Weekend Wrap Up

What a wonderful weekend of witness and worship for BBC! The weekend started off with the Annual non-violence march sponsored by Mamas Against Violence. This is a group of women who have had a child murdered. This ministry is led by, Bobbie Woods, who is a member of our church. They come together for support and violence prevention. Normally this event is lead by the Mayor of our city, but this year they asked the IMA to lead the march. I think it sent out a special message to see the preachers leading a march against violence in our community. I had an opportunity to push the Gun Buy Back as well as speak out publicly against the violence in our community. The IMA has vowed to do something to reduce the violence in this area, and our presence there was felt and appreciated by all in attendance.

After leaving there, I was invited to a cookout/concert in Lasalle Homes. This is a housing development located in our city, which has seen an increase in violence lately. This event was out on by Camp Salvation. This is a young group of gospel rappers, who instead of competing with one another have joined forces to do ministry. One of these artists is Bro. Cory Brazier, who is a member of our church. I had an opportunity to fellowship with people there and met several new acquaintances with whom I look forward o fellowshipping with in the future. Being in Lasalle Homes reminded me of being back home in Gary, so I felt very comfortable. The people there are very nice and warm and they helped out in serving food and everyone enjoyed the music. I also had an opportunity to promote the Gun Buy Back there as well and share my passion about seeing a decrease in violence in our community.

After this great day of work in the community, I could not wait until public worship on Sunday. Our morning started with Early Morning Prayer. The topic of the day was Togetherness. The prayers offered up were passionate and powerful as the people asked God to bring them together and to remove anything from them that caused any separation in the body.

Morning Worship started off high and lifted up! The songs were beautiful and the prayers were fervent. I could not wait for the preaching moment as we began a new series of messages in the Gospel of John. This series is entitled, "You made a believer out of me". In this preaching series, we will look at the miracles in the book of John. I believe that there is a message in the miracle and the signs have significance. The overall scripture for this series is John 20:30-31, which says, " Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. "

The 1st message in this series was from John 2:1-11. The message was entitled "Advice for your Adversity". Here's the basic outline:

1. Acknowledge the problem

2. Adhere to the procedure

3. Advance to praise.

God truly blessed the exposition of this passage! We had run em go get em, pick em up and put em down church, followed by a soul coming back home on restoration. God be praised!! I am pleased to see the people of BBC allowing themselves to be free in worship once again. I believe that God was pleased with our presentation of public worship on this past Lord's Day!

Pray for us as we have a long week of meetings gearing up for our 60th Church Anniversary, our 1st ever Youth Sunday, Gun Buy Back promotions, and Teaching/Preaching prep. Also I am pleased to announce that I will be meeting with Rev Jessie L. Jackson Sr. on today at 3pm EST!!

By the way, if you would like to help us with the Gun Buy Back, visit our website and click on the CURE link. 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!!

Weekly Wrap Up

Greetings Blogging bunch! I will start this post by letting you know that this will probably be a little lengthy, so I apologize in advance. Last week was the annual City Wide Revival put on by I.M.A. . I was excited for 2 reasons, first because I really needed to be preached to and secondly this would be my first event as president of the I.M.A. Our evangelist for the week was, Rev. Dr. James A. Boyd, pastor of the Zion Gate Missionary Baptist Church of Columbus, Mississippi. Dr. Boyd has served as the pastor of this church for almost 44 years! He preached with power and passion each night, challenging both clergy and congregation to live up to our God given potential. He was truly a blessing to the body and I look forward to hearing more from him.

Normally, during the revival, we have noon day services featuring local pastors. However, over the past few years, attendance has been extremely low. Because of the drop off in attendance, we decided to combine the noon day into the night service and allow the local pastors to lecture. This turned out to be a wonderful idea! All the pastors were to lecture from an invitational passage of the bible. I was selected for the lecture on Friday night. The passage I chose was Matthew 11:28-30. It was simply called, "An invitation to rest" Here's the outline:

1. Request (Come unto me)
2. Requirement (All you that labor and are heavy laden)
3. Reward (I will give you rest)
4. Responsibility (Take my yoke upon you and learn of me)
5. Resume (I am meek and lowly in heart)
6. Revelation (You shall find rest unto your soul)
7. Report (My yoke is easy and my burden is light)

God blessed as I did my best to keep this at a lecture! This revival was truly a wonderful experience as Dr. Boyd shared with the pastors and ministers some of the pleasures and pitfalls of pastoring.

After hearing such a great week of preaching, I could not wait to get to the pulpit on Sunday! As always, we started out public worship day with Early Morning Prayer. The topic for the day was being available.. My heart was lifted as the prayers of the saints went forth. It was amazing to see the people of God crying out to Him for them to be available to be used by Him.

The choir truly blessed us and set the tone for worship. I approached the preaching moment with anticipation of something transformitive happening in the lives of the people of God as a result of hearing the Word of God! We continued in our series, "No more drama". The passage for the preaching moment was James 2:1-4. The message was entitled "The problem with partiality" Here's the basic outline:

1. Adverse Contradiction (v.1)

2. Absence of Consideration (v.2-3)

3. Antagonistic Conclusion (v.4)

God blessed the exposition and presentation as we were challenged to not show favoritism. The closing argument was simply this. We are no better then anyone and all of us have what we have, simply because of God's grace! It's not that we've applied ourselves, been good, been careful, made all the right decisions, or even the fact that we are saved, it is simply God' grace!

The IMA started a night worship on 5th Sunday nights at 7pm. This is part of fulfilling the three-fold vision of the IMA: 1. Restoring the Worship 2. Reclaiming our Witness 3. Reconciling the World. Our preacher was Rev. Dwight L Gutridge, pastor of the St. Luke AME Zion church of Gary, Indiana. We were truly blessed as he encouraged us on what to do when your life is a mess. This was a tremendous day of worship and I believe that God was pleased with our offering of public worship!

Pray for us this week as we continue to "Serve the Lord with gladness"!

Weekend Wrap Up

This was a wonderful weekend filled with worship of a worthy God!! Our Early Morning prayer service was very uplifting as the prayer warriors at BBC prayed concerning servant hood this past Lord's Day! I am always strengthened by the prayers of the saints!

On Sunday, we celebrated our Officer's Installation Service during the morning worship. Our special guest was Rev Dr. Marion J Johnson, Jr, pastor of the Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church of Gary, In. He preached a timely message from Exodus 17, entitled "The driving force behind ministry". Our officers were then installed and charged with the task of leadership and following leadership for the upcoming year. I am expecting great things from our leadership this year!


On Sunday afternoon, the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of St. Joseph County, held it's Annual MLK service. This worship experience was held at the Greater St. John MBC, where Rev. Andre A. McGhee is the pastor. Our very special guest was Pastor Addis Moore and the Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Kalamazoo, Michigan. I can only describe it this way, "We had us some church up in there, up in there!" His choir was phenomenal, but paled in comparison to the preached word from Dr. Moore. His text was 2 Chronicles 7:14, and his message was entitled, "The power is in the Church". This was a call for the church to be the church because we have been given a Divine obligation to bring change in the lives of those that we come in contact with. I was really challenged and inspired to do more as a result of the preached Word!!


One of the things that I absolutely love about South Bend is the amount of things that they do to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and his legacy. There are things going on from 7:30 in the morning until 9:00 at night, and they are all enjoyable. I participated in the Traditional March that goes from the County-City building to the Convention Center. This is a wonderful event and it always puts me in the mind frame of those who marched for our rights and civil liberties.


During the ceremony that preceded the march, I was asked to participate in the Night Worship Service as the speaker. I humbly and graciously accepted. I was grateful for the opportunity and I believe that God was pleased with the presentation. I am really grateful to God for all of the doors of ministry that only He can provide. I can truly say that not only am I walking in my Divine purpose, but I'm living out my dreams at the same time to serve humanity and make a difference with the life and time that God has given me! Hallelujah!!!


I am really excited about Bible Study on tomorrow. I didn't get to teach last week because we were snowed in. Hopefully the weather will not present these problems tomorrow. I am also excited about preaching on Sunday! Pray for us as we continue in the grace of our God!!

Weekend Wrap Up

This past weekend has been one of the most exciting weekends of my ministry! On Saturday about 60 saints from BBC and GCC joined together to minister to the needs of the community. There was a truck of food and personal care items that we passed out in Harbor Homes, which is a housing development near BBC. This may not sound like much until I tell you that there was 8 inches of snow on the ground! In spite of all of the snow, everyone was enthusiastic about meeting the immediate need of these residents. Every home that we went to, we were received warmly and had an opportunity to meet new families and pray for them. This was a great expression and I know that the residents of Harbor Homes were appreciative! Every time I think about it, I get excited all over again! Several of the members that participated are now eager to do more ministry outside of the walls of the church building!

With this kind of Saturday, I could not wait until Sunday to preach. I must admit that sermon preparation was difficult for me this week because of the text that I was going to preach. When I read the blogs of Pastor Ray Owens and Pastor Ronald Saunders, I noticed that both of them recently preached wonderful messages on the same passage. In my preparation, I did not want to run into either one of their outlines and I still wanted to be doctrinally sound and socially relevant.

When I arrived at BBC on Sunday morning for prayer, I was still bubbly from the day before. Our prayer service was spirited as we petitioned God about relationships, ours with Him and the ours with others. I'm a firm believer that if we can relate to God right, we should have no problem relating to one another. This prayer service has been a blessing to our church.

This past Sunday, we were blessed by songs from our Male Chorus. I approached the preaching moment with great anticipation. I am extremely grateful to God for counting me faithful enough to preach His word! I preached a message from Luke 13:6-9. This is the parable of the barren fig tree. At points in our existence, all of our lives have mirrored this fig tree. We have been positioned in a good place, given access to sufficient resources, and consistently fail to produce. I got happy when the Liaison said let it alone this year also. The word also suggests that this wasn't the first time that the Owner wanted the tree down, but thank God for the Liaison!! The message was entitled " Let it alone this year also". Here's the basic outline:

1. The action fitting judgment.

2. The announcement foretelling judgment.

3. The appeal forgoing judgment.

God really blessed the exposition as several members came to me after church desiring to be more involved. I look forward to what God is going to do through our church in 2009!

After morning worship, Pastor McGhee and I travelled back home to Gary to attend the 12 Night Revival. Pastor Keith Winfield and Pastor Raymond McDonald II both preached excellent messages. I really thank God for the fellowship that exists between the pastors in Gary. It is a breath of fresh air to see so many men of God come together and worship. On yesterday we went back down to hear the President of the conference, who happens to be my pastor, Rev Isaac Culver Jr., pastor of the Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church of Gary. He preached a timely message from Esther entitled "It's your time!" I may be a little biased, but my pastor set the place on fire last night!

I pray that God was pleased with our offerings of worship!

Pray for us as Bible Study resumes this Wednesday, so the Wednesday in the Word posts will resume as well. God Bless!!!