Ordination Recognition

Having already been ordained by the Bovoni Baptist Church of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI, in December 1992, I applied for and received ordination recognition from the American Baptist Churches, USA and in particular the ABCPSW Region in October 2002.  Ordination recognition means that the ABC/USA  fully recognizes that I have been set apart as an approved brother, convinced of my call of God to the Gospel ministry and after which, with full consent of the ABC/USA and ACTS “A Church That Studies” I may devote myself to the full time ministry as Senior Pastor of ACTS “A Church That Studies”.   I take seriously God’s call by giving evidence of thorough preparation and commitment to God-honoring living. 

Christian Commitment and Growth

My first real dishonoring of God and my parents occurred in 1967, when I ran away from home with only three months to graduate from high school.  I eloped with my girlfriend and got married in New York and started working in the mailroom of CBS Television.  I remained in that industry for thirty years.  While working in the broadcast industry, I chose to live life as it pleased me, with no real conscience of who God was or what the benefits of a real relationship with God could mean to me.  I was reckless in my life style and went through two marriages leaving as casualties, three children from the first and one daughter from the second.

After seeking God in many places of “religion”, a young lady shared Christ with me in Hawaii in 1976 and I accepted Christ as my personal Savior as an adult of 27 years of age.   As I began to progress in my sanctification, I reconciled with both the mothers of my children, as well as, my children and became a dad fully committed to the spiritual growth and development of my children.  I discovered the freedom of letting God carry me, and all my problems.  God has done an awesome job of rebuilding my broken places and giving me hope.  I married Beverly in 1977 and began my formal Christian education the same year.  The challenge to complete my education was fueled by my insatiable desire to know Jesus Christ by experiencing Him. [1]

Mrs. Georgiana Sugars disciple me and later became my mother-in-law and grandmother to my children and now is an active senior woman in our church.[2]   In 1979 Sharyl was born to Beverly and I and we took on the responsibility of raising all five of our children.  David, Monica, and Fred from my first marriage, came to us scared from an experience of living through a second and bitter divorce of their mother.  They had also been exposed to the drug culture of their mother.  Nicol, my only child from my second marriage, came to live with us for a year, while her mother and stepfather took an assignment at Trinity Baptist Church of Honolulu. 

By 1980, my life had become a complex maze of balancing a broadcast management career, Bible School, Jr. College, parenting, managing an over active church life, blended family and extended family.  God brought us through as the children grew and gave their lives to the Lord.[3]  Beverly had become my best friend and major encourager.

Call To Ministry

While serving in the Virgin Islands Baptist Missions, two weeks every year, I was challenged by Dr. Clarence Hedrington to teach in the Bible Institute and preach in the churches.  I came home and spoke with my pastor and my wife about this new experience.  Pastor Reece agreed to pray with me and encouraged me to seek God’s call upon my life through prayer and fasting and preparation.  Beverly’s reaction was different.  Her opinion was that she had married a broadcast executive and not a preacher.  Beverly told me she did not want a preacher as a husband.  I asked the Lord to affirm the call through Beverly.  I continued to go to school and prepare.  Beverly and I got involved in ministering to the homeless on “skid row” in downtown Los Angeles and she heard me preach for the first time.  Five years later, while just enjoying an evening together, Beverly asked me, when I would publicly acknowledge my call to preach?  God had given me my affirmation.  

In 1988, the call of God upon my life was validated by the surfacing of the gifts He had given to me coupled with my new pastor, Robert DeFrance, of Calvary Baptist Church of Santa Monica, encouraging me, along with the church family agreeing to license me to preach the Gospel.  My call to preach has been validated and tremendously supported by my family, home church, the Interstate Baptist Association, the National Baptist Convention – USA, Inc, the Sunday School Publishing Board, Western Baptist State Convention, the Virgin Island Baptist Mission, Inc, and most recently Church Planting with the ABCPSW.  More significantly, souls have come to know the Lord through the preaching of the Word in the local church, the home mission field, foreign mission field and street witnessing I participated in.   

Academic and Actual Experience

From 1976 through 1983 I attended Grace Bible Institute (Western Institute of Biblical Studies) in Long Beach while attending Santa Monica College from 1980 through 1991.  In the early 1980’s, I was privileged to attend several “Shepherds’ Conferences” at Grace Community Church of Sun Valley during which time I also took several classes at their Logos Bible Institute.   In 1992, I transferred to Biola University in La Mirada, California and received a BS in Organizational Leadership.  In 1995, I entered Talbot School of Theology and later transferred to Philadelphia Bible College and Seminary and received my Masters of Theology in 1999 and my Doctorate in Theology in 2001. 

In the late seventies while at New Bethel Baptist Church of Venice, I served as a deacon, trustee, and director of Christian education.  This experience allowed me to mature my gifts of administration, teaching, serving, and preaching.  Later, as I got involved in the Virgin Islands Baptist Mission, I gained a tremendous burden for church planting and was able to put what I had learned in school about indigenous people groups to a practical use in the mission field.  This also introduced me to mentoring and developing relationships of accountability among other men of God.  My primary gift of teaching was manifested while working in the mission fields of the Eastern Caribbean Nations.  While attending Calvary Baptist Church, I served as Superintendent of Sunday School, using my spiritual gifts of teaching and administration.  I also taught a weekly Bible class, and served as a Deacon and on the Board of Directors of the church.  In 1988 I was affirmed in my gift of preaching by Calvary with a License to Preach.  After being ordained to preach the gospel by the Virgin Islands Baptist Mission in 1992, I taught and preached the Word in many cities and foreign lands with the results of souls accepting Christ and being baptized.  In 1993, I accepted the call to serve as Interim Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church and was installed as the Senior Pastor of Calvary in 1995 and continued in that capacity until early 1999 when I planted ACTS “A Church That Studies” where I currently have accepted the call to serve as the Senior Pastor.

Reasons for Seeking Recognition of Ordination with ABC/USA

I have been exposed to the American Baptist Churches denomination since serving at Calvary Baptist Church, which is a member of the ABCPSW.  This church had among several former pastors, Dr. Henry Mitchell who is an advocate for the ABC/USA.  Dr. Elliott Mason is my mentor and he strongly recommends this denominational affiliation.  Rev. Keith Magee of Trinity, Santa Monica, our Mother Church, has shared the benefits of this affiliation with me and I have seen and received the blessings of fellowship through “Churches Helping Churches” in our denomination. Some examples of first hand experiences include:  the successful ministries of Rev. John Hopkins, Dr. John Nix McReynolds, Pastor Houston McLendon, and Dr. James Carrington.   My personal experience with Dr. Ross Chenot, Dr. Dale Salico and other denominational leaders has been fruitful and always a learning one.  Through the varied ministries of the ABC both regional and national, I have been exposed to many resources that have assisted me and the members of ACTS, to plan and accomplish goals for Kingdom building efforts.  Judson Press, Christian Community Credit Union, the M & M Board, Breaking the 200 Barrier Seminars, The Ministers Council, AB Men and AB Women are just a few of these helpful associations.     

I appreciate the strong American Baptist tradition of missions both with a history on the field and a continued resolve to be committed to missions at the local, national and international levels.  In particular, I am excited about the ABC’s commitment to plant churches.  Not only does this deal head on with the issues of cultural context worldwide but it also provides another vehicle for older churches to become re-vitalized by partnering with new church plants to reach the world for Christ.

While I do not personally support women as senior pastors, I am able to work with women in roles of leadership of women and children ministries.[4]  I believe women make significant contributions to many areas of ministry and provide leadership through administration of ministry.  I also appreciate being a part of a denomination that is committed to every person of God, whether male or female, utilizing the gifts God has given them to give glory to Himself and edify the church.     

I firmly believe that the American Baptist’s support of the autonomy of the local church is in agreement with scripture and this includes the separation of church and state.[5]  God has given separate roles to church and state.  The church’s responsibility is to those who are followers of Jesus Christ and must serve as a witness to the story of Jesus Christ to the world by encouraging believers in their faith and reaching out to others in the name of Jesus.  The state, on the other hand, has an obligation to people as citizens and must exercise civil authority, enforce the laws and provide order for the citizenry.  These two institutions must co-exist and yet must remain separate and thereby maintain separate administrations and provide separate means of education to their constituency. 

Philosophy of Ministry

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11).  I believe I must take the total man into consideration when preparing to minister.  My greatest challenge is captured in the thought, “When I’m keeping myself spiritually, emotionally, and physically fit, I have a far greater capacity to deal with the problems at the office.  More specifically, when I keep myself functioning in the context of my gifts and sense that I am growing as a person and am committed to staying at it, even on the tough days, that’s when I do my best on behalf of the Lord who called me to serve Him.”[6] 

I seek to keep my ministry Christ centered, biblically based and prayer focused, trusting and leaning on the Lord for results.  I am relationally oriented with a strong drive to develop leaders through discipleship.  I believe in delegating, not only duty, but also authority and I believe that myself, as well as, other leaders are to have relationships of accountability.  In our changing world I believe in being creative in our approach to assessing the needs of our community and church members and equally as creative in developing ministry to meet the discovered felt needs.  I believe in sharing the responsibility of assessing needs and developing ministry through a vision community of peers and church members.  I believe in accomplishing ministry through challenging leaders to discover their spiritual gifts, their passion and personal style; and to engage them in ministry through the service of that gift or gifts as directed by the Holy Spirit.[7]    

Doctrinal Statement

I believe that one needs to place together the teachings of the Scriptures in order to discover the broadest perspective of the Biblical truth.  The complete study of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit should give one a complete picture of who God is.  In order to put a complete picture together we must look at the individual parts while considering the revealed picture of the sum of all the parts.  The development of these complete biblical pictures is the task of the systematic theologian.  

God

“Theology proper”, or the study of God is best understood when we examine two kinds of revelation: 

A.     Natural theology – Theology based only upon the revelation of God in nature.  The

      way God reveals Himself in nature.[8]

B.     Revealed theology – Theology based upon the special revelation of Scripture.[9]

God exists.[10]  God is spirit, infinite, eternal, unchanging in being, wise, powerful, merciful, holy, just, good and true.[11] God has revealed Himself to us.[12]  God is incomprehensible.  It is impossible for man to have knowledge of a God that is exhaustive and perfect in every way because He is infinite and we are finite.[13]  We cannot know or commune with God unless God is revealed to us.  Such a revelation is found in the incarnate Jesus Christ, God’s only Son.[14]  God is life, immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immutable, perfect, righteous, faithful and merciful. [15]  I believe those generations of past as well as present day, could have been removed from the earth, if God were not immutable.[16]  The Bible contains thousands of things that God has promised for those who belong to Him.  What I believe most affects my life of God’s immutability is that of those thousands of promises God can be trusted to keep His Word.   God should be worshipped in spirit and in truth.[17]

Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ is God.[18]  I believe Christ existed in the pre-incarnate state and the New Testament as well as the Old Testament give clear witness to this.  Christ Himself gave witness:  “Before Abraham was, I am.”[19]  Jesus proclaims His pre-incarnate existence when He called upon His Father, “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”[20]  Jesus Christ descended from heaven.[21]  Jesus was viewed as the “Coming Messenger”.[22]  Jesus Christ existed in the form of God, emptied Himself, made in the likeness of man.  This is called the kenosis.[23]  “Though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.”[24]    Concerning the humanity of Christ certain statements of prophecy indicated that the mediator of salvation was to be a man.[25]  The Bible gives us the human lineage of Jesus Christ.[26]  Jesus had a human birth.[27]  Jesus Christ is God’s Redeemer for the entire human race, who being the eternal Son of God became man, having two distinct natures and one person.[28]  Christ was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, without sin.[29]  The purpose of Christ coming in the flesh may be ultimately summarized in the fulfillment of the three offices:  prophet, priest, and king.  Christ as prophet reveals to us by His Word and Spirit the will of God for our salvation.[30]  Christ as prophet is God speaking to us through His Son.[31] Christ as prophet becomes our example of how to live.[32]  The significance of the incarnation for the priestly office was so Jesus could be like us so He could make the sacrifice for us.[33]  Other significance for His incarnation for the priestly office includes:  Death is tasted for everyone; He came to give life; He came to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. [34]  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).   Jesus Christ came as a man to establish and uphold the throne of David and the kingdom.  He also came to be given the throne of David.[35] 

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is complete divinity and Jesus testifies of this when He promised to send the Spirit to be “another Counselor”.[36]   The Holy Spirit is a person in the same sense that God the Father is a person and the Lord Jesus Christ is a person.  The Holy Spirit is the same in substance and equal in power and glory to God the Father and to God the Son.[37]   The attributes of His personality are:  Intellect, emotion and will.  As to intellect:  He teaches men,[38] He possesses a mind,[39] and the Holy Spirit also knows and searches the things of God.[40]  As to His emotion:  While the Spirit can be grieved, He also loves the saints.[41]  As to His will:  The Spirit distributes special gifts.[42]  The Spirit directs the activities of the saints.[43]  The Holy Spirit has been sent to carry out the work of God upon the stage of human history.  Once Jesus ascended to heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to us to provide the power, the guidance, the comfort, and the presence of God, for carrying out the work of building the church, fulfilling the Great Commission, and transforming disciples into the image of Christ.[44]  The Holy Spirit indwells every believer.[45]   He regenerates man.[46]  The Holy Spirit is the Agent in the “baptism of the Spirit”.[47]  The ministry of the Holy Spirit in this present age includes:  Restraining sin;[48] illumination;[49] conviction which could be included under revelation because through it the Spirit reveals truth to the world about their lost and sinful condition.[50] 

The Trinity

The Trinity of God means that within the unified essence of the Godhead there are three distinct persons who are co-eternal, co-equal, and co-substantial.  Although the Trinitarian nature of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not as fully revealed in the Old Testament as in the New Testament, the Old Testament does give indications of the plurality of the Godhead.[51]  The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are considered one in the New Testament.[52] 

Humanity

I believe that God created man in His image and that man does not exist autonomously or independently but solely for the purpose of God.[53]  Man is not only a creature, however; he is also a person and being a person man has a free will.[54]  Man has fallen and is forever impacted by sin and is separated from God and needs redemption.[55]  Man’s redemption is in Christ only.[56]  It is my conviction that when our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned in the garden that man’s creation in the image of God had become perverted and the only way the image could be restored was that God send His Son to die because Christ is the perfect image of God.[57]  Man is made up of body, soul and spirit and man will die apart from being taken to glory at the return of Christ.[58]        

Salvation

Man needs regeneration in order to have an eternal relationship with God.[59]  Jesus Christ performs the work of salvation. He forgives sins, which only God can do.  He Himself claims the power and right to do so.[60]  Jesus Christ gives eternal life.[61]  In order for man to be saved he must realize that he is a sinner and needs a Savior.[62]  Man must “confess with [his] mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in [his] heart that God has raised Him from the dead, [he] will be saved” (Romans 10:9).[63]    

Justification

The manner in which “Justification” operates is through “Imputation”.  Justification is a legal term describing our perfect standing before God in the righteousness of Christ.  Imputation means to put to a person’s account.  Paul uses Abraham to illustrate three great facts about justification by faith.  Justification means righteousness imputed to our account and gives us a right standing with God.  Paul points to Abraham and asks, ‘How was Abraham, our father in the flesh, justified?’  Was it by works?  No, for then he could have gloried in his accomplishment, and we have no record of such action in the Old Testament.  What does the Scripture say?  Abraham believed God! (Gen. 15:1-6)  The gift of righteousness came, not by works, but by faith in God’s revealed Word.[64]   Paul quotes (Psalm 32:1-2) in (Romans 4:7-8) Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. 

We are sinners and deserve to have our sins placed into our account with God but when we confess them, God forgives us of our sins and imputes them or places sin’s debt in Christ’s account on our behalf.  That’s like telling my child to go to the store and buy what they want and charge it to my account.  When I do that, I am imputing the debt my child made to my account. I become fully responsible for that debt.  This is what Jesus does when God imputes our sin debt to His account; He becomes completely responsible for that debt on our behalf.  My child, based upon their faith in me to pay that debt goes on about life. 

This is where sanctification comes in and complements justification.  While justification gives us a right standing before God, sanctification gives us a right standing before men and they believe we are Christians.   This means that our sin debt is imputed not because of anything we do; it is imputed by God’s grace.[65]  Imputation provides justification by grace.[66]  Paul rightly says that justification comes by grace, through faith; and thus all people Jews and Gentiles can be saved![67] Imputation provides justification by resurrection power.  The basis of justification is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.[68]  

Sanctification

I believe, that being saved, the Spirit of God also sanctifies me.[69]  I believe that God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit have unique roles in man’s sanctification.  God is the primary agent of our sanctification because He is the only source of life and sanctification is the process of God sharing His life with and through us.[70]  Christ plays a part in man’s sanctification and man plays a part.  Christ’s part is positional and man’s part is in practice.[71]  Jesus came that we might have life and to make that possible He died for us and at the moment of salvation believers are joined to Christ and He becomes the believers life.[72]  The Holy Spirit’s role in man’s sanctification is the present work that enables us to put to death the misdeeds of the body.[73]  Sanctification is progressive and it is the process by which man is being conformed to the image of God.  Positional sanctification is often referred to as what happened at the moment of salvation or in the past.  Progressive sanctification is viewed as the life man lives in present.  Our position in Christ is also the basis for our growth.  The moment we accept Christ as our Savior we enter the progressive process of allowing Him to become Lord of our life.  At salvation we are set apart unto God and therefore participate in His holiness.[74]  The means of sanctification is the renewing of the Christian’s mind with the Word of God.[75]  

Glorification

The benefits of man being born again include not only his renewal in the image of God but man’s perfection, resurrection and glorification in death.[76]

The Bible

I believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, and that this Word of God was literally spoken by God to holy men of God and carefully guarded by the Holy Spirit as man through his own personality penned it down.[77]  I believe that the central figure of the Bible is Jesus Christ.  I also believe that the Bible should be treated with the same integrity in which it was given to man.[78]  The Holy Spirit makes the reading, hearing and preaching of the Word a powerful means in which man can be convicted and converted unto salvation.  The Word also builds up, or edifies, believers into holiness and provides comfort to the afflicted through faith unto salvation.[79]

The Church

The Church is the called-out group of born again, baptized believers with Christ as the head.[80]  The Church is the living body of Christ.  Each member of the body has been placed in the body as it pleased God.[81]  I believe that God’s intent is to have a Church that is inclusive of all cultures.[82]  Christ’s expectation of the Church is that believers will seek out the un-churched people groups of this world and share the truth of the gospel winning the lost and creating truly devoted followers of Jesus Christ in this present age.[83]

Ordinances of Baptism and The Lord’s Supper

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper differ from the other ordinances of God in that they were specially instituted by Jesus Christ to represent and apply to believers the benefits of the new covenant by visible and outward signs.[84]  The act of believer’s baptism by immersion is consistent with the Holy Scriptures and symbolically portrays an individual joining Christ in death, burial and resurrection to new life.[85]  Baptism is an outward expression of an inward conviction and is practiced as a means of public profession of faith by all born again believers who desire to express their conversion.  While baptism is not a guarantee of salvation it is an act of obedience to Christ, through faith.  In baptism, one symbolically dies to an old way of life of sin and rises to a new life forgiven by the blood and resurrection of Jesus Christ by God’s Spirit.[86] 

The Lord’s Supper is an ordinance wherein believers find genuine spiritual renewal through the observance of this memorial meal.  It is an opportunity to take personal inventory of ones self and examine our relationship with each other as well as ones communion with our Lord.  It is done in memory of Christ’s suffering and death on the cross.  The elements of bread and the fruit of the vine represent Christ’s body and blood.  In the breaking and eating of the bread we remember his suffering and sacrificial death.  In the drinking of the fruit of the vine we remember the shading of His blood as the remission of sins through which we receive the atonement.[87]

Eschatology

God’s purpose from the very beginning was to create a place where He could show Himself in a tangible way.  This place was to be called His kingdom.  Men and women were to be His representatives on the earth to rule for Him in what could have been an ideal place.[88]  Sin, through the will of man, has postponed God’s kingdom being established.[89]  God’s purposes throughout history have centered on establishing His kingdom on the earth:  Abraham,[90] Moses,[91] David,[92] Jesus and His return,[93] and the end.[94]  Jesus offered the literal messianic kingdom to Israel.[95]  Israel rejected the kingdom; hence there will be a future restoration of the kingdom to Israel.[96]  God will reveal the literal heaven, hell and spiritual realm in these last days of this world, as we know it.  Heaven is both the abode of God as well as closeness to God experienced by believers.[97]  Hell is a literal, sorrowful place created for fallen angels.[98]  The lost and un-regenerated souls, those who reject the risen Christ as Savior, will also find hell as their eternal home.[99]  The spiritual realm is that place where angels and demons engage in spiritual warfare in our midst.[100]