connection Independent Assemblies
uniting ministries worldwide
the
building
May/June 2010 | Volume 2 Issue 1
calendar
July
IA Annual Minister’s Conference Mon-Wed, July 12-14, 2010 Embassy Suites Hotel & Conference Center Norman, OK See page 6
May
Interstate Fellowship Meeting Monday, May 10, 2010 Calvary Temple Edmond, OK Rev. Dale Drain (405) 348-2334
June
Interstate Fellowship Meeting Monday, June 14, 2010 Vassar Full Gospel Church Guthrie, OK Rev. Ralph Yost (405) 570-2850
www.independentassemblies.org 2 • connection
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Contents 2
Calendar
4
Rebel Turned Preacher
5
Member Focus
8
Building the Kingdom
10
Forgiveness
11
Board Members
Independent Assemblies PO Box 1546 Ada, OK 74821 (580) 310-0222
Independent Assemblies PO Box 1546 Ada, OK 74821 (580) 310-0222 Produced by Layers Media, Inc. www.layersmedia.com
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rebel t u r n e d
preacher by: Mindy Wood
Cord and Donna Blankenship
Pastor Cord and Donna Blankenship’s four hundred member church is filled with people who never thought they would get saved. That’s okay with Blankenship since he never thought he would either. The rebel-turned-preacher broadcasts his testimony and the gospel of Christ to anyone who will listen and he’ll do what it takes to get their attention. “Our vision is the cause of Christ, whatever Jesus would do to help people is what we want to follow,” said Blankenship. “Whether it’s feeding someone, giving them a cup of cold water, or laying hands on them and seeing them recover, that’s what we believe the Gospel is. Our mission is to win souls locally, globally and to be a non-traditional church that reaches out to all people.” Blankenship said members range from eighty year old women to people with Mohawks and business professionals. “We preach the whole gospel, we’re not ‘sin secretive’ but we use techniques to draw people in. We remix music like Van Hallen and ZZ Top and rewrite the words. We go from old school Amazing Grace to radical, we can be a full blown show to a slow service your grandmother would enjoy.” Being a non-traditional church also means innovative outreach. Often after praise and worship they send people to the laundry mat to pay for everyone’s laundry. They opened a skate park for their youth group, nearly doubling it overnight. They have a sensory driven children’s curriculum. From art to songs, snacks and plays that apply the lesson to their lives, kids transition every twenty minutes 4 • connection
to a different activity that reinforces the lesson and holds their attention. Blankenship’s conversion fuels his mission to reach a modern culture who doesn’t relate to church. He didn’t think salvation was real. “There was no one saved in my family. Then my mom got saved and filled with the Holy Ghost at a crusade and I thought she was in a cult.” After his father, aunts and uncles and even his wife got saved, Blankenship had it out with God. “I told my wife she had to choose me or God. She went to church and I railed against God for three hours. He just reached down and touched me and I knew it.” Blankenship says they allow people to belong before they believe and although it takes a while to reach them, they can see the fruit. “We don’t change the message, we love them where they’re at. It took eight months but a couple who lived together had been coming and about two weeks ago they showed up at my house and wanted to make things right. We’ve had lesbians come, some stay and get right and some go. A woman in our church was basically a Mary Magdalene and we just loved her through all of it.” Blankenship summed up their philosophy. “I believe you can walk in this world and not be of it. Everyone’s got their ups and downs and I’ve been there but we’ve got to remember that Jesus was the friend of sinners without partaking of sin. We’ve got to get back to believing what we preach.” Refiner’s Fire ministries is located in Ennis, TX. For more info visit www.refinersfire.org
by: Mindy Wood
Pastors Dale and Cris Drain of Calvary Temple Church in Edmond, Oklahoma take the gospel anywhere they can and train their congregation to do the same. Overseas, in their community, and deep in the inner city their passion for Christ shines like a torch in darkness. Twenty five years ago they began mission work in Tijuana, Mexico. “Since the beginning of our church we’ve been in missions and it’s always been a big part of what we do. We began building churches in Mexico, went on to help in the Philippines, and currently we’re working in Costa Rica.” Two churches in Costa Rica consider them their pastors and where they regularly hold conferences. Their newest pastor in Punta Arenas is in the heart of the most impoverished area. “It’s worse than the ghetto there. He’s running about sixty people under nothing more than a roof with poles. We’re building them a church and getting him established,” said Dale. Being a pastor to pastors in several other countries, they are also working with a church in Oklahoma City’s inner city. “It’s pretty rough there with drug dealers and prostitutes across the street. At any time you can see them walking up and down in front of the church but they’re getting saved and we’ve seen some real miracles happening there.” They’re also planning a homeless outreach with music and free food near the bus station where the poor congregate. They don’t do the work alone. “Our mission is to see the lost saved, the saved matured and the matured working,” said Cris. Dale says bearing fruit is what it’s all about. “If we can’t get people to work, we don’t believe we’re doing our job.” As an apostolic church, Dale says their goal is equip people and send them out. “We’re sending people out all over the world instead of just trying to get as many people here to stay. We don’t always want to let
Dale and Cris Drain them go because we fall in love with them but we know when it’s time to let go.” One way they’re training members it the two year class called “School of the Supernatural.” Cris says its unlike a typical Bible school and focuses on equipping believers for a ‘book of Acts’ ministry. “We are literally teaching them to function in the supernatural, doing the works that Jesus did.” The curriculum is based on Scripture and studying the lives of evangelists like William Branham and Smith Wigglesworth. The congregation widely varies from children to seniors, from impoverished to wealthy. “We don’t target a specific age group and we never have but we take the ‘whosoever will,’” said Dale. Their plans for the future include a day care center, expansion of the “School of the Supernatural” and a new church building. They have two children, three grandsons and a granddaughter on the way. Visit them at www.calvarytempleok.org
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Fellowship
Annual Minister’s Conference Monday, July 12th
5:00-6:00 PM 7:00 PM
Meet & Greet (Hotel Atrium) Service - Dr. Morris Sheats
Tuesday, July 13th
6:00-8:00 AM 9:00 AM 10:30 AM 12:00-2:00 PM 2:00-3:00 PM 7:00 PM
Breakfast Ministry Workshops - Speakers TBA Speaker - President Mickey Keith Lunch Missions Update - Dr. Robert Johnson Service - Dr. Morris Sheats
Wednesday, July 14th
6:00-8:00 AM 9:00 AM 9:30-12:00 PM
Breakfast Worship & Ordination Presbytery Service
July 6 Embassy • connection Suites
•
Norman, OK
12-14 •
www.norman.embassysuites.com
“And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”
Esther 4:14
time for such a
as
this
guest speaker Dr. Morris Sheats
Dr. Morris Sheats has been in ministry for over 50 years. He founded Trinity Church in Lubbock, Texas in 1964 and led the church to a membership of 4,000 before moving to Dallas, where he served as pastor of Beverly Hills Baptist church(membership 6,000). He is also the founding pastor of Hillcrest Church, which grew to a membership of 5,000 under Sheats’ leadership. He currently leads Heritage Church of Dallas, which he founded in 2006. Since founding Leadership Institute in 1980, Dr. Sheats has taken his ministerial experience to tens of thousands of pastors and churches across America and 50 nations of the world. His passion is to reach and train young pastors in developing countries. Understanding well the dynamics of human relationships, Pastor Sheats is a strong motivational teacher/preacher in high demand as a speaker at pastors’ conferences. Pastor Sheats holds a B.A. degree from Texas Tech University, a Master of Divinity (M.Div.), and Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of four books: You Can Be Emotionally Healed, You Can Have A Happy Family, Courage to Lead, and Building Better Churches: Building Blocks that Matter.
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building the
by: Mindy Wood
one relationship at a time
Frank and Bernice DeNike are missionary pastors, watching over pastors in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Cuba, and Kenya. By using an effective and efficient training curriculum, they’re building the Kingdom of God one relationship and one school at a time. In twenty years, DeNike Ministry has helped pastors build churches, homes, orphanages, schools, and rehabilitation centers. It all started on a short term mission trip to Tijuana, Mexico. Frank was a contractor so they put their construction experience to work building churches and meeting what needs they could. When they realized pastors could better reach their own countrymen they decided to provide them training. They formed the Vision Project in 1998 to better equip pastors who wanted a Bible education. “We were looking for more than a weekend seminar. We knew some ministries would bring pastors here for training but there were problems with that. We kept saying, ‘Lord who’s going to take care of their church and feed their families; there’s got to be something else we can do,’” said Bernice. They soon discovered a solution with the International School of Ministry. The bilingual curriculum comes with videos and, “it’s basically 160 hours of Bible training by the best of the best,” said Bernice. They started purchasing licenses for their pastors and they were the first ministry to 8 • connection
purchase a license in Swahili. When they presented the program to Bishop Zephaniah Orao, who currently oversees 137 churches in Kenya, it was an answer to prayer. “We have a full curriculum Bible school being taught under a thatched roof in the middle of nowhere. We set them up with a generator, T.V., and a DVD player and we use the pastor as the facilitator. It’s so much more cost effective. We don’t have to spend $100,000 for a building, pay someone to teach classes, take care of the building or remove people from their homes,” said Bernice. “Our expense is only $1,500 to start a school.” Upon graduation, students proudly don cap and gown and receive a certified diploma from ISOM, signed by the DeNikes. “This is a fifteen to eighteen month course and they’re so hungry they finish in about eleven months to a year. They are so hungry for the Lord,” said Frank, “but they have so little understanding of who they are in Christ so we saw this as a real need. There’s a lot of evangelism in Africa and we’re thankful because we wouldn’t have anyone to train but there’s a lot of Jehovah’s witnesses and Muslims coming behind them and discipling them.” The courses are not exclusively offered to those with formal education but also to church members. Although they do not financially support their pastors on a monthly basis they do try to help them meet needs and building projects have always been a constant in their ministry, especially in Mexico where they’ve helped build churches and countless homes. Javier Castrejon is a former drug addict who found Christ in prison and established nearly 30 Christian drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers in Mexico,
built seventeen churches and an orphanage. “When we met him he only had two centers and we were the first American missionaries to help him,” said Bernice. “He runs about a 50% success rate,” added Frank, “and the chief of police and mayor in Juarez called him and wanted to know what he was doing different. In secular centers the success rate is 3-5% and he was so excited to share that with us. He’s an awesome man of God and we’re just proud to be a small part of that.” “It boggles our minds how God has used us and we just give Him the glory for it. We’re just a yielded vessel allowing Him to work through us wherever we go,” said Bernice. Its full speed ahead for the DeNikes who plan to establish more schools and tackle a much needed orphanage in Kenya. They maintain a 90% completion rate, graduating 150 students since their schools began and they plan to double the number of schools this year. For more information visit www.denikeministries.org
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forgiveness forgiveness giveness by: Greg Baker
Forgiveness isn’t something that you do for the sake of the person who wronged you. It is something you do for yourself. I don’t forgive people because they deserve it, or earn it, or even ask for it. I forgive them for a very selfish reason. The main purpose of forgiveness is to free yourself from the burden of the pain inflicted on you. Bitterness is a cancer that’ll destroy you and your relationships. As a pastor of a Church, I’ve witnessed this root of bitterness defile so many things that a person holds dear. I knew a woman that held so much pain and bitterness against a person that she had literally made herself sick and physically weak. If she could forgive the person that had wronged her, she’d be able to release the burden of that pain and the bitterness. The truly tragic thing about a grudge is that it hurts you more than the person you hold it against. In many cases, the other person is unaware of your grudge or the depth of your grudge or even of the fact that they may have hurt you. So your anger, bitterness, and pain are only hurting you. It is only destroying your own spirit. Christians are supposed to be big on forgiveness. I should know. But even they
10 • connection
miss the main purpose of forgiveness. It isn’t to pretend that the wrong done to you is okay. It’s not so that you can give some offender a pass on his wrong, or to pretend you weren’t hurt or angry. It isn’t even to demonstrate how holy and righteous you are. It is to release that anger, to release the burden of the pain that you carry around. Jesus told Peter to forgive people until it became instinctual or habitual. He, being the Son of God, had much more clarity in this than we do. But the example suffices to demonstrate that unless we forgive, we have a human tendency to carry a grudge, to carry bitterness, to carry the burden of pain. This burden crushes you, not the person who hurt you. Forgive people. Do it for yourself so you can function in life, see clearer, and not have to live with the painful burden of bitterness. Don’t look at the other person to determine if they are worthy of your forgiveness. It’s not an issue of worthiness or even of relevance. It is about you releasing anger, pain, and bitterness. Carrying such a burden will affect your marriage, your friendships, your family, and every other relationship you possess. Your revenge plotting twists your mind more than it makes the person who hurt you suffer. Let it go-for your own sake.
Executive Board Mickey Keith
President PO Box 1546 Ada, OK 74821 (580) 310-0222 mickey.keith@gmail.com www.life623.com
Dr. Ted Estes
Vice President PO Box 2248 Claremore, OK 74018 pastorted@lifechangerchurch.com www.lifechangerchurch.com
Ken Anderson
Secretary/Treasurer PO Box 1120 Lexington, OK 73051 (405) 527-6030 kda@valornet.com www.libertygospelok.org
Robert Johnson
Director of World Missions PO Box 978 Blackwell, OK 74631 (580) 363-2734 roj@clarionmissions.org www.clarionmissions.org
Jerry Edmon
Board Member PO Box 862 Elgin, TX 78621 (512) 281-5316 Jedmon1234@aol.com www.fwcelgin.com
Regional Representatives Southeast Oklahoma District Rev. Billy Hunter Antlers, OK (580) 298-2740 Southwest Oklahoma District Rev. Donnie Miller Cyril, OK (580) 464-2224 (580) 512-3657 Northeast Oklahoma District Rev. Mac Blackwell Locust Grove, OK (918) 479-6057 North Central Texas District Rev. Dr. Daniel Sue Kemp, TX (903) 498-4704 Southeast Texas District Rev. Herb Hawthorne Baytown, TX (281) 723-2278 South Central Texas District Rev. Jerry Edmon Elgin, TX (512) 281-5316 Midwest Regional District Rev. Mark Maynard Granite City, IL (618) 931-4106 Arkansas District Rev. Charles Kendrick Alexander, AR (501) 303-0831
connection • 11
emblie
s
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magazine
March /April 2010 | Volum e 1 Iss November/December 2009January/February | Volume 1 Issue2010 ue 6 4 | Volume 1 Issue 5
PREPARING CHURCH FOR NEW FAMILIES
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ARE POSSIBLE
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May/Jun
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ue e 1 Iss
| Volume 1 Issue 2 July/August 2009 1
H ANT FAIT HER DEFI IN EVERYDAY LIFE
YOUR WORSHIP
g lindsey’s son
IN CHURCH TODAY
3 September/October 2009 | Volume 1 Issue
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