Sunday Summary

What a delightful day in the Lord! Although this past Lord's Day was a busy day, it was a blessed day! I was very honored to be the 8am guest preacher for Pastor Rickardo Taylor and the Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church. Pastor Taylor and church were celebrating 11 years of service as Sr. Pastor. He has an awesome testimony as he left a good paying job in Indianapolis to come and pastor a 15 member church on the southeast side of South Bend. With the Lord's help, he has since grown this church into one of the largest, most progressive churches in the region. I was very glad to be preaching at 8am, as the Oklahoma City Tornado, known as Pastor Ray Owens, was preaching at the 11am service.

The service was very uplifting and inspiring as their music and mime ministries set the atmosphere for preaching. I know that the schools of thought vary on this issue, but in my feeble opinion, I do not believe that our job as pastors is to go to another church and then chastise the people about what they should be doing for their pastor. In my experience this does more harm than good, because as the guest you leave, and the pastor of the church has to stay and deal with the backlash, which often lasts longer then the sermon. So i went simply to encourage the pastor and people. I preached a message from Psalm 27:10-14. The message was entitled, "The blessing in being forsaken". Here's the outline:

1. Dependence (10)

2. Direction (11)

3. Deliverance (12)

4. Determination (13)


God really blessed the preaching moment as we rejoiced on verse 14. "If you have the patience, God has the power".

When I arrived at BBC, I was excited about seeing the saints. I always appreciate the opportunity to travel and preach in other venues, but the saying is true, "there's no place like home". Worship was inspiring from the devotional service until the benediction. I was really excited about preaching in the pulpit that Christ has made me overseer of. We continued in our series, "No More Drama". The message was taken from James 4:7, entitled "Make the Devil Do it". Before you tune me out, please read the introduction, "There was a popular comedian, named Flip Wilson that had a variety show. One of the most popular characters was Geraldine Jones. Every time Geraldine was confronted about something that she was not supposed to do, she wold reply by saying, “The devil made me do it”. This phrase became extremely popular and even found its way on t-shirts.

Even though he passed away in 1998, his popular phrase lives on, and what’s worse is that it has found its way into the church. There is so much “Devil talk” in church, that we forget that God and the devil are not equals.

A careful study of scripture will reveal to you that the devil cannot make you do anything, but today’s text let’s us know that we can make him do something and that is flee from us. "

In order to make the devil flee, you must:


1. Relinquish

2. Resist. If you do these 2, the devil will

3. Retreat


God really blessed the exposition of this text as we were challenged to "Submit to God". I really liked this word because it literally means to place under. It carries the connotation of voluntarily placing our total selves under God's authority. This includes our failures, fears, faults, and frailties. I contend that the reason we have so much "drama" in our lives is that there are some things that we haven't placed under His authority.

Our day of public worship ended at the Pastoral Appreciation service for Pastor Cory Gathright. Pastor Gathright is a son of BBC and he pastors the Greater New Birth Christian Ministries Church. Dr. E.A. Jones preached a wonderful message, entitled "Love and Happiness".

I believe that God was pleased with our offering of public worship on today. Pray for us this week as the Gun Buy Back draws closer. It's looking well, but we are still looking for support. Later on in the week, I will post a link to it. God Bless!!

Weekend Wrap Up

This was a wonderful weekend worthy of recollection! I was afforded the privilege of traveling to Oklahoma City, to participate in their 65th Annual Simultaneous Revival, hosted by the BMA of Oklahoma City, where the president is the Sr Pastor of Fairview Baptist Church, Rev. Dr. John A. (Pop) Reed.

It was a tremendous blessing for me and my life has been bettered to hear from some of the greatest seasoned preaching minds of our day, such as, Dr.L.K. Curry from Chicago and Dr. Wallace Hartsfield from Kansas City. The fellowship was rich among the clergy and I have met many new friends. I also had the pleasure to meet my blogging brother Pastor Tony Rhone in person. It was great to hear his voice instead of just reading his thoughts!

I was humbled and honored to be invited to preach at the Greater Mt. Olive Baptist Church, where Dr. A. Glynn Woodberry is the Sr. Pastor. I want to thank Pastor Ray Owens for opening this door! I'm eternally grateful to him. Greater Mt. Olive is a HOUSE!! I understand why some of the members call it the "Metro-plex". Not only does it have a state of the art sanctuary and plenty class space. It is equipped with a fellowship hall and a full gymnasium! Also located on the campus is a Senior Village, which consist of about 50 duplex units. Pastor Woodberry is doing a great work and Greater Mt. Olive Church serves as a testimony to what a pastor led people can accomplish!

I failed to mention, but did not want to overlook the tremendous preaching ability of Pastor Woodberry! He is truly one of the best and most gifted preachers that this country has to offer.

I am normally nervous about any preaching assignment, but this time, I was flat out scared! This past Lord's Day was Youth Sunday. G M O has a great youth choir under the direction of fellow blogger Rev. K.D. Moss. They sang beautifully, even though Rev. Moss tried to convince me that most of them were not there. i was shaking as I did not want to flop in front of God and this great sea of humanity. I know God would forgive me, but not sure about the others.

I preached a message from 1 Samuel 17:31-45, entitled, "How to Handle your Giants". This is a message I had preached before and it was the one I was directed to preach that day. Words cannot begin to describe how the preaching moment went! Like my son says, "IT WAS OFF THE HIZZLE FOR SHIZZLE MY NIZZLE" The people were both receptive and responsive to the preached Word and we all rejoiced at the close of the message as we remembered how God has moved some Giants out of our way!!! This was a preaching moment that will forever be etched on the walls of my mind! I want to thank Dr. Woodberry again for allowing me to come!

Now on this week, I will be going back and forth to Gary this week for their Simultaneous Revival. I cannot get enough good preaching! Also I want my blog family to be in prayer for my grandfather who is in the hospital. Gotta go, it's time for me to do what I do everyday and try and take over the world for Jesus Christ! Be Blessed.

Weekend Wrap Up

This has been a weekend worth remembering! It started off with the IMA "7 Last Sayings of Christ" . This worship experience was held at the Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. I must say that this was one of the best 7 last sayings services that I have attended. We were blessed with the presence of 32 local pastors and preachers in attendance. I also heard from many that this was the most well attended service of this kind that they had experienced in our area. God is really blessing us in the IMA and I am extremely humbled to be able to serve in any capacity. God Be Praised!!

We were blessed by sermons from: Pastor Barney Lewis (New Peter's Rock MBC), Pastor Timothy Rouse (First AME Zion), Pastor Rickardo Taylor (Mt Carmel MBC), Pastor Ray Owens (Macedonia MBC) and yours truly. We were also blessed by Rev. Barrett Berry (Assoc. Min. Pentecostal Cathedral COGIC) and Rev. Derick Buggs (Assoc. Min. BBC) . Let me say that all of these preachers did a marvelous job! I was honored to be in such a great lineup.

I was also privileged to preach on WUBU, a local radio station which has a Sunday Morning show called, "Michiana Talks", hosted by Vivian Sallie. This was a new experience for me, but all in all I believe it went well.

At BBC, we do not have traditional Morning Worship on Easter Morning. We allow our young people to have their "Easter Program", during 11:00 am service. This has proved to be a blessing not only to our young people, but to family and friends as well. We have some very talented kids at BBC, and they were really on display this past Lord's Day. I was so proud of them. We are taking steps to engage our youth more at BBC. I am excited because we are actually beginning the first ever Youth Sunday at BBC. These will take place on 5th Sundays for right now. My vision is to give them a Sunday every month. Hopefully this will turn into our youth playing a more integral part of Morning Worship, as I believe that public worship is for all who attend.

Pray for me this week as I make preparations to travel to Oklahoma City, OK, to do what God has called me to do! Join in with me as we take over the world for Jesus Christ!!

Sunday Summary

We had a wonderful day of public worship at BBC this Lord's Day! Our Day started off with our Early Morning Prayer Meeting. For the month of April, our Deacons and Trustees are providing leadership in prayer meeting. the topic for today was forgiveness. Our hearts were lifted as the people poured out their hearts to God about desiring to be more forgiving toward others. Thank God for the power of prayer!

Morning Worship started off a little differently this morning. Instead of the Deacons leading devotion, the Mothers and Deaconess carried on in their stead. This took several of our members back to their southern roots as it was a tradition for the Mothers and Deaconess to lead the devotional service on 1st Sunday in the south. This was welcomed and warmly received by the congregation as the praises of God went up!

We were blessed in song by our Mass Choir as they lifted the Savior up for all men to see! I approached the preaching moment with great expectation. My prayer for the week was that the people of God would be both receptive and responsive to the preaching. I continued in our series entitled, "No more drama". Today's message came from James 3:1-12. The message was entitled, "Tempering the tongue". Here's the basic outline:

To temper the tongue, you must;

1. Tame its ability to influence (1-5a)

2. Terminate its ability to impair (5b-8)

3. Train its ability to inspire (9-12)

God really blessed the exposition and presentation of this passage! The power of speech is one of the greatest powers God has given us. With the tongue, man can praise God, pray, preach the Word, and lead the lost to Christ. But with that same tongue he can ruin a person’s reputation or break a person's heart. The ability to speak words is the ability to influence others and accomplish tremendous tasks; and yet we take this ability for granted. I pray that this message was well received and the people would respond by using the gift of speech to edify, equip, encourage, and enlighten one another as well as evangelize the sinner.

I believe that God was pleased with our offering of public worship on today! Pray for us this week as I have meetings about the Gun Buy Back. We held a press conference that appeared on the news. I am interested to see the response from the community. I'm praying that this one will be more successful and more lives would be saved as a result. In the words of Pinky and the Brain, with some slight variation, "What are we going to do today Brain?" "Same thing we do everyday Pinky. Try to take over the world for Jesus." God Bless!!