This is a pretty big weekend for me. It is to be my last Sunday services with my beloved congregation at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church.Several events will mark this celebration. A luncheon is scheduled for this afternoon, which will give us an opportunity to fellowship with one another outside of the formal setting of a worship service. Dr. R.A. Williams, pastor of the McCoy Memorial Baptist Church of Los Angeles, was scheduled to speak. But he is not feeling and will not be able to attend. Please remember him in your prayers. Tuesday, we asked Dr. A.D. Iverson of...

I have often mentioned the Church Council of MSMBC on this blog. Here is a picture of me and the guys that I received this evening. It was taken on the occasion of my 15th pastoral anniversary at Mt. Sinai. These men have served with me throughout the years. And it has been one of the great joys of my life to shepherd MSMBC alongside these godly men. My friends. My brothers. From left to right: Anthony, Charles, Phil, John, H.B., Todd, Richey, Harry, & Marcellus. A hat tip to Venus for the picture.

Over the years of my ministry to MSMBC, I have taught that Christ is the head of the church. And he exercises his authority the a plurality of godly leaders. That is the clear teaching of the New Testament concerning spiritual leadership. No church is to be a "one-man show." While one man should definite take the lead in shepherding the church, there should be a team of godly men around him to hold him accountable and share the burden of pastoral leadership. Most churches that operate as I have described above call this group a board of elders. We...

God willing, I will continue my series on "Total-Life Stewardship" this Sunday. I am nearing the end. And it is pretty interesting how this series has been growing on me as the weeks have gone by. Sunday's message will be the next to last in the series. I plan to speak on the stewardship of our (spiritual) gifts. 1 Peter 4:10-11 is the foundational text for this message. It says: "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves,...

The Mt. Sinai Church website has been updated. Browse around it and learn more about our church when you get the opportunity. The most important feature I want you to know about it is the audio messages that you can listen to for free. Actually, this is one of the primary reasons why we updated the site – so that we will be able to put more material on the website more easily... for free. Approximately two years of teaching and preaching is in the "sermons" section. And you should be able to subscribe to our messages as podcasts, as...

Last night, our congregation met at our new location for the first time. Three congregations are going through a transition at the same time in this process – Mt. Sinai, the congregation purchasing our facility, and the congregation whose facilities we are purchasing. And to do our part to accommodate everyone, we have switched our midweek service from Tuesdays to Wednesdays. And we have begun meeting at our new location on Wednesdays. We hope to be fully moved into our new location over the next several months. For most of the members who attended last night’s service, it was their...

I usually give a “State of the Church Address” each year at Mt. Sinai, during the first midweek service resumes. We call it our “Vision Night” service. But I chose to delay that message this year, not really knowing if I would ever actually get to it. Our congregation is in the midst of a relocation process. The Lord has been answering our prayers and doing great things on our behalf. But these first weeks of the new year have also been rather challenging. We delayed our final planning that would have been completed in October or November, trusting that...

This coming Sunday I will begin a new sermon series that I am calling "Total-Life Stewardship: Being Faithful with a Borrowed Life." The bottom-line of Christian stewardship is simply that God owns everything. We are just stewards (or managers) of the things we possess. And this stewardship involves more than just our time, talents, and treasures - even though it definitely includes these fundamental things. Christian stewardship involves every area of our lives. It is required of stewards that one be found faithful. And one day we will have to answer to the Lord for how we have lived our...

Tonight we will have our annual “Vision Night” service at MSMBC. This is what we call our first midweek service each year. We worship God together in songs of praise. We spend an extended and focused time in prayer for our health, mission, and development of our church. And I usually give a “State of the Church Address.” These meetings have been a special time in the life over the years. And I expect tonight’s meeting to be no different. May God smile on our time together tonight.

Here are some pictures from this past weekend. Clint, Ronald, H.B., Barry, Reginald.H.B. and Natalie H.B. (III) and NatalieH.B. and Dr. John A. Reed, Jr. H.B. (III), Natalie, H.B., Crystal (and the one in the "oven")

It is the end of a long, good day. I am winding down now, preparing for bed. At this point, it’s been more than twenty-four hours since I have slept. I pulled an all-nighter last night to finish my message for our Thanksgiving Day service this morning. My message was on the story of Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 9. I was going to call it, “Surprised by Grace.” I did not get to preach my message this morning. Our Thanksgiving service is the one service of the year our congregation has open-floor testimonies. The past several years, I have been...

Yesterday, we celebrated 65 years of God's faithfulness in and through the Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church. Our guest speaker was Paul Felix, who is a professor at The Master's Seminary and the president of the Los Angeles Bible Training School. Prof. Felix delivered a challenging and powerful message from 1 Thessalonians 4:14-15, calling on us to heed the six exhortations in those two verses, that we might be a "healing community." Stellar preaching! He also led a mass study during our Sunday School hour, calling on us to make a new/deeper commitment to personal Bible Study. I was personally...