Pastor B's Blog

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

2009-01-04T19:27:00.000-08:00

Let me begin this post by saying Merry Christmas to everyone. I pray this holiday season brought with it the joy and peace that our Savior so graciously blessed us with by entering into the human experience. He came to be the light so that we could become the light. I know that we have all and will continue to let our lights shine.
Also let me say Happy New Year. How great is our God. As my grandfather would say, "It's another New Year and I ain't gone, Oh I ain't gone, Oh I ain't gone and I thank the Lord that i ain't God." (Sang with a slow Baptist drag.) Let me say that 2008 was an awesome year overall. It was truly a year of New Beginning for me. i can say that God opened some doors and closed some as well. I was deeply saddened as I transitioned from my home church and will begin a work here in Macon in April of 2009. I am saddened because I left full time staff at Beulahland Bible Church. It was a difficult decision to make and I wrestled with for most of the year but when the time came I had the peace of God. I was told early in ministry that you don't fight the PEACE. When God gives instruction and grants His peace we must walk in the peace of God.
That's pretty much the entire update. My wife and I and about 9 core team members will begin meeting in the next couple weeks and begin planning the process of the church start. We are excited but I must admit I am very afraid and I know the Word. We are still members of BBC but will transition sometime in late March. So Rehoboth Family Worship Center will be coming soon to Macon, GA.

Blog Update

2008-11-28T16:54:00.001-08:00

I know its been awhile since I last posted but life has been full and I have been having a great time on the ride. Let me go back and start with the Sunday Services.

The Lord blessed me to preach on the third Sunday at our last two services at Beulahland Bible Church. I preached a simple message out of II Kings 4. It was titled, "It is Well" I feel it blessed those in attendence because I received several calls and emails on how much the Lord blessed His people through that Rhema word. On that week I was called to the hospital to see a young girl who was battling cancer. The next day she was taken from labor to reward at the age of 11. She will be buried tomorrow.

I also had a friend from church pass on Wednesday this week. He and I sang in the Youth Choir at Beulahland for many years and were good friends then. Time brought with it change and we grew apart. It saddens me to see two young people 11 & 25 to transistion in the course of a week. It reminds me to continue to work while its day for the night is truly coming when no man can work.

The holiday was great and I am lookign forward to completing my undergraduate studies next week and another change that's coming really soon. Stay Tuned!!

Blog Updates

2008-11-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

It has been quite awhile since I last posted. That can be attributed to several factors including finishing the last semester of my undergraduate degree, several things at the church that occupy time and mental space, and bbeing married to an outstanding woman who I make sure I spend time with.
There are several things going on in my life now that I must admit. I am dealing with the call/purpose/destiny of God on my life. I know that I am in the proper place for this season but as of tomorrow the chapter is read to be read to me although God has already written the story. I am in no ways saying I know the next move of God for my life but I am going to say that I am considering what God is saying through His word to me. I solicit the prayers of the righteous for this matter.
On a lighter note. We are in the midst of a building project for our North Campus at Beulahland and it is really coming together. There is no foundation, no skeleton framing, no subfloor or any of that but I can see the picture becoming reality. Its been a long time coming.
http://www.glorynet.net/beulah/Title0_Chapter0.html This is a video of our new construction.

I have been a memeber of "The Land" for my entire life. I can vidily remeber the late Pastor A L Hudson preaching and the church having an echo because of the few people in the church. It was good church though we had some good church. I can remember the afternoons when we would stay an hour after church just to fellowship. We were small in number but large in heart. I remember him being sick and not preaching for awhile and alot of older preacher were filling in the pulpit. Then he died. To me things went on as usaul except we had a young preacher come preach every now and then. He was really young compared to the other preachers we had been hearing. But he could sing and preach as well or better than any of those we had been hearing. he was a distant family member and I had no idea that we were looking at him to be our pastor. His father pastored the largest black church in Macon at the time and they had the best Sunday school too. We called this young man Eddie, Jr. in the family. He was only 19 and a freshmen in college and in May they had a meeting and called him as the pastor. We then knew him as Pastor E. Dewey Smith, Jr. We were still few in numbers but we had some good church. We would be in church for hours and just enjoyed it. We were traveling to other churches to celebrate their Annual Days with them and it was great to be going as a church. We adopted the theme "A going Church for a Coing Christ". After 3 years we were stuffed in that small A-frame church that only sat about 200 at best.
We then purchased land with the intent to build but God had other plans. Pastor Smith say an ad for a church for sale in the paper one Saturday and investigated to find that we could only imagine building of that size for the price. But we were out of money. He petitioned the people and we raised the neccesary funds to aquire the loan for the edifice. We raised the money and moved into our Newberg Location facility in June of 1994. We have been in it every since. Pastor Smith lead our church until December of 2003. In January of 2004 Pastor Maurice Watson was in school at Beeson Divinty School in Alabama and came to fill in the pulpit for us at Beulahland and priclaimed "I am not a candidate". Well we prayed and the rest is history. He came in April of 2004 and by February 2005 we had started our South Campus. By August of 2006 we were moving into our new constructed South Campus. Our membership has more almost tripled in four years. We have more than 5500 member now and are still growing. Through the sound biblical preching and awesome praise and worship we are continuing to do the work that God has ordained for us to do. Our church hadn't built a building since our first sanctuary. In August of this year we broke groud for our new North Campus and its all to the glory of God. We do have a some good church now too.

Last 2 Weeks

2008-10-28T17:26:00.001-07:00

Wow!! What an awesome Sunday I had this week. i had the oppurtunity to preach for my pastor this past Sunday at our 7:30 am service. It went well I preached the message I had previously preached at our 10:00 am service. The rest of the line up for Sunday was as follows
8:30 am - Min Henry Kennedy - Minister of Congregational Care - South Campus
10:00 am & 11:45 am - Dr. Diane Hollings - Director of Christian Ed/Ministry Development
I then had the priviledge of preaching at the Stinsonville Baptist Church for there Annual Family and Friends Day. It was an awesome experience. Their youth choir sung and they rocked the house. I preached a message entitled "The Must of the Matter" from Acts 14:22. I pray it blessed someone's spirit.
I spoke with our former youth pastor and someone I consider a dear friend Min Reginald Bell who left Macon in August to attend the University of Memphis to get his PHd in communications. He told me last week he joined a church in Memphis pastored by Brandon Porter and on this past Sunday he got an oppurtunity to preach at an evening service and he killed everything that was sitting, standing or looking. I am so happy for him because he truely has a gift and a word for the nations. May the Lord be with him.
I have to teach our corporate Bible Study this week at our North Campus. I have to find a text and subject to teach on.

Another Great Sunday

2008-10-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

The Lord is good and His mercy is everlasting.

This Sunday was an awesome Sunday at Beulahland Bible Church. We had two guest speakers for the morning services. At our 7:30 am service we had Pastor L Christopher Solomon (who is also an attorney) from the Beulah Hill Baptist Church in Tifton, GA. He preached on Sampson and the title was, "Failure isn't Final." For the remaining services we had Pastor Tony Sanders from Koinonia Worship Center Church in Omaha, Nebraska. At the 10:00 am service he preached from the text about about the ten lepers titled "I just want to say Thank You". For the 11:45 service he preached from Jeremiah dealing with the call and the servents inability to avoid it.

After service my wife and I went to do communion with a member who is homebound. We also visited with my grandmother who is still in a nursing facility for rehabilitation since she has had hip replacement surgery.

We then went to dinner with two couple friends of ours Pastor Marshall and Davieta Maybry and Minister Walter and Quinyanna Kearse. The Kearse's hosted and the dinner was great. We throughly enjoyed the evening.

We went home and prepared for Refreshing & Renewal Revival 2008.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

2008-10-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

Sunday was a pretty good day. Church was good all day. Our senior pastor was out of town preaching at an annual engagement at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington D.C. where Dr H. Beecher Hicks is the Senior Pastor. Dr. Hicks came to us back in June and really preached it was an awesome experience. On Sunday I preached the 10:00 am service at our North Campus. I preached out of I Kings 18 "D-Day Decision Day". Two people made a committement to Christ.

After service my wife and I went to dinner at Golden Corral. For those who know I don't eat out on Sunday but this was pretty good because we hadn't cooked and weren't going to. We only saw a few Beulahland members while dining and really enjoyed ourselves. We then went home to take a nap.

We were awoken by the arrival of our neices Kayla (2 years old) and Taylor (4 months). We baby sat while my sister took the rest of the family to the Georgia National Fair in Perry. They came with us to a concert at the church. The concert was entitled "A Step Back in Time". The concert featured some of Macon's finest community choirs from the 70s, 80s and 90s. They included the HV Johnson Singers, Melodic Voices, Young Angelics, Ultimate Choice, Gospel Movement, and HV Johnson Juniors. It was an awesome concert they sung 16 songs but the time flew by. We had a mishap and the memorial candles wax fell on the carpet but we got it up and there are no rements of such today. The day ended as it began in the presence of God.

Sunday Preparation

2008-10-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

This will be a short one tonight (I hope).

I am preparing to minister tomorrow at our 10:00 am service and I am finishing some late night studying and finalizing my sermon and I must say it has taken a life of its own. I have preached this message before in narrative form at our South Campus but this will be the first time I preach it in expository form and at our North Campus.

Let me give you some information about our church. We are under the leadership of Dr. Maurice Watson (one of the premier preachers on this age). I have been a member of the same church my entire life and I now serve as a full time staff minister. We have two locations one in Macon and the other is in Warner Robins about 20 minutes away. We currently have four services each Sunday 7:30 am; 10:00 am and 11:45 am in Macon and 8:30 am in Warner Robins. Although numbers don't matter our 10:00 am service is by far our largest with at least 1100 people in attendance. I am always nervous and anxious to preach but this time is different. God has been speaking in strange ways and I am not quite sure I am ready to submit to the next phase of God. i know its not an option but I still have reservations.

Well let me get back to the case in point the sermon. I'll be preaching from I Kings 19 about Elijah's encounter on Mt Carmel. I have heard at least 3 sermons from this scripture this week but none really dealt with it the way I intend to do. But God reserves the right to change my plans when He gets ready. I think well I know I am pretty well prepared and I am ready for the preaching moment. At least then I can breath easier and get a sigh of relief.

I guess I may as well give some info on my day today. It started teaching a Children's New Member's Class this morning. I had 11 children under 12 years old and the class went well. I can truly say they are ready to be baptized next Sunday. After the class I went to the live recording of Evangelist Cynthia Givens of Word of Salvation Ministries in Macon, GA. It was a great experience done in a spirit of excellence and the songs were really great. My wife had the pleasure of backing her up on the recording. Afterwards my wife and I went to dinner with a couple friend of ours the Mabry's who are new parents of a beautiful baby girl Hayden-Marie Dorthy Mabry. After a great dinner we went to the hospital to see a friend and co-laborer who is in the hospital. Once we got there I saw a church member and went to pray with her grandmother, Grace McGhee (I solicit your prayers for her). While we prayed her granddaughter who we came to pray with eyes were filled with tears as I prayed. We comforted her and went to see Min Kearse. He was in good spirits and we stayed and fellowshipped for awhile. We left around 9 and I started studying afterwards.

Tomorrow is a long day. Church at least 3 times maybe 4. We then have a dinner to attend of the family of one of the mothers who passed last month and I had the opportunity to preach her eulogy. After which we must go to the nursing home to see my grandmother who is recovering from hip replacement. Tomorrow night at 6:00 pm there will be a concert at our church to benefit the battered women's shelter. The choir of the concert is made up of former community choirs in Macon and Middle Ga it promises to be an exciting concert.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

2008-10-07T19:04:00.001-07:00

This past Sunday was really great. My wife and I attended two of the services at Beulahland and then traveled to Milledgeville, Ga and attended the 2nd Pastoral Anniversary for a friend of mine Pastor Shedrick D Ellington.

The services were great at Beulahland. We had a very special guest Dr. Bill Crouch of Georgetown College. He came and spoke about the oppurtunities for minority students at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentuky. It was inspirational but its sad that I am too old to participate. Pastor Watson preached a sermon entitled "Take the Load Off" out of I Peter 5:7. The message was great and over 15 people united with the church in response to the message.

The Anniversary service was an afternoon service. I would like to say congratulations to Pastor Shedrick D Ellington of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Milledgeville, GA. It started 30 minutes late. I was the Worship Leader for the program and moved it quickly. The special guest was Pastor Derrick Dumas and the Greater Lizzieboro Baptist Church of Macon, GA. He preached a good message out of II Chronicles. Overall the service was meaningful and mindful of time.

After church we went to visit my wife's grandparents. It was good to see them and her grandmother Barbara cooked a wonderful meal that we throughly enjoyed. We actually enjoyed it for two days.

I have to preach this Sunday at Beulahland at the 10:00 am service. I look forward to the oppurtunity and ask for prayers to perform this task.

Passing of a Public Servant

2008-10-04T19:22:00.000-07:00

This week I had the opportunity to participate and assist in the final arrangements of Charles Dudley.

Charles Dudley, a former Macon city councilman and police officer whose public service was marked by his advocacy for children and the Unionville community, died Monday at a local
hospital.

He was 58. The cause of death was a blood clot and respiratory failure, Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said. Dudley had been admitted to The Medical Center of Central Georgia for undisclosed medical reasons. A friend of the family, Kecia Morris, said Dudley was hospitalized after complaining of shortness of breath Sept. 17 and that his condition had worsened since then.

For about 18 years, Dudley represented the city's fourth ward. First elected in 1987, he served through 2005 before leaving in the middle of his last term to take a job as the police department's truancy coordinator.

"He was always interested in the community," said longtime Unionville activist Dorothy Johnson. "He worked with the kids. His slogan was 'save the kids.' He would have a day with them. He solicited funds for the Unionville Improvement Association. ... He was a wonderful person, a wonderful person. It's a shock."

Bibb County school board member Tommy Barnes remembered Dudley as "always looking out for the little guy."

"He was very active and cared about Unionville," Barnes said. "I saw him three or four months ago at the Frank Johnson gym working with kids. He was outside talking to them about staying in school."

On the council, Dudley was highly respected and known to be thorough in his business, said Councilman Ed DeFore, who had already occupied a council seat for nearly 16 years when Dudley first arrived. He said Dudley was instrumental in bringing to Macon the Miracle League, a baseball league for disabled children.

Dudley also excelled at brokering compromises among his colleagues, putting together the coalitions needed to get done work he felt was important, DeFore said. And when that wasn't possible, Dudley was not one to hold a grudge.

"It's tough to lose a good leader like he was," DeFore said. "It's sad. It's sad."
Mayor Robert Reichert, who was elected to the council the same year as Dudley and served nearly four years with him, also described him as easy to work with.

"I remember him fondly," Reichert said. "Always pleasurable, gregarious, outgoing. And he had a contagious laugh."

As a member and chairman of the council's Public Safety Committee, Dudley was able to put his law enforcement experience and expertise to use. It was a committee he was interested in immediately after taking office. And it was one he continued to think about after he left, said Councilman Virgil Watkins, the current Public Safety Committee chairman and occupant of the same Ward IV seat Dudley held.

"When I got that, he was more excited than I was," Watkins said. Dudley would frequently call the young councilman to school him on the background of various issues, and Watkins said he has spent hours at Dudley's house jawing about local politics.

"He knew it well, and he enjoyed it," Watkins said. "He was a good man. He worked hard for the community, really hard. He definitely loved Macon."

Years before joining the council, Dudley patrolled the streets as a Macon police officer. And he made a mark in his eight years with the department.

In 1976, Dudley spearheaded a class-action lawsuit in response to the treatment of black officers in the department. The lawsuit was eventually settled in 1981 for $500,000 and a consent decree that required the city to maintain a 31 percent minority representation across a range of departments and job levels.

Dudley eventually rose to the rank of detective sergeant. Gary Collins, now the police chief for Mercer University, was his partner when Dudley joined the detective squad.

"All I can say was that he was a heck of a policeman and a good guy all around," Collins said. "He was humble and very bright. He was a great investigator and a good person. He believed in what was right and believed in speaking up for what he believed in."

Collins said he and Dudley often went out into the community to meet with people, which was helpful in getting information for cases. It also gave Collins an early peek at Dudley's political prowess.

"I knew Charles was going to be successful in politics," Collins said. "He would meet with people, and they got to know him."

While on the force, Dudley was cited for heroism several times. In 1981, a photographer from The Telegraph captured Dudley talking down an armed robbery suspect who was pointing a gun to his own head and threatening suicide. That same year, Dudley helped rescue two female hostages from an armed robbery at a local Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Former Mayor George Israel created the Mayor's Award for Superior Achievement for his efforts.

"He was always a good police officer," said Mike Carswell, deputy chief of police. "He was a decorated police officer. He was on the SWAT team. He was very vocal about equal rights and not afraid to speak up for what was right."

But despite his success, Dudley's tenure in the department was cut short. In 1982, he was fired following his arrest for DUI in Jones County. Although a judge threw out the charges, Dudley did not keep his post because he had not told supervisors about the arrest when it happened. Dudley sued the city for reinstatement but was unsuccessful.

Dudley also had a DUI conviction in 1994 while a member of the council. He voluntarily entered a hospital for alcohol addiction treatment.

After leaving his job as a police officer, Dudley worked several years for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. He left after the company closed its Macon plant in 2005, returning to the police department as coordinator for its truancy program.

"I think he saw that if you talked to anybody in jail, he could tie a lot of those individuals to school truancy issues," said Bibb County schools Deputy Superintendent Sylvia McGee. "He saw that was an indicator."

Dudley worked, through a city truancy grant, at Bruce, Burghard, Ingram-Pye and Burke elementary schools and found students who were absent from school. He knocked on their doors, McGee said.

"He did home visits," she said. "He got incentives, food coupons and bicycles donated to use as rewards. It was about pulling all the pieces together to make a difference."
In the final years of Mayor Jack Ellis' administration, Ellis made Dudley his liaison to the Macon City Council.

Ellis and Dudley butted heads in 2001, when as a councilman Dudley wanted to post "Stop the Killing" signs in city parks to promote an anti-violence message. Dudley had already led a campaign that printed 30,000 similarly marked bumper stickers.

Even though they disagreed, they maintained a mutual respect, Ellis said, and he had "a great deal" of confidence and trust in Dudley. Everyone who knew Dudley, said Ellis, "will know that he always put the community first, that he had a genuine love, caring and concern for the people that he represented."

"He did make a difference in the lives of people."

That was the article in the paper . . .

I had the opportunist to assist his children in planning his final arrangements in such a way that would be fitting for a man who had done so much for the community. I personally knew him and the work that he did in the community for children. I was a recipient of many of the activities and funds that he brought to the Unionville community. It was a somber yet uplifting service. He died suddenly without much warning. He had been attending our church for a number of years but had never joined. I was contacted on the Monday of his passing and asked if our Pastor Dr. Maurice Watson would be able to preach the funeral and if not would I do it. I was taken back by the invitation but assured the family that if Pastor Watson was available he would perform the services. He agreed and did a great job with the Eulogy comparing his service to that of Martha as she served Jesus at the passover meal. Our choir sang and our ushers served so it may as well have been a Beulahland service but it technically wasn't. He will be sorely missed and I ask that everyone keep his family and the community in your prayers.

Why Start a Blog

2008-10-04T18:57:00.000-07:00

Why Blog? Why share my personal thoughts with the world?

It's simple yet complicated to discern the reason for this blog and the coming posts. There are several reasons to start blogging including improving my writing skills, learning to express myself through written word and i plan to use this a long term archive of events of my life for future reference.

i am not that great of a writer. In fact it could use some improvement to say the least. I have in the past written in a journal but throughout adulthood that practice has ceased and I now have to start back writing down my thoughts. As I continue my christian pilgrimage I know that writing and expressing myself will be tantamount to my continual success in ministry. I have to continue to develop the fundamentals of writing in order to perfect the skill. Therefore I'm starting to blog!

I have been told in the past that I'm a non expressive person. As a man I have been taught to avoid displaying emotions and feeling so its hard for me to express myself at times. I am now trying earnestly to better express myself. Let me add that it's not hard to tell how I feel but I am not expressive you just have to see me to know how I'm feeling. I plan to address that through this blog. That's why I'm starting to blog!

I plan to be used by God mightily through His Church and in the community. As the years past and I can no longer recall all the events of my life I want to be able to look back at this blog and recap the places I've been and the events of the ministry of that God has given me. I plan to use this as a tool to one day write my memoirs. This is why I'm starting to BLOG!!