Meeting Transcripts

‍Opening Remarks

Welcome

Thanks so much for coming. To make it easy on a couple of you, I would like all of you to stand. Those of you who are sitting with your backs to me, please swivel your chair in my direction. I would like to see your eyes instead of your backs. You can be seated again. Thank you so much, and thanks again for coming today. We are glad that you have arranged your schedule to be here early enough for this time together. You are at the heart of the international Apostolic Faith Mission of Portland, Oregon. Therefore, as our pulse goes right here in this room, so goes the pulse of the entire organization. We cannot overstate the importance of each one of you and the importance of all of us walking together in harmony. To the extent that we do, we can expect our congregations to do the same. Let’s expect God to give us a wonderful camp meeting. The anticipation is very high for so many who are coming for their first  time, and we know that the Lord is going to send His blessings down. I personally look at it as reinforcements coming, and I’m looking forward to reinforcements.

You Will Have Experiences

“Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not” (2 Corinthians 4:1).

Introduction

The first chapters of 2 Corinthians can be divided into three parts. Paul speaks of the ministry of the Spirit, of reconciliation, and of suffering. 

He speaks of the ministry of the Spirit when he says, “Who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but     the spirit giveth life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). In context, the people demanded letters of recommendation from Paul. Paul’s reply paraphrased was, “you are my letters of recommendation. You have experienced the changing power of the Spirit of God, so I do not need to give you a letter of recommendation. You are our epistle.” That’s the ministry of the Spirit.

He speaks of the ministry of reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5:18: “God who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18).

Finally, he speaks of a ministry of suffering, as some outlines call it, in 2 Corinthians 6:4, “But in all things approving ourselves as the minister of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings.” This is where we want to spend our devotional time this morning. I would like to call this session “A Ministry for Today Comprised of a Variety of Experiences.” Since we will not easily remember all of that, I’ll summarize it for you in four words: You will have experiences. I think you can remember that and so can I. There is not one of us who will go through life without some extraordinarily challenging experiences. We may not see it on                                the surface, and we may not see it in the expressions on one another’s faces, but we will all have experiences.

Marriage Experiences

Learning

Marriage brings new experiences. After Debbie and I married, one new experience for us was when she was expecting our daughter. It was not very long ago, but back then we did not know if the baby was a boy or a girl. Now parents know that way ahead of time. But since I did not know how this birthing process worked, I remember asking Debbie as she was approaching countdown time how we were going to know when this baby was going to be born. I asked her, “Do you start running a fever and get sick for a week or two?” On the farm, they did not teach us that stuff.

Of course, that was not it at all, and soon she had a couple of nights where she had contractions. One night she must have had a really hard one. I immediately said, “This is it!” And it was it, but it was only about midnight when it hit her, so I had a pencil and paper, and every time she had a contraction, I wrote down the time, in the dark. I knew I needed to get some sleep, that I was in for a long day. By the way, she saved that piece of paper where those contractions were timed out. Eventually we went to the hospital and Alicia was born. So that was a new experience.

About sixteen years later, when we moved to Eureka, I dropped Alicia off at a new high school for her junior year. It was a painful experience to watch and know that it was hard for Alicia. However, those were the best years of her Christian development. There are painful experiences and there are learning experiences.

Funny

One incident that Debbie reminded me of this week was when my office chair at home, which has a swivel mechanism underneath, began to wobble. I knew I needed a new chair, but you know how it is—you don’t get a new chair because you think the old one still works. However, one morning the chair really wobbled and all this grey dust—the bearing must have ground out—piled onto the chair mat. It was a mess. So I got a rag and some Pledge and cleaned it all up. Then I took the chair out to the garage and got a folding chair and set it there. After I arrived back at the headquarters office, Debbie called me kind of laughing and crying and out of breath. She had gone to the office to sit at the computer and stepped on that mat and her feet went right out from under her. I had to decide how to respond. I could have said, “Oh, that’s too bad,” or I could confess. I confessed and she was not as happy then as she is right now.

My favorite incident lately was when we were on vacation at the Honolulu Coffee Company on Maui. Debbie likes to mill around the shops, and I like to go to that coffee place because they serve the cappuccino, which is very good by the way, in a mug. It just tastes much better in a mug rather than in a cup. I did my usual thing and sat there and read for an hour-and-a half, and finally Debbie came back to the table. There was another cup on the table, and I was not paying attention when she came up and picked up that cup and took a swig of it. She said, “This is gross.” I told her that it may well be gross, but that cup was there when I sat down. So, there are learning experiences and there are funny experiences.

Challenging

There are various experiences in marriage and our commitment to our marriage is validated or proven by the experiences we pass through. I believe that is what Paul is saying here with respect to the ministry, “in all things approving ourselves, as the ministers of God,” or as pastors of God, or as spouses of pastors. Our experiences will prove and validate our commitment. I am not talking about fun experiences. Any commitment to God is not validated when all is going well. It is validated when we are faced with challenges. It is then that we will find out what we are made of. That’s when it will be disclosed. Hopefully, we grow from our experiences, and learn and progress as the Lord helps us. I do not think most of us have experienced what Paul experienced in the fourth chapter when he says, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed”(2 Corinthians 4:8). These words are a reflection of some of the experiences that Paul encountered, so I suppose it is all right at times if we feel troubled, perplexed, persecuted, even cast down, provided that we never digress to distress, despair, forsaken, or destroyed. Our experiences will challenge us. They certainly will.

My Pastor Experiences

I look back and recall my first experience with pastors. There was a man by the name of Rev. Tom May, from Westside Christian Church in Roseburg. As a result of my mother’s interest in church, he came out to the farm to visit us and see if he could gain more converts. Try as he might, he got no one but Mom. That was what he started with and that was what he ended with, but I respect him for trying. I do remember that one day when I knew he was coming out, I ran downstairs and hid in the basement. I did not want to see him.

Another pastor lived across from a house that I and my two buddies rented for a time before I was saved. We pulled a prank on him because he had called the police on us once. He should have called the army on us, because we toilet papered his house. That was kind of the worst thing you could do thirty–five years ago, but not too serious by today’s standards. When I was saved thirty-two years ago, I made restitution to that man. I cannot recall his name, but I wrote to him and told him that I was saved and apologized for being a part of that prank. He wrote back a nice enough note, as far as that goes, but that was another experience with pastors.

Then, of course, we came into the Apostolic Faith Church in Roseburg, where Brother Martin Girard was the pastor at that time. Sister Olive Girard was his wife. Brother Marty was a very common man—a very steady man. I suppose even though it’s only a decade or so after his passing, he’s for the most part, somewhat forgotten. He was not a man who made a huge impact on our work, though he was very involved, so I do not want to minimize that impact either. However, there was not a man who could have been a better pastor for my family at that time in Roseburg than Brother Marty Girard. He had an impact on our family. So I learned that pastors have impact. Whether you are well known, or not well known, that’s secondary. Sister Olive did as well. She had a role. She is still living. In fact, I just spoke with her on the campground two days ago. She has always been a sweet, funny lady. Brother Marty liked to tell the story how Sister Olive insisted that he have $1000.00 saved before she would marry him. A few months went by and she asked him how much money he had saved. He said $50.00, and she said, “That’s close enough!” They married. People have memories of their pastors.

My observation of watching some of my succeeding pastors, was that the congregation observes the strengths of the pastor. The pastor also observes the weaknesses of the congregation. By the way, I will say without hesitation that I felt that at every step along the way, every one of my pastors and their wives were the right ones for that period of time. Having said that, I never viewed my pastors as deity. I viewed them as common people, like Brother Marty. Like the fishermen, the call came, so they dropped their nets and did what the Lord called them to do. I thanked God for my pastors, but I have learned that just as we observe the people in our congregations and draw certain perspectives or conclusions about them, the people of our congregations observe us and draw certain conclusions about us. We have to be careful because there are more of them than there are of us.

Congregation Pastor Experiences

I observed along the way that the congregations pray for their pastors daily. I mentioned this at a Portland ministers’ meeting this week. We prayed for our pastor in our home growing up. Our children heard the names of our pastors in devotions every day. When our children were infants, we prayed for Brother Nolan and Sister Joan Roby. Then by the time Brother Ted and Sister Sharon Friesen came to Dallas, our children prayed for them each day. Over the years, first we prayed for our pastor and then for Brother Loyce Carver and then Brother Dwight Baltzell. So I think that I can draw the conclusion that most of the people in our congregations pray for us on a daily basis. Even if we forget to pray for them, because there are more of them than there are of us.

Our congregations will remember our gracious and kind acts long after we have forgotten them. Of course, they will remember the other ones too. Hopefully the kindness outnumbers the ones where we fell a bit short. But our congregations are very kind and gracious. They really are. I have said it many times over the last few years, that God’s people are the most beautiful people on the face of the earth. They do overlook our shortcomings if they have a sense that we overlook theirs.

One time I needed a shortcoming overlooked. I was visiting Richard Afdahl’s mother in the hospital. She was sick and had gotten saved but needed to have an amputation. Obviously, that was a troublesome time for her, and I had gotten to know her well by then. I remember encouraging her and telling her to let the hospital staff wait on her hand and foot. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I wondered why I was saying it. I hoped it would go over her head, but it didn’t. We do and say the wrong things at times, but we can be thankful that our people are very kind and gracious. You will have adverse experiences. Paul does not stop with characterizing our ministry but continues by describing how we overcome when these experiences confront us.

Benefit by Adverse Experiences

Continuing in 2 Corinthians 6, Paul tells us how we overcome adverse experiences: “By pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left” (verses 6-7).

Then he says this is done in spite of the contrasting ways that we will be viewed by people. He says, “By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (verses 8-10). Sometimes you will be viewed favorably by people and at other times not.

If we have the Gospel, which we do, we have the greatest possession in all the earth and our lives should reflect that. Our reports should reflect that. The way we carry ourselves and mix with one another should reflect that. We have a victorious Gospel, a good Gospel, and we have a Gospel that many people are clamoring for, so we thank God for every experience that comes our way. We would rather be characterized by our pleasant experiences, but those experiences do not characterize us. It is the unpleasant ones that do.

My prayer for you this camp meeting is that God will add to your catalog of beneficial experiences, and that this camp meeting will be a good experience for you. The devil comes to camp meeting too. However, we can be assured that whatever comes our way does not come without passing the Lord first. When these experiences come our way, my prayer is that we will benefit by them, grow by them, and be what the Lord would have us to be.

Closing Remarks

Thanks again for coming this morning. Thanks as well for laboring faithfully wherever you labor throughout the year. We know it falls upon you to balance pastoring and work, church maintenance and family maintenance, but in one sense we do what we did before we became a pastor. Not much has changed. We were balancing all of those things before we were pastors. However, we know that it is a sacrifice for you to make the trip and come to camp meeting and we do appreciate it. It makes camp meeting for us here and we pray that it makes it for you. With that, remember that you will have experiences. And if you want to know details, look at 2 Corinthians. Let’s sing a song and be dismissed in prayer.

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