Chapter 5 "Above All Else, Get Knowledge"

Bible school was in my future and a very necessary ingredient for my success. I highly value education but formal education is not the only way to get trained and equipped for God’s calling on our lives. It would be a few years and a journey of faith before getting into Bible School. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Psalms 37:23, “The steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord.” I realized a long time ago that I am not righteous by anything I have done or not done. The Bible states that my righteousness is as filthy rags, Isaiah 64:6. Nonetheless I am still righteous! Jesus makes me righteous by His Blood and the work of the Cross. So, If I am righteous His promise is that my steps are ordered by Him. Indeed He led me to avenues of equipping and training that were every bit as valuable as what I learned in Bible School.

To become an official Royal Rangers Commander you have to complete the Leadership Training Course (LTC). This was an all night camp out where we had to learn and practice everything that is taught to the boys. Along with memory verses that taught the boys how to share their faith we had to learn knot tying, starting a fire using flints, simple camp cooking and many other camping skills. The LTC was for training men and organized by the District Royal Ranger Leadership. I was looking forward to a night of camping with the guys. What I did not expect was a Southeastern Virginia downpour! What a miserable night! The men training us were probably marine drill sergeant wanna-bees. They were loving every minute of the harsh conditions.
In the midst of this all night rain we had to continue with the outdoor training. Have you every tried to start a fire with wet wood in a rainstorm? To make it worse we could not use matches. We were forced to use the primitive flints provided. Thank God my partner was resourceful and brought lint from his wife’s dryer. Lint is very flammable and is a great resource in helping to start a fire. It still took much chipping away at the flints before we got a spark large enough to ignite the lint. I hate camping in the rain but this night was a great training ground. I built lasting friendships with the all the men in LTC training that night. Crisis situations builds relationships and intimacy and that night I made some lifelong friends. It was not a matter of life and death as we camped on the property of a rural church. We could have packed it in and slept in the church at anytime but we chose to “Man-up” and it was fun and worth it.

Pastor Tim White, our second children’s pastor, provided great training for the children’s ministry workers. My wife and I took advantage of all his training. It was during this time that I told Pastor Tim of my desire to someday be a children’s pastor. I shared with him that I planned to go to Bible School. His response was to not wait for formal education to get the knowledge and skills I needed. He shared that most of the knowledge of the world was written in books and that I could get much of what I needed through reading books. I have since learned a phrase, “Leaders are Readers.” In addition to regularly reading my Bible I began to read books on children’s ministry.

Our church started a part time Bible School and I quickly enrolled in classes that I thought were relevant and also matched my schedule. I was eager to learn. Our church was blessed to have a Messianic Jewish man from the tribe of Levi as a Bible School teacher. His name was Murray Gold. Murray was a sweet elderly man that grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York City. His Jewish background gave him such a special insight into the Bible that he was always eager to share. He had a class called “Tabernacle Truths”. To this day I have never attended a class or seminar that was as impacting as that class. I developed a knowledge and love for the Old Testament because of Murray.

Our church Bible School was not accredited. I saw the need for accredited courses so I started a distance course offered by the Assembly of God’s Rhema Bible College. I found out that most people do not finish distance courses, now called online courses. The problem is accountability. No one is keeping them accountable therefore it becomes easy to procrastinate to the point of non-completion. The course was meant to be self disciplined but I was advised to meet once a week with Murray Gold so he could check my work and also give me the exams. Murray kept me on schedule and helped me to avoid laziness and procrastination. For me this submission and accountability helped me to complete courses which later I was able to transfer to Dayspring Christian Bible Training Center, the Bible School I attended when I was able to go full time.

I was thirty-five years old when I quit my full time job as a realtor and moved my family to Baden, Pennsylvania. My father had died recently and my mom had an un-occupied, two bedroom apartment above her house. She offered it to us to stay for free while I went to school. This helped us out financially but I still worked two other part-time jobs while attending Bible School full time. It was a difficult time as my wife and children had to sacrifice my being gone most of the time. I would go to school all day, come home for dinner and then leave again for work until the next morning. I worked for a foundation that cared for mentally handicapped adults. The clients lived in group homes and I would clean the houses and care for these handicapped adults through the night and into the morning.

I maintained straight “A’s” through Bible School except for praise and worship. School opened with praise and worship each day and we were a graded on attendance and punctuality. I would get off work an hour before school and I had to rush across the city of Pittsburgh’s during early morning traffic jams. Needless to say I was late on many days which affected my grade.
I studied hard and completed all the papers and assignments for the rest of the classes. My night job allowed me some free time to study while the clients slept. It was a difficult season but I was determined to do my best. The end result was excellent marks except for praise and worship. Most of my fellow students were between eighteen and twenty-five years old. I was amazed when many of them made excuses to the instructors when papers and assignments were due. Most of them still lived at home with their parents and either worked a part time job or did not work at all. How could they not find the time or initiative to complete the assignments? When I would express my disgust, my wife would often ask me the question, “Where were you when you were their age?”

While still in Bible School I was offered an internship as a Children’s Pastor in Singapore! One of my best friends and mentor, Pastor Mark Geppert, had lived in Singapore and made a connection with a local Chinese church that needed direction in their children’s ministry. The offer was made to us after my first year of a two year school requirement. After completion of my first year my family and I took a mission trip with Pastor Mark to Singapore and Indonesia. The church was the Church of Singapore/Jurong. We joined with the church for a fourteen day trip to Indonesia. After the trip we spent the next ten days in Singapore evaluating what it would take for us to live there. We prayed and received confirmation to accept the offer for the internship and one year later we moved to Singapore and became children’s pastors in a Chinese Church.

What a great opportunity and learning experience this was. We accomplished some great work while there and also made many ministry and cultural mistakes. In the midst of my frustrations with myself and sometimes the culture, Pastor Mark would remind me that although I was the Children’s Pastor, I was also still an intern. I was there to learn. This often set me free and helped me move on. This internship was an excellent opportunity to understand cross cultural communications and ministry.
We left Singapore to go on staff as children’s pastors in an inner city church located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The church hired us to run the children’s ministry in the church and also develop outreach to children in the inner city communities of Pittsburgh. I came to know Pastor Bill Wilson of Metro Ministries located in Brooklyn, New York. His ministry was reaching over twenty-thousand children per week. Every child received a home visit every week! I determined to learn all I could from Pastor Bill and to pattern my ministry after his. If it worked in the inner city of New York, surely it would work in Pittsburgh. It did! We took that knowledge and ministered weekly to hundreds of children in the inner city communities of Pittsburgh.

It was during this time that I was offered a Bachelors Degree at Logos Bible College, Florida. They gave me credits for my two years of Bible School. They also gave me credits for my internship and mission work in Southeast Asia. I had to fulfill a few more classes which I did online. I was then obtained a Bachelors Degree in Pastoral Science.

I encourage formal education. For those going into full time ministry I would recommend at least a two year Bible School education. I also believe that the knowledge necessary for ministry can be learned through experience and internships. Children today learn by doing and seeing. This also works for adults who are seeking equipping for ministry work.
Education and training should be an ongoing endeavor in our lives regardless of our professions. The world is changing at an alarming rate. More information is readily available with each passing minute. To keep up we must always be learning. Remember “Leaders are readers”. If nothing else get into a discipline of reading.