Personal Information

• The Cherry Point Church of Christ (in Havelock, NC)
• The Newport church of Christ (see here, too)
• The Westhaven church of Christ (in Plymouth, NC), and
• I've also been involved in some meeting work.

I preached my first gospel sermon on May 8, 1977, and the title was simply "Death." The lesson was preached at the Cherry Point Church of Christ in Havelock, NC. At the time, I didn't know that there was a division among the churches of Christ (primarily institutional and non-institutional, or liberals and conservatives), and the Cherry Point congregation has sided with the institutional people (they participated actively in the sponsoring church arrangement, namely in the Amazing Grace Bible Class [which was aired on WCTI TV-12 in New Bern on Sunday mornings], along with other several liberal congregation in eastern North Carolina (Kinston, Pike Road, Jacksonville, and Goldsboro).

Shortly after I was medically retired from the U. S. Marine Corps, I was asked to preach at the Cherry Point church. On April 2, 1982, I began my work there on a full-time basis. During the next two years, attendance grew from about 36 to 125 and 36 were personally taught by me and baptized. Two funerals were preached, and I married four couples after short Bible studies. I continued to preach and teach there until September 2, 1984 when we had a parting of the ways; I preached that Gal. 6:10 applied to individuals, but their Diotrophes insisted that I should leave (otherwise I would have to go to the Sunset Church of Christ School of Preaching to learn "the party line").

A couple of weeks later, I was visited by a couple from the Newport church of Christ, and they asked us to visit their congregation that Sunday. We did, and I was asked to work with them, which I did from May 19, 1985 until September 26, 1993. During my work at Newport, I conducted about 60 Bible studies, and of that number, about 25 were baptized for the remission of sins. Attendance grew from about 30 to about 75, and contributions doubled. On Sunday mornings, we studied all the books of the New Testament, looked at a harmony of the gospels, and had several other short periods of intense Bible study.

On April 18, 1994, I began a new work with the Westhaven church of Christ in Plymouth, NC (this was a 99 mile, one-way commute on some of North Carolina's most scenic back roads). The first Sunday I preached there, there were 9 in attendance. While I worked with the brethren there, two were baptized and one was restored. About a year after I started at Plymouth, we lost one of our older members; a year later, we buried his wife. The last day I preached there, there were 23 in attendance. When one of the young people up there got married, the building was as full as I'd ever seen (almost 60 folks were there). I worked and worshipped with the church in Plymouth for nearly five years.

When my work at Plymouth was done, I resumed worshipping with the fine brethren here in Newport. Craig Hearne was preaching here then, and doing an excellent job. About a year before I returned to work and worship with the Newport congregation, several families from New Bern began worshipping with us because the church in New Bern had begun to teach and practice Homer Hailey's position on marriage, divorce, and remarriage. In October 2001, the brethren from New Bern decided to start a new congregation (the Croatan church of Christ) in their city; since Craig and his family live in New Bern (and have for all of his life), he was asked to do their preaching. Since October 2001, I have been doing the preaching again at Newport.

On July 28, 2002, I preached my last sermon at the Newport church. Despite my warnings, the men of the congregation decided to hire a young man (actually a former "youth minister" and "part-time" pulpit minister) from a liberal congregation in Parkersburg, WVa (he was educated at the Ohio Valley College, which is a liberal college supported by various liberal congregations in Ohio and West Virginia). Following the morning worship on July 28, three "prominent" men in the Newport church spoke with me (took me to the wood shed); they took exception to my condemnation of their hiring a liberal preacher. They understood very clearly what my condemnation was (that they were committing sin [missing the mark] by inviting an unsound, not to mention erroneously educated preacher. A couple of weeks prior to this, the young man came and preached two ("try out") lessons--both were from the Old Testament, and both had few scriptural references). Following the evening lesson, we had a question and answer period, in which I had a few pointed questions that were aimed at exposing his liberal beliefs/ways. When the men met to discuss what to do about the preacher (he had been invited by one individual and without the prior approval of the men), I voiced my objection; some present thought that my questions for the young man were biased (of course, they were--his answers were very telling)--he knew what the Gospel Advocate was and had heard of Rubel Shelley, but he had never heard of Florida College, Truth Magazine, or Ferrell Jenkins (or Homer Hailey or Roy Cogdill). The wife of one of the men who spoke with me on July 28 told the congregation "We have to change or the church here is going to die"--my response was that if we change, the church will digress into error. Because we couldn't agree on who was lost (i.e., liberals [because they practice {what they preach} the errors of the sponsoring church arrangement and providing church-sponsored entertainment), my family and I no longer have fellowship with the people in the new liberal church in Newport. It is my hope and prayer that the folks at the Newport church repent and return to their first love (Rev. 2:4).

As of Dec. 21, 2003, there have been two more revelations of the Newport congregation's digression into liberalism. First, they are using a book by Max Lucado as the text for their Ladies Bible Class, which meets at the meeting house on Tuesday mornings (there is no Bible authority for a part of of the church to come together, especially when others cannot attend; if the ladies want to study the Bible, let them do it as a private Bible study in someone's home). Last Sunday, after their morning worship service, the members were asked to stay in the building while they gave the preacher and his family Christmas presents. The seeds of digression have taken root--pray that they repent and return to their first love (Rev. 2:4).

Because I am a stronger believer that Christians have their best influence in the towns in which they live, may wife and I visited some area congregations for a while, but in the mid-2000s, my heart developed atrail fibrillation and in early 2008, I had a pacemaker implanted (and my health improved; however, I did retire from my teaching the middle of 2008; I'm still weak, so weak that it's impossible to talk for more than a couple of minutes). When we returned to the local congregation, we found that James Clark, who invited me to the Newport congregation in the late 1980s, was doing the preaching (and he's been preaching there for almost two years).

My first gospel meeting was held at the Lincoln Park (Michigan) Church of Christ; they averaged almost 175 people for those five nights. Since then, I've had the opportunity to preach the gospel in various parts of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Ohio.

My wife's family lives in Columbus, Ohio, and when we visit them, the Laurel Canyon church of Christ usually invites me to preach one or two Sunday lessons.

Besides this work in progress (The Visiting Preacher), I am also involved in maintaining  A Directory of the churches of Christ in North Carolina, which I have published since the early 1990s; I recently moved this directory to this site. I "mend tents" by teaching at East Carolina University, where I am a lecturer on the faculty of the English Department and maintain my own web site; I commute to Greenville three days a week