Testimony and Call to Ministry
In my early teen years I struggled with the idea, “Am I saved?” I knew verses such as Hebrews 13:5: “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” The question in my mind wasn’t “ Would Christ leave me?”, it was “Did I ever ask Him to be my Savior?”. When I was about thirteen years old, my family began to attend a small Independent Baptist Church that was meeting in the Pastor’s home at the time. The messages were strong and convicting, yet the question remained, “Have I done that?” I shared with the pastor, Reverend Glenn Lewis, that as a child of seven, I rode the bus to church and I specifically remembered being baptized in a lake in our home town, but I could not specifically remember the details of praying to receive Christ. I fully understood that being baptized doesn’t save a person. Prior to this meeting with the pastor, I had prayed many times “Lord, I believe you died on the cross for me and that I am a sinner, and I’m asking you to save me.” I never doubted God’s saving power, only my faith. I never believed I could lose my salvation, but with the limited knowledge I had I wanted to make certain I had it. Once the fact was established that if I meant what I said, God meant what He said. “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (Romans 10:13). That settled it. I confessed, I believed, I was saved. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered something in the Bible I had as a child that would become very precious to me. In the front of that Bible, in the hand writing of a seven year old was written, “I received Jesus into my heart on May 18, 1980.” As I continued looking through that Bible, I found written in the back, “I am considering to be a minister or a missionary at age 12, 2-9-86.” What a blessing for me to have found the date that I had accepted Christ and the evidence I was His by the conviction to serve Him. I know now that on the basis of the word of God that I was saved at age seven and after being saved I was obedient to God and was baptized by immersion. For the next several years I faithfully attend church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. I served God when it suited me, but felt convicted to serve Him faithfully. There were times on the mountain top and times low in the valley. When I was fifteen I worked with Child Evangelism Fellowship as a summer missionary. Before I started teaching, I was required to go to 12 days of training in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. When I arrived, there were fifty teens attending for training. That summer changed my life forever. Not only did I know that God could use me, He did! I was able to lead children to Christ that entire summer. I knew this was something I wanted to do every summer. Through the school year I struggled some spiritually, but each summer I was a Summer Missionary until I turned eighteen.
When I was eighteen years old I joined the volunteer fire department in our small town. It wasn’t long before I began to make the fire department a priority in my life. Each fire fighter was assigned a group of three or four and a Sunday morning to inspect the trucks. At first I would go right after church and help them finish. Then I began to miss the Sundays I was scheduled to check the trucks. Before I knew it, I wasn’t attending church at all. I wasn’t reading my Bible or praying. It didn’t seem to bother me as long as I didn’t think about it. I always had to be busy so I wouldn’t have time to think. Then summer came, I had been on the fire department for eight months and was involved as much as I could and even more. I had to choose. Was I going to be a Summer Missionary again this year? No way. Even if I wanted to, I hadn’t picked up my Bible or prayed for almost a year. No way would God use that. I knew that the training had influenced my life and for a reason only the Lord knows I picked up the phone and called the State Director of Child Evangelism Fellowship, who was in charge of the training, and asked him if I could come and visit on Saturday. He said, “Rick, are you right with the Lord?” I said, “Probably not.” I knew the answer was definitely not. He told me that I could come and visit that day. Because of my spiritual condition, things were different this year than they had been in the past. It didn’t seem so great. I remember sitting in one of the teaching sessions. The instructor was demonstrating a Bible lesson to about fifty teenagers when he began to struggle and confuse his words. He stopped, said “Excuse me,” bowed his head and prayed and asked for God’s help for the lesson. I was sitting in the back of the room and I immediately realized that I couldn’t call on God for help even if I wanted to, because I was so far from Him. Psalm 66:18 “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:” I prayed a short prayer, “God, I’m tired of playing games.” I left that evening for home not knowing that God felt the same way. On the way home—about a two and a half hour drive—I thought much about what had happened that day, but my mind soon shifted to meeting my friends up town later that night. About half way home I decided to stop at a convenient store to get a coke and a bite to eat. I turned off the car, but it started smoking and the engine continued to run. The first thing that came to my mind was to stop the engine. I quickly grabbed a wrench and began taking the battery out of the car. I didn’t get one terminal off before I heard a loud pop and felt something hit my face. I quickly ran inside, asked them to call 911, get me some wet towels, and show me a mirror. I immediately removed my contact lenses and began putting cold towels on my face. Within minutes the ambulance arrived. They started me on morphine, but it seemed to not even touch the pain. As I was loaded into the ambulance, the Lord brought a verse to my mind that I had known from years back. II Corinthians. 5:20 “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ...” I realized immediately that I had been a disgrace to my God. In my ignorance I prayed, “God, if you let me keep my eyesight, I’ll do anything you want me to do.” When I arrived at the hospital it was confirmed that I had second and some third degree burns on most of my face including inside my nose. It was later discovered that the radiator overflow tank on my car had been under too much pressure and the lid blew off. God, in His mercy, chose to completely heal me. I knew then that I was going to serve God with my life.
That fall I enrolled in a small Bible college near my house. I went there for one semester, constantly praying that God would show me exactly where he wanted me. After a semester there I went to Missouri to attend Children’s Ministry Institute. I graduated from there in April of 1994. Praying that God would show me right where He wanted me, He led me to New Castle, Indiana to be the director for Child Evangelism Fellowship of East Central Indiana. I had worked in that capacity for four years when I had the opportunity to direct the Summer Missionary training program that had impacted my life so much as a teenager. After doing that for a summer I felt that God could use me to impact the lives of teens. God had been dealing with my heart about doctrinal issues with Child Evangelism Fellowship and I felt that He would have me resign as director. We had been attending Grace Baptist Church for several years and in October of 1998, I was presented with the opportunity to be the Youth Pastor. After much prayer I felt certain that this is what God would have me to do. We served at Grace Baptist Church for five years. In 2002 I took my teens to summer camp as I did ever summer, however, this time God was dealing in my heart about becoming an evangelist. We surrendered to that call in 2003 moved to Shelby, North Carolina to attend Ambassador Baptist College.
My dear wife, Lynn, and I were married on November 4, 1995. We met at our home church in our early teens. God has blessed us with three wonderful children, Alex, Emily, and Brianna. We have been traveling full time in evangelism since April 2007.
