Would you share your personal testimony?
I was raised by a godly mother and a father who had a lot of problems. Our home would’ve been called a dysfunctional home, you know, today, but she was a praying mom. I’m the youngest of six kids and we grew up in a rather difficult and hard environment. She had a very hard life. What she lived through, most women wouldn’t put up with, and my parents had multiple reasons to divorce, but they stayed married 63 years by God’s grace.
My earliest recollection of spiritual things was as a little boy. Everyone else was in school or out of the house, and I saw my mom on her knees just begging God to help. I just sat there and listened to her, and I thought she’s really talking to somebody. It made a deep impression on me.
During my early years, I think around eight or nine years old is when I was overwhelmed with the sense of my own sin and my need of a Savior. I asked the Lord to save me South Park Baptist Church, in Beaumont, Texas.
I’m grateful for all the Sunday School teachers, training union teachers and RA directors. I remember them, and they were so kind and helpful to me. But I didn’t think seriously about the things of Christ the way I should have. Nobody took my Bible from me, but it was just like, I didn’t really think about it.
During my teenage years, I just drifted and went along with what Christian kids were supposed to do. It was pretty superficial, and I became pretty self-righteous, but then God just kind of turned me upside down and convinced me He was calling me to be a pastor, which was, I thought, a cruel joke because I didn’t like pastors.
Would you tell us a little more about your call to ministry?
Yeah, I was 16 years old and I was jaded about pastors. I was a self-righteous person looking back on it and, you know, self-righteous people think that they’re right.
We’d had some pastors, two pastors, I guess that had been pretty difficult on the church. Our family lived in a house that was owned by the church. My dad was a drunk and a womanizer and an abuser and it was just difficult, but he was also a deacon and he was my Sunday school teacher as a teenager. I just had all this anger and angst and the church wanted to have us move out of the house.
They were going to evict us out of the house because we hadn’t paid rent, and we knew that was coming. So, we were thinking about what was going to happen. And the pastor was saying, look, we just got to do this and he was in an awkward spot. I get it. But as a teenage kid, you know, I was pretty bitter about all that. So, I was jaded against pastors, and one deacon stood up and kept that from happening. So, we were able to stay in the house, but when God called me to be a pastor was during a series of special meetings for a youth event at our church.
My mom was out of town, and she was the spiritually-minded one in her family and when this overwhelming sense came on me like I need to direct my life differently. I wanted to be a lawyer. And so I went to the associate pastor that I kind of liked and asked what do I do with this?
He prayed with me. I called my mom and said, “I don’t know what to do with this, but I’m afraid this is happening.” My brother was four years older than me. He had a similar kind of thing like a couple of days before. We just kind of settled it that this is God’s dealing with you.
Then I thought, well, okay, don’t tell anybody, you know, let’s just kind of keep it between us and see if it’ll go away. But I met with the pastor and some deacons and they said, “We, we think you ought to explore this.” So they asked me to preach, and I invited the football team. I was on the football team and a bunch of folks from school came. And my best buddy was converted at the sermon.
I said everything I knew about the Bible in about 15 minutes, you know? I was petrified, but there seemed to be this affirmation. The church licensed me to preach, and then other people, other churches, asked me to start preaching.
Where did the Lord take you from there?
I got a scholarship from Texas A&M and I thought I’d major in sociology because that’s like being a preacher. You know, it’s almost a pastor. You help people so I thought “I’ll be a sociologist and counselor.” I actually had a contract to sign with a youth organization to help troubled kids when this little church called me and said, “Hey, we need a preacher. We heard you preach. Would you come to preach Sunday?” So, I did that for three weeks in a row, and then they blew me away and said, “Hey, we want you to be our pastor?” So, I did that. I believed God wanted me to do that.
You seem to hold deep convictions when it comes to how you view right and wrong.
Oh yeah. There’s no doubt. One of the things He’s (God) done in the last half of my life is convicted me of just really what a self-righteous prig I was. I was full of pride and thought I knew better than everybody else.
My dad was converted before he died, and it was an amazing thing. He had a lot of shame, a lot of guilt and a lot of regret. I got to see him on Christmas day just before he died in the spring. He was in the hospital and had a lot of medical issues, but they gave him a day pass to come be with the family.
So, all the family was together in Beaumont, and we spent the day with him. I took him back to the hospital. I’d been thinking about it. God had been convicting me over the years. All the kids were converted, so we’d all preach the gospel to him.
He’d begin to have these doubts and these regrets and, you know, shame over what he’d done. He started down that road again and I stopped him. I said, “Dad, look, I’ve been thinking about this”, and I talked to him about the gospel. And he said, “I believe, I really do believe in Christ.” So, I said, “Well, let me tell you something.” I said, ‘God’s been showing me something and I’ve thought about this. If I could go back and pick any man in the world, to be my dad, I’d pick you because you’re the one that God wanted me to have to help me come to know him.”
