to brighten his outlook by taking him into a room filled with toys. Instead of shouting with delight, the little boy burst into tears. The psychiatrist was baffled and asked him, “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to play with the toys?” The pessimist cried and said, “Yes, but if I did, I would only break them.” Next the psychiatrist treated the optimist. He tried to dampen his outlook. (I debated whether to share this story, but I think it will be okay because I’m a farmer at heart.) The psychiatrist took him to a room filled with horse manure. Instead of the little boy wrinkling his nose, he expressed the delight that the psychiatrist had hoped to see in the pessimist. Then he scrambled to the top of the pile and began scooping handfuls of manure. The psychiatrist asked him, “What are you doing?” He was baffled. The little boy replied, “With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere.”

My dad was a little like that. As boys, we would drive into town on occasion, and behind a barn on the way into town there would be a big manure pile. My dad would point to that manure pile and say, “That is just like money in the bank.” The statement was true because Dad didn’t have to pay for fertilizer. He had a pile of manure and four boys to shovel that manure into a spreader. Then he would go out with the tractor and spread it through the pasture, and that nitrogen would make the grass grow.

Whether we serve with eight, eighteen, or eighty, we really can never afford to be anything less than completely upbeat, and sincerely so. In fact, I don’t feel any differently about attending the meetings in Dallas and Eureka where there were thirty or so, or in Portland where there are several hundred, or going to Nigeria where there are thousands. I’m encouraged to step into a Gospel meeting where there are twenty-five, because we have the greatest Gospel in all the world, and we have the Gospel America needs. So may God help us all to be inspired and be genuinely excited about the Gospel that the Apostolic Faith preaches. I am more pleased with it today and more convinced of its genuineness than I was when I attended that first meeting thirty-one years ago.

Concluding Verse

1 Corinthians 15:58 tells us, “Be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” God bless you as you leave these meetings and go to your great harvest field and labor there.

‍