Articles, Thinking in Public, Bible Studies, Sermons, Devotions, Biblical Theology, Historical Theology, Contemporary Theology, Doctrinal Studies and etc
Month: November 2013
God has His hand on you for something special, something He has called, appointed, equipped, fashioned, and assigned YOU to do, and it’s for such a time as this. You are alive at this time in history for a reason and purpose.
Hear the WORD….again
General Conference grew out of a sincere Christian desire Wesley had for Christians to confer for the purpose of discovering the truth. Today we understand Christian Conferencing as a means of grace because it puts us in the position of growing in our faith, spiritual maturity, community, and love for one another.
We are called to be people who see the possible when those around us see only the impossible.
We are called to be people who speak out for peace and justice when those around us rush to war.
We are called to be people who stand with those who grieve and suffer when those around us are too busy, cynical, or apathetic to do so.
We are called to be people who name Christ’s presence in the midst of despair when those around us are caving into hopelessness.
We are called to be people who proclaim salvation in Jesus Christ when those all around us seek salvation in cultural gods.
Most of us know how disrupted our lives become without electrical power. We have become accustomed to and dependent on a reliable, uninterrupted power source.
A power outage or power shortage is a terrible thing. And, at times, that seems to describe our personal experience or our church experience. Sometimes in the life and ministry of the church, we also experience a “power shortage” or even a “power outage.” Such times are characterized by lots of talk, but very little action; by lots of good intentions, but very little follow-through; by lots of worship ritual, but very little passion; by lots of human effort, but very little reliance upon God’s Spirit-power.
Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, warns the church about such power outages.
“God’s kingdom isn’t about words, but about power” (I Corinthians 4:20).
Periodically, we all experience a power shortage or even a power outage—times when our lives and ministries are characterized by lots of words, but very little fruit. The presence of lots of “talk” is probably one of the best indications that we are trying to rely upon our own strength, ability, and energy for ministry, rather than relying upon the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we have to be silent and just be content by the knowledge that God has already answered our deepest prayer.
Southern Methodists prize the autonomy of the local church — so much so that every local church is understood and affirmed to be complete in its ministry and free to determine its own membership, convictions, and principles.
Victory Fellowship, a church whose soul is found, not primarily in a building, strategy, statistics, and success, but in the stories we tell, the songs we sing and the sights we see in social media and internet began October 2004 at the bosom of the General Conference with the motto, “Sharing the Gospel to All People!”
For the last 9 years, the vision at hand has been reshaped, reformed, and restructured at an incredibly high cost. Was it worth it? That is the answer the General Conference has to answer before God as it convenes at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, May 12, 2014, and continue through Thursday, May 15, 2014, at Shocco Springs Conference Center, Talladega, Alabama.
The good news of the gospel is that God is able to turn our cleverest paradigms until we surrender to His will and purpose for the glory of His name. As we face the future, our hope is not in the General Conference but in GOD who is able to make changes that will completely upset the order we are used to for the saving of many souls.
God is omniscient and he knows that at the General Conference of the Southern Methodist Church, there will be about four groups of people that fall into four categories identified by Paige Patterson in his essay, Anatomy of a Reformation: The Southern Baptist Convention 1978-2004.
The vast majority of Southern Methodists fall into “intuitive” conservatives. These Southern Methodists are driven by a basic confidence in the Bible as the word of God and the Gospel as the only means of salvation. Their basic theological and moral instincts are deeply conservative. They believe that every word of the Bible is true, that all the miracles happened, that abortion is murder, that foreign mission is the most honorable cross-cultural ministry we can do, that marriage is between a man and a woman and that Jesus is the only way of salvation. But this is a hard group to convince that the denomination is in deep trouble if it fails to accept that slavery was sin and the church can no longer ignore the presence of the brothers and sisters of other races, nations, tongues and kindred in America.
The ‘gap’ left by ‘intuitive conservatives’ calls for ‘movement’ conservatives. The number of “movement” conservatives is relatively small. These Southern Methodists understand that it is a movement of God that can lead the upcoming session to elect as president of the General Conference an elder with unwavering commitment to keep the denomination close to a reliable Bible for the sake of evangelistic and missionary outreach to all people. These are the people who believe that heaven and hell are the only destinies and that everyone alive will spend eternity in one or the other, and further that Jesus and His atoning death provides the only way for all people to avoid hell and inherit heaven
As we wait upon the LORD, and as General Conference convene to make important decisions, Victory Fellowship can expect {as we trust and obey the voice of the Great Shepherd} that our end will indeed be ultimately glorious because God works His marvelous agenda.
The formation of FSMC of Dallas in 1969 was announced by the Rev. Philiph Bashaw, Chairman of the Board of Church Extension of the denomination’s Mid-South Conference. The following is the rest of the story
President of the Church, the Rev. Glenn S. Comfort of Orangeburg, South Carolina was present to receive the first members into the church, and to recognize the new congregation ….. as members united together in a formal organization on Thursday Evening February 27, 1969.
Also present and participating in the service were the Rev. Frank M. Beauchamp, Pastor at Shreveport, LA., the Rev. W. L. Porterfield, Pastor at Port Arthur, Texas (both were members of the Mid-South Conference Board of Church Extension) and Mr. Guy Hebert, member at Baton Rouge, La, church of which Rev. Bashaw is a pastor.
Chairman of the local organizational committee has been Mr. James S. Wilkins, and temporary officers were elected by the new congregation February 27. They are as follows; Mr. W. W. Hughes, Chairman of the Church Conference, Mr. James Wilkins, Vice – Chairman; Mrs J. S. Wilkins Secretary; Mrs. R. U. Beard, Treasurer; Mr. R. U. Beard Sunday School Superitendant.
The new church is being organized, and worship services are temporarily being conducted in the Y.M.C.A. on Prichard Lane in the Pleasant Grove addition of East Dallas. The Committee which led to the formation of the Congregation in Dallas has been meeting for more than a month, and mid-week prayer services will continue to be held in the homes of members.
The new church will not have a regular pastor for a short time, but various pastors will conduct services here from time to time and receive new members into the church. Other services will be led by laymen and visiting speakers until a pastor is secured.
Erick Chepkwony, TH.D 