A Brief History and Biography Of a Country Boy

Professional Ministerial and Pastoral Experience for L. Duaine Allen 3.23.2004 Reverend L. Duaine & Pamela J. Allen
1. 1946-1965 Johnsburg NY Birth, Home, Farm, Church, School, Education, Salvation, Call Of God, Work and Family Life Experiences,

I enjoyed playing, biking, forts, tree houses, mountain climbing, jogging & hiking
I experienced the call of God…
I experienced salvation…
I enjoyed pastoring in… I enjoyed pastoring in…
I enjoyed Schools in… Johnsburg One-Room School, Johnsburg Central
I enjoyed family life… Meals, Games, Rides, Visits, Holidays, Family Altar,
I enjoyed work in the woods, fields, barns, pens, coops, churches,
I enjoyed youth groups in…Word of Life, Wesleyan Youth & Wesleyan Camp

I Am Telling About Gleaning Life-Lessons From Grampa and Gramma Allen, Though they were poor, they were rich!
Posted by Reverend Retsel Eniaud Nella, PhD on May 1, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
I Am Telling About Gleaning “Life-Lessons” From Grandpa & Grandma Allen’s… They were poor but they were rich!
Grandpa Allen becomes very ill and he is confined to twenty-four hours a day, bed-care. While I was pastoring a Wesleyan Methodist Church in Charles City IA, I flew home on some other urgent family business. I wanted to visit him. I went by his farm-home; it was dark and dank. I learned that he was at his son’s, my Uncle George’s family-home; Aunt Harriet, a professional caregiver was lovingly nursing, feeding, and tending Grandpa Allen. I found him homesick for the past and he literally begged me, as he had many others, to take him back home. It was my opinion, that he did not just mean, back to the farm-home, but back to the secure healthy happy past, the home he had planned for, loved, lived in, and remembered. Even though knowing that he was fading in mind, when he pled with me to take him back home, it tore at my heart… Though full of faith in God, he preferred the place and peace in his warmly remembered home-bed, known with Grandma Allen. Though many were around him, he felt lonely. He said to me, “Duaine, if you ever loved me, listen to me. I want to go to my home. I do not want to die here. Please take me to my own home. You are one who will listen to me and obey me”. “What a timely compliment!” “I want to go home and die there”, he said to me. I thought, “Why hadn’t he asked me to go split a dozen full-cords of firewood, or milk a dozen cows, or dig a dozen bushels of potatoes?” I had always done whatever he had asked, as perfectly as possible. “Not this time!” With a tortured soul, I prayed with him. I hugged him, kissed his forehead, shook his hand, while his eyes looked into my heart, waiting, waiting… and I finally squeezed his hand again, and slid my from his, and said, “Good-bye”! This was the other time, I knew he felt angry, and betrayed. Broken-heartedly, I had to depart for my next flight from the Albany Airport, and leave him there in that warm, clean soft hospital bed, under excellent expert care. On the flight home, I cried. Upon my return to Iowa, I received the agonizing phone call, informing me that Grandpa Allen had died. I could not even get to his funeral! I loved him! We grandchildren felt the loss of one of life’s rare grandfathers, Grandpa Allen. I remembered my last visit with him, when I reconciled myself to his heaven going, the life he lived, and death he died, and the heart and mind full his “Life-Lessons”!
I began to mull over my thoughts and memories about these wonderful people, the Grandparents and one-by-one this narrative took shape. They spent their daily routines at simply living. It occurred to me that most of life was just doing what life demanded; merely to stay alive… that was their lives’ work. They took for granted so much we will never know. We take for granted so much that they never knew! I will forever live grateful to them for all the “Life-Lessons” they taught, by their precepts and by their examples… by just being whom they were. Pretension did not exist in their humble world of country-life, where character, reputation, hard work, faith, family, and friends defined their wealth, worth, and what they treasured.
“Life-Lessons” are confirmed in this life, through the lives of others, and by God. However, from the lives they had lived, they seemingly innately understood the prerequisites far beyond a good college education… even without one, for the familiar to us factors like team endeavors, for divisions of specialized labor, for setting agendas, for establishing priorities, for budget control by increasing income, or decreasing expenses, and all this without a board of directors. Moreover, we computer savvy grandchildren talk in a language they did not know; about multitasking, stock advances, major accomplishments, blackberry calendars, extensive travels, and personal influence. The hard-working Grandparents perfectly, harmoniously followed their calendars according to the day in the year, on the wall calendar, “The Farmer’s Almanac”, and they had gotten every job done, on time, and learned from the “Life-Lessons” taught to them, those same ones they taught to us. Their life’s experiences, confirmed, “Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How” had concise answers! “What you do, and what you do not do, again!” “What to be and what not to be”! What really matters, is not what changes, but what never changes, those “a priori” assumptions of faith written in the fabric of the Universe, for all.
They blew out the lamps and turned on the lights. They took off the muddy boots and put on the polished shoes. They paved their dirt roads. They traded in their icebox for a “Frigidaire”. They got three pounds of “Sue Bee” honey in a bail-wire pail rather than from a wild bee tree-hive. They put the “broom and pan” in the corner and turned on the “Electrolux”. They had hung up their grain-sack garments and put on “Spiegel’s Catalogue” offerings. They laid down their ‘pen and paper’ and answered the telephone. They took down their horse barn and put up a tractor garage. They bought hunting and fishing licenses. They grew with their age! But, the much they retained, we retain! Nevertheless, they lived quiet happy satisfied lives. They read the Newspapers: “The North Creek News Enterprise”, “The Glens Falls Post Star”, “The Grit”, and always “The Farmer’s Almanac”. They read the Bible every day after breakfast and prayed together, before he went out to his day’s work.
Time marches forward, inevitably altering all things familiar to them in the temporal, but establishing and confirming the absolutes in the eternal. Probably they would have preferred to turn the calendars back, rather than forward, not because they despised progress, but they genuinely questioningly pondered, “If or not the apparent advances were in fact improvements and advantageous. Their own grandparents knew Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and the influence of the Civil War. Their own generation had endured the plagues of war during, World Wars 1 & 2, the Great Depression, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam War. Grandpa Allen had lived through “the horse and buggy” and “trips to the moon and back”. Orientation to their time in history, and its reality conflicted with new assumptions and cultures, mores and habits, methods and the “whys and wherefores”. Their generation witnessed the inventions or introductions of television, telephone, electric power, paved roads, indoor plumbing, and transitions from kitchen wood stoves with hot water reservoirs to ranges, and independent hot water heaters. However, at their times of death, their “Life-Lessons”, were their secure foundations, absolute assumptions, and their Christian faith!
With them, and theirs, I ponder, “Has, what is forever important, changed… really?” Does progress necessitate trampling our history with disdain or is our own history rather built upon the very foundations, that were safe, strong, good, and secure, for them, a history of “Life-Lessons”, upon which we must build. They taught us that we must both value, “Doing and Being”, That is doing good things, and being good in heart, in motive, and nature. “Temporal and Eternal”, it is not either, or, but, both and! Right? Yes they both assumed the worth and value, both intrinsic, and extrinsic, in everything, everybody, everytime, and everywhere… “Don’t do it right just because I am right here… do it right, because you are right here, and ‘He is!”
An Interlude and a musing about musings: My musings are surrounding some special people, my Grandparents. From their by-gone era, they have conveyed to me a profound legacy, which I dare to share with you. These are honest recollections from my vivid memories from these people, places, things, and events, circumstances, and conversations. I am aware that any two people, including husband and wife, children, siblings, friends and relatives remember the same event and report it differently, and that is, as it must be. Many of the things that I share here will omit some of the things you might include and value more, and I interpret my observations and experiences differently than you might. As in all of my writings, I want absolute genuineness and factual accuracy in true-life authenticity. However, in perceptions and experiences I must and can only report what I know. My Brother Ron read this, and on some of the reported conversations, he was also present but focused on something else. When, for example, one evening Dad and his boys were visiting with Grandpa Allen standing on the Garnet Lake Road near his home. We were on the house-side directly across from Grandpa Allen’s driveway to his barns. I asked Grandpa Allen about that bright whiteness in the heavens that spread across the sky from one side to the other, while making a broad sweeping gesture. This night was most clear, with a crisp brilliant starry sky. He answered me in detail, while Dad had gotten into the car and brought it up beside us. Right then and there, Ron and Tim where playing with Grandpa Allen’s dog, throwing the stick for “Lady” the cow dog, to fetch, and tussling with her. Grandpa Allen continued to answer me about the Milky Way, and Constellations, by name and the Big and Little Dippers and The North Star. Though they were there, my younger brothers did not hear these pieces of information that I reveled in and appreciated, not because they did not care or hear, but because their focus was upon “Lady” and play and not the sky.
The below photos are of my Grandparents: John & Hester Dalaba, my Maternal Grandparents and George & Cora Allen, my Paternal Grandparents. Both families had nine children and both of my parents are each the fifth child in their families. Both families lived on the same Chatimac Mountain ridge about two miles apart. Dalabas had two boys, Lyndon and Oliver and seven girls, Violet, Blossom, Pansy, Daisy, Rose, (Who is my mother), Fern, and Carnation (or Carnata or Candy is also in the picture above), and they were known by his teasing brothers as, “John Dalaba’s Flower Garden”. Allens had one girl, Mary the eldest and eight boys, Frances, Harold, Arnold, Lester, (Who is my Father), Gerald, Keith, George, and Joseph Lee (Also in the picture above.) Two of the Allen boys married two of the Dalaba girls, Harold & Pansy and Lester & Rose.
Crane Mountain on Garnet Lake Road Johnsburg NY GRANDPARENTS

Dalaba – My Maternal Grandparents – John & Hester Allen – My Paternal Grandparents – George & Cora
Our Grandparents were Much Loved: I loved my Grandparents greatly, as did all of us, their fortunate grandchildren. We also knew that they loved us, all of us. Almost all that I tell about the Allens, in my musings could also be true for the Dalabas. Like all grandparents, I suppose, ours wanted the best for each of us, as they so often communicated it and quite plainly, “Now pay attention!” “On the other hand, you must learn this!” “You will need to know this!” “I want to tell you something that you must never forget!” “Did not I tell you?”
Grandparents Teach “Life-Lessons”: They needed us to learn all we possibly could from the much they had to teach us. They acted, as with conviction, that they must augment our schools and our parent’s teaching and influence, that is, especially while we were their young grandchildren. Grandparents are not exactly the same as our parents, are they? I suspect, partly because they are older, and wiser, and seemingly possessing a whole lot more patience and even time, despite the fact that they were always busy and possibly because they usually only had one or two or three of us at once and even that only for a relatively short time on any given visit and whenever. However, for me it seemed easier to learn a lot from them, more quickly. They managed to convince us that we must understand, so that we could be good and profitable citizens and prepared for our own lives when we reached adulthood responsibility, which I remembered thinking, “That is forever and a long way away!” “Little did I know what they knew?
Grandparents’ Profound Influence, Proliferates: They all remain an incredible influence in my life, though Grandma Cora May (Millington) Allen passed away in 1965 and Grandpa George Fayette Allen passed away in 1975. Grandpa John Nobel Dalaba died when I was five years old in 1951 and Grandma Hester Bavarlestone (Rist) Dalaba, died in 1989 when she was 93 years old and I was 43. The Dalabas had forty-one grandchildren and the Allens had forty-nine grandchildren, so subtracting double cousins and siblings, I had 65 first cousins and we all were and remain close friends and enjoy reunions, visits, and holidays. I loved and respected all of my sixteen aunts and sixteen uncles. We all frequently visited each other and remained secure, gracious, and amorous.
Grandparents were Good People, Living Their Own “Life-Lessons”: Practicing what they preached, our Grandparents were all very good people. The Dalabas were Pentecostal Holiness folk, and the Allens, Wesleyan Methodists. Both were hard working farmers, nearby friends, and neighbors and to us, superb grandparents. All four of my grandparents were born in the late 1800s. However, I have very nice memories and fine things to say and share about all four of my grandparents this story is mostly about my Allen Grandparents and especially, Grandpa George Fayette Allen. I will tell you only what I know, and saw, and heard.
This “A MEMO” is an interjection written in 1981, ‘copied and pasted’ here from my own letter to my brother Tim.
“A MEMO” From LA CA and About Back Home,
on “The Farm”” Adirondacks Johnsburg NY:
from the desk of Lester DUAINE ALLEN
I left my Childhood-home, the Family, the Farm and the Grandparents in 1965 to go to college.
Fifteen years later it began to come back to me of my childhood life and its real worth to me!
July 30, 1981 Duaine & Pamela Allen and our Family 21127 New Hampshire Torrance, CA 90502
To My Very Dear Brother Tim and Sister Cindy, Brian and Serena,
I write warm Christian greetings to all of you. God bless you dear folks. It was heartwarming to receive your lovely letter. Tim, we have to do this kind of thing more often. Every line of your letter was a genuine delight to read. Thursday night, that is tonight, I got home from work at about 6:15 PM, and we sat down for family dinner and after saying grace (as you well know… an Allen tradition). I asked Pamela the regular questions, “Honey Pam”, I said, “Did we have any phone calls or visitors?” Moreover, she said, “No, there were no phone calls or visitors and I haven’t checked the mail box yet”. Well, you know how I always anticipate “fan mail”, love letters, phone bills and the like, so I excused myself and made my way in a quick manner, and lifted the lid on our house-wall POBox just outside the front door, and what a perfect surprise for me, and I shouted, “Well, praise the Lord!” “What is it? What is it?” They all asked, all five of them. “Well,” I said“, here is a genuine, valid, bona-fide letter from the East coast, and I do declare, if my eyes tell me the truth, it’s a letter from Tim & Cindy”. Well, with no time wasted, I served the family each their plateful of Pamela’s perfect kitchen best and then I picked up your letter and read to the entire family. Your epistle was welcomed and appreciated. You can imagine how perfectly the timing and the message. Your letter had a part for everyone. You both can be certain; it was a very special gift, to see their hearts warm, as Uncle Tim and Aunt Cindy cared enough to write to them. Thanks; write again, would you please? It was a blessing. You will by now have received a letter from the West Coast that was a general epistle written once and copied by Xerox and mailed to about two dozen families – Allens, Tices, Dalabas and friends. A little impersonal perhaps, but at least it shared some information with lots of “Kith and Kin”, easily and quickly.
We like it here very much. Geographically, we are about seven miles from the Pacific Ocean at Redondo Beach on our west. We are near Long Beach and the Queen Mary, and LA harbor, on our south, about eight miles, downtown LA, on our north, LAX (or LA International Airport), right near by, Watts where the race riots broke out and spread countrywide.
The Goodyear blimps are a mile from our house. There are four such blimps. A blimp flies over our house 20 to 30 times every day at 30-minute intervals some days. I gave Dad a brochure about the blimps, but I did not tell him the Home Base Blimp-Pad is only about a mile away. Culturally, in our last home in Sylmar CA we lived (near 70%) with a Mexican population. Here in our new home, Torrance CA and our new church in Gardena CA we live with about 30% White (like us) – 30% Negro – 30% Oriental – and 10% Mexican and foreigners. “If I ever thought about being a missionary… I am NOW it!” In our present Christian school, GVCS, that I superintend, these are the exact percentages we at GVCS, must maintain, that I have written for general population. The weather in our new home is about 15 to 20 degrees cooler here than our last home for four years in the scorching San Fernando Valley in Sylmar CA, neighbor to the Mojave Desert. However, here too we will receive the same hot dry winds, those strong annual autumns’ “Santa Anna Winds”, and blowing desert sands fifty miles per hour for two weeks straight. The Pacific Ocean tempers our new climate nicely. Most often, it is foggy in the AM, hot and sunny in the PM and cooler in the evening tempered with the ocean breezes. We now contend with a cloud formation, I doubt you can comprehend, “SMOG”. The Nation’s freeway systems began here in southern California, in this large megalopolis comprised of 80 separate cities, covering four hundred square miles, and is well developed and travel through it, is easy, yet at 60 mph it still takes 2 hours from east to west from one side to the other and the same north to south.
In the “LA Basin”, we are not too far from famous places like: “Knott’s Berry Farm”, “Disney Land”, “Busch Gardens”, “Universal Studios”, “Magic Mountain”, “Water World”, the Pacific Ocean, “The Griffith Observatory Park”, the six famous cemeteries, each built with specific themes, “The Forest Lawns”, “The San Andres Fault”, “The Angeles Crest Forests”, “The Santa Monica”, “The San Gabriel” and “The San Bernardino Mountains”, “The Mojave Desert”, “Cathedrals” “The Towers”, “The Museums”, The Pavilions”, “The Convention Centers”, “The Bonaventura”, “The Huntington Memorial Library”, “The Rose Bowl”, “Jet Propulsion Laboratories”, and some of the largest churches, libraries, shopping malls in America, lots of responsibility, and good income, (But I’m Still Homesick).
What more could a country-boy want?
“You can take the boy off the farm, but you can never take the farm out of the boy.” That is an ancient cliché, but it is a cliché because it has withstood the test of time and I will attest to its veracity. You folks live in heaven, and do not even know it. I am still a little homesick! All of LA is reclaimed desert and all trees are planted and fragile, and in our front lawn between sidewalk and pavement, in the berm, and those trees belong to the city, … you can look at them and maybe even dare to touch them, but watch out!
I have wanted my children to know what you and I grew up with and knew! I want them to know, the same joys, delights, the same freedoms, the beauties, the scenes of nature, the buildings of dams, the making of tree houses, the swimming in the creeks that we dammed up with stones, rocks and sod, the running loose with the dog, the running foot-loose and fancy free, picking roses or wild flowers for mom or the slinging of the crusty cow-flops, the original Frisbees, the sling shots, the bow and arrows, the cedar darts, the fire-crackers, the playing with the tractor and the doodlebugs, whether hitched to a plow, disc, trailer, old auto hood, or wagon, or not, the feeling that the entire out-of-doors was ours, the playing with our cousins and neighbors (without fears of drugs, murders, sex, sadists, homos, that’s enough), playing in the dark, the hide-and-seek or the capture the flag games, or the climbing out on the roof in the moonlight, or sliding down “Barney Hill” at fifty miles an hour, the playing in the hay mow, the chasing of the pigs, the milking of the cows, the feeding of the chickens, the wonder of chrysalises and butterflies, discovery of little mice nests, with the mom and pop, mouse and the wee little ones, the picking of the apples, berries and cherries, the maple syrup making, the smell of smoke from a stove wood fire, the camp fire, or the sugar house fire, or burning brush, the plowing of the fields or the snows, the hoeing of the corn and potatoes, the blowing of the ? Baritone B-Flat horn, the building of the radio kit for a “super heterodyne five circuit radio receiver” for shop classes, or remember riding on Ferdinand, our bull calf’s back until he’d stop so quickly we’d fall off his back into the grassy pasture, the monthly cutting of the trees so we could each sell one cord of pulp at $17.00 per cord and buy our own school clothes, shoes, pants and shirts, the carrying of the water on the tractor for home and farm, the digging of the potatoes, even the ugly parts like, the slaughtering of the meats, the visits to Grandpa and Grandma Allens & Grandpa and Grandma Dalaba-Capwills, and the visiting of our home churches on the way to our visit, the churches that we loved and still love. Remember how many wonderful times we were sitting on the creek banks or down on the beaver dams and just sitting there and just thinking and talking and praying and dreaming, just loving life and breathing in clean air and enjoying four distinct seasons, listening to the sounds of nature, and just pausing to reminisce? Not yet aware that life could be other than this, elsewhere. Yet, I know God has called me into the ministry and I am convinced and believe that my children will love life and learn just as much as you and I did, about life and love it and enjoy it as much as we. I do not know how; I cannot even imagine how, but I believe God is a good God and does this for all his ministers and their families. I’ll never get used to the fact that the houses are so close that when my neighbor’s phone rings, and I answer mine; when he lays in bed and tells his wife “I love you”, Pamela turns head to me and says, “Duaine, I love you, too!” when scolding my children, the neighbors’ begin to cry. (There is not much exaggeration, either.) They call New York City, the Big Apple – Sin City; they call Chicago, the Windy City – business city; they call Miami, a hot retirement village. Well, LA in the Land of Make Believe, and it is not just Disney. Back home in our rural and in most suburban areas, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors know each other well and care much. What is real is family-love and friendships, a stable support system for individuals, genuine relationships, long and deep! If someone goes to another’s house for a meal, everyone knows about it. It will be in the, “The North Creek News Enterprise”. People care. They even know when you light your lamp or flush your stool. Out here, the opposite poses a problem for so many. Nobody seems to know anybody else and many family units seem broken; each man, woman and child seems to be left, fending for himself, and on the freeways all sixteen lanes wide seem filled with lonely drivers, all in a big hurry to get there, somewhere, anywhere.
Thursday 14th 2010 at 1:10pm •

Lester Duaine Allen
TODAY’S NORTH CREEK NY POLL: Are you still loving winter or are you ready for Spring?
I love all four seasons of the year in my home turf, back in the Adirondacks and the North Creek Area. I always enjoyed winter immensely… I even had to chop a hole through the frozen-over creeks’ ice for our live stock to drink their fill, or to carry a 33 gallon barrel on the tractor tow bar filled with many pails of ice cold water from that hole and carried back to the barn. I loved to transport hay from one barn on the tractor and trailer to another in the snow. I loved to plow snow with the tractor. I loved to play in the forests with my brothers and cousins building brush huts we covered with snow. I loved to slide down Barney Hill with the Church Youth Groups, 20-30-40 kids on toboggans, hand-sleighs, over-inflated truck tire inner tubes. I loved to ice skate on the ice covered Kibby and Mill Creeks, just above the beaver dams. I accepted the bitter cold challenges tackling the chores at 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM before & after school, daily and before & after Church Services on Sundays, and before & after all youth groups’ activities on Saturdays. I enjoyed felling trees, with my brothers and cousins, to buy school clothes at roughly $17.00/ per cord of paper pulp wood, or firewood for the home fires, using the chain saws, tractors and trailers… I willingly though maybe begrudgingly) endured the axe, sledgehammers and malls and wedges for fire-wood preparation. (A splitting maul (or mall) is a heavy, long-handled hammer used for splitting a piece of wood along its grain. One side of its head is like a sledgehammer, and the other side is like an axe. In some countries it is also called a block buster, but in Adirondack Country it is a mall.) On days colder than 40°we all wore thermal undergarments and wool socks and mittens (which kept our feet & hands warm while dry or wet), and most of us wore either heavy leather shoes oiled from the mines stores, or their rubber boots for the very cold weather. Properly dressed the cold was a part of living life in the Adirondacks, and as accepted, after all back then we didn’t know any other possibility existed. Especially fun were hundreds of ‘Hide and Seek’ games in fresh snow and at night in bright moon light. Yep, I still love winter… But mind you well, I will also have equally nice things to say about Spring, Summer and Autumn. Duaine Allen 1946
Thu at 4:16pm .
I know why I am here, though! Sin is big, but I preach God’s Word and see “good things happen”. Most adults leave for work early before rush hour traffic-jams, so our school has morning day-care at 7 AM until 9 AM, with breakfast, then school from ( AM until 3 PM, with lunch, and then day-care from 3 PM until 7 PM, with dinner. The kids often fall asleep on the way home, they tell us, as they ride home with equally fatigued parents. We serve hot delicious, nutritious meals, three times daily, plus snacks. Many of these students are here twelve hours per day. I have been here one month this week and I have led over 300 of these precious schoolchildren in the sinner’s prayer throughout this school of six hundred-fifty students, and visiting in each class through-out the days. On the playground, in the corridors, in the classrooms, wherever and whenever, we meet them, they seem to want to know acceptance, worth, security, friendship, and just a little minute of personal time to tell or to ask about something, wondering if anyone really cares and if anyone really loves them. We assure them that Jesus does love them and that we do too! I really love you. You are forever my family. Write Soon, Won’t You, Duaine
Grandparents’ information sources brought them closer to their changing world. They loved and used the orange-yellow “Farmer’s Almanac” and appreciated its recommendations. I saw them refer to it occasionally, and heard them ask each other, “What did the “Farmer’s Almanac” say? They got the “Grit” newspaper from Tommy Armstrong, a near neighbor up towards Garnet Lake, and by the end of the week, they could report its contents, nearly verbatim. Because they lived in the mountain valleys with no direct line of sight to any TV transmission-towers, the best TV reception from their best antenna approximated snowy images faintly visible, and its sounds usually noisy static, during their entire lifetime. There big brown radio connected them to their outside world.
They chatted with a new breed of information source, the door-to-door peddlers… who were driving about the countryside in new station wagons, with product offerings now readily available in our stores. However, peddlers also brought with them new tidbits of information, insights, and opinions, from life about the county and beyond. With Grandma Allen’s apron money, she purchased an “Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner” from one such fellow. This occasioned one of the only times I heard them tiff, about anything. Grandpa Allen declared, “But we don’t have any rugs!” Grandma Allen retorted right back, but we sure have a whole lot of floors, with sawdust, bark, dirt, and stuff coming in from out-of-doors, somehow.” She continued, “Besides, he told me that this new broom thingy would sweep it all up.” They sat down, prayed grace and shared their meal together… though Grandpa Allen, a notorious tease, did enjoy sharing this story with each new guest for quite sometime, even two or three times. Even Grandma Allen saw the humor in it all.
Grandpa Allen finishes his dinner… Grandpa Allen’s own massive steel wheeled tractor was way too cumbersome for these haying fields and therefore would not be in use on this haying-day. With his permission and with a great sense of pride, I had taken “Barney and Cub” down to the river to drink their fill for the day’s chores in the haying field. When I returned with the harnessed team, I stepped into their kitchen just as he was finishing his dinner-lunch. Oh my, the satisfying smells alone were an intense temptation to invite myself to their table… though I restrained myself! I observed him taking one of Grandma Allen’s canning jars, full of a quart of his fresh milk and drinking the whole quart, at once. He finished the home-fried potatoes, salted, and peppered, fried in Grandma Allen’s own churned butter. I noticed that Grandma Allen put cream in her tea and in his coffee. He ate his last bites of venison and fresh homemade bread. He sopped his bread in some homemade current-jelly and tearing off another piece of bread, sopped some in his own maple syrup, in a saucer. I noticed that the syrup left in the saucer, he drank. His salad was a whole carrot and a handful of fresh green stalked onions. Most of us, of their forty-nine grandchildren almost never ate at their table though we often enjoyed some of our best chats during visits at their mealtimes.
Especially influential was this story about being a Gleaner from Grandpa Allen’s, “A Haying Field Lesson”.
This is the “Haying Field Lesson”: This story took place one beautiful summer day, the kind of blue-sky, fluffy cloud, gentle breeze ideal day on loan from heaven, when my father and we, his children, Ron and Tim and our cousins, Jim and Dave and I, Duaine were helping in the haying fields on Clifford Cross’s farm, typically. Dad had just gotten this new “Farmall Cub Tractor” and tools for loose hay, a sulky haying rake, and a loose hay haying loader. We were helping Grandpa Allen whose team of horses, “Barney and Cub”, were standing on this opportunity in the shade under the edge-fields dense maples, standing and ready, hitched to a haying wagon, awaiting the next command from my Grandpa Allen. Dad proudly and with delight whisked his new tools about the field, first raking up and down the field’s invisible corridors making rows of hay mounds and next straddling these mounded rows with his small pneumatic rubber tired tractor, wagon, and haying loader in tow. Some of the grandsons were in the haying wagon with Dad making load, but with side-racks. I had ridden the sulky rake behind Dad’s tractor making the mounded rows.
Now I was with my Grandpa Allen, and his team, “Barney and Cub’. With a three tined pitchfork in my hands, as he had in his, and I was learning and he was teaching me, how to make a square load with this loose hay that would stay on the wagon piled high during the miles back to the barn’s haylofts. He artistically weaved the forkfuls of hay into tightly woven bundles and placed in patchwork patters that tied the whole load together. Old-fashioned… yes but it had worked for him for many years. From the ground, Grandpa Allen advanced the horses about the field, simply with ‘Giddy-Yup” or “Whoa There” or “Gee, and Haw” with astounding proficiency, until both wagons were now loaded. Again and yet another trip, with horses, tractor and both wagons full of hay, we went back to the barn.

The Barn swallows welcomed us with their commanding calls back to their barn… as Grandpa Allen’s horses and wagon pulled onto the barn floor beside the humongous bay on the right, and the lofts above the milking barn on the left. Above the milking barn, the hay would also serve as insulation for the animals during the forth-coming winter months when temperatures could frequent zero and below. Whether to the team of horses’ Whipple-tree or to the tractor’s tow bar, the rope would affix and that long strong rope passed through a barn window up to the pulley in the barn’s peak over the center of the bay. The rope passed through that pulley and down to the new load of hay. At this end of the rope, four huge forks tines, attached, which were skillfully pushed down into the loose hay, not too deeply, and not to shallowly. The horses or the tractor would pull the rope forward, lifting from the load of hay, the first forkful. Quite like a giant hand, the hay would lift from the load. Raised high from the wagon, the forkful would swing from the load in the middle of the barn floor out into the large bay when Grandpa Allen would pull the trip cord. The large handful of loose hay would drop and near miss those of us mowing away with pitchforks, putting the hay evenly about the bay into the four corners and in between until the load was offed. The forkfuls of hay would broadly swing back and forth until it was above where it needed to drop into the lowest place. The falling hay blew vast clouds of hay, dusts and seeds swirling about us, visible in the bright sunlight coming through cracks in the barn-board walls and whirling and twirling in and out of the light and shadows, peppering us sweaty fellows, blanketing us with layers of field-dust. We anticipated a cool swim in the Mill Creek after haying daily, just to rinse off sweat and chaff. Grandpa Allen commanded the tractors, the horses, the boys, and the men with polite but certain calls, understood by all and obeyed instantly, lest injury should haunt us, and for necessity to accomplish the jobs.
The men respected us, the boys and granted us responsibility with the tractor and the next load. On this beautiful waning summer day, we returned to the same fields from whence we had loaded six loads of hay into the bay. We could all see and we all judged that that there was nearly another whole load left. What was left on the field was raked into windrows, and upon our arrival to the field, we eager young beavers proceeded to make this load by ourselves, while the men cooled in the shade of large maples and they leaned against the field stone wall, and stood with the horses sipping Grandma Allen’s sweetened iced tea, tainted with mint leaves, sharing a chit-chat of glorious other days.
Grandpa Allen teaches a life-lesson about gleanings.
Grandpa Allen began to teach his most valuable life-lesson for the day. When we excitedly and proudly had finished with finesse this seventh load, our own last load of hay for the day, and the field was now visibly bare we drove our tractor hauled load over to the men under the maples with some pride, distinction and quite some measure of satisfaction, expressing to ourselves and them, “A job well done… ayah?” When the anticipated, “A job well done!” did not come back, but rather, “The job is not yet finished!” I remember feeling, “aught oh!” “Aught Oh!” It was then that Grandpa Allen began to teach his most valuable life-lesson for the day.
In my own mind, I rehearsed lessons for the day. I thought that we had already learned plenty, even on that very day; “riding this new loose haying rake”, “using this new loose haying loader”, “learning the proper careful use of the pitch-forks”, “making the loads of loose hay tie together”, “sharing turns at each station and responsibility”, “pitching on”, “making load”, “the unloading”, “mowing away”, “obedience to each succinct command”, “quite like the horses”, I thought to myself and yet, one more life-lesson and job, we did not perceive and could not have conceived. At first, when Grandpa Allen instructed all of us to go and retrieve the hand-held haying rakes with wooded teeth, one for each of us, with the instructions to go over the entire field by hand, from the far edge and to rake this way with these hand tools, for the last load. I thought, “Grandpa Allen, the field is clearly empty.” I wondered to myself, “Grandpa Allen, are you upset or angry with us?” “Maybe for using our new tractor, instead of the team, and tools, or maybe we had talked too much, or maybe we had unwittingly disobeyed a vocal command.” Such thoughts coursed through my mind. But without voicing any of this, we kids and the men all obediently began raking the empty field, and, “low and behold”, as we raked together from across this empty field, I was astounded that we gathered another full load of hay, and this was our eighth and largest load of these fields, and all from what Grandpa Allen called, “The gleanings”.
Grandpa Allen had taught another life-lesson and this one was about gleanings. This one “life-lesson”, would characterize my ministry, and, has since 1964, until now, and in large measure, even defines it. I have gone about this country raking up the gleanings with equal joy and energy, as on the day Grandpa Allen taught us about gleanings… gleanings from every country, town, little village, and cities… helping these gleaned ones to find homes, pews, podiums, benches, stations, factories, mines, mills, stores, farms, jobs, pulpits, families, and friends, rural, city and suburban. That life-lesson, learned that day, I realized, was the “life-lesson”, that would define my life’s work, my pastoral office, and my evangelistic ministry.
Grandma Cora May (Millington) Allen: My Grandma Cora May (Millington) Allen was deeply loved and much cherished by all who knew her. Grandma Allen was very special to me. She was a churchwoman and she never wanted to miss church, but Grandpa Allen rarely ever attended church. Grandma Allen loved God, and Church and Sunday School and following the morning service, an assembly, called by the Wesleyan Methodists, “The Class Meeting”, in which every church member weekly stood in turn, and gave a testimony, quoting a newly learned scripture, sharing prayer requests, confessing to temptations or failures and making reaffirmation of their commitment to God. This was in the John Wesley tradition required of the members of his “Methodist Holy Clubs”. Grandma Allen also attended mid-week Prayer meetings, Bible Studies, revival, and missionary services. Grandma Allen was tender of heart and spontaneous in worship, deeply convicted and frequently, she raised a white handkerchief as a flag, and waved it about while singing in reverence or testifying of her love for God. Commonly, while sitting with her in Church, I observed that during services, in her sweet tenderness, she usually spoke softly, meaningfully, tearfully and reverentially. She always requested prayer for and prayed for the salvations of every one of her friends and relatives, weekly.
Grandma Allen was also intent in typical “Life-Lessons”, teaching whoever might be there with her. She taught about making soap, or jams, jellies and fruit preserves or canning venison or orchard fruits and garden vegetables. She would take us to her garden with her and a hoe for each one and she taught the art of hoeing weeds and banking potatoes right there beside her, or she would give each of a pail and we would pick beans together. Later we would sit on the stone steps just outside her kitchen door snapping those green and yellow beans. She taught us the making of sourdough pancakes or small curd cottage cheese on the back of the kitchen wood stove. She taught about well water hardened with high mineral content or soft spring water, fresh as rain but from deep within the earth. She taught boy, or girl, how to mop or sweep or to hang curtains or carry firewood, correctly. She taught about making bread, cornbread, and biscuits, and flavorful stews, soups and gravies, and quenching switchels, a sweet gingery vinegary beverage to cut summer thirst. Switchel, also called switzel, swizzle, or ginger-water a haymaker’s punch or switchy, and it is a drink made of water mixed with vinegar, and often seasoned with ginger, with honey, sugar, brown sugar, or maple syrup were sometimes used to sweeten the drink and sometimes molasses. Sweet root beer sodas, were common and coffees and teas, white and sweet. In addition, by team effort they produced some apple ciders. Grandpa Allen preferred his cider chilled, with just a little bite, not sour and not fermented.
A race was never announced, but subtly, it was understood, … with both Grandparents, that it should be, “bean for bean” or “hoe for hoe” or “tit for tat” and so all was accomplished, by cooperative team-effort. Life was and all happened and the sun shone, and the animals giving birth, grazed, and the rains rained and the leaves budded, swelled, fruited, colored and dropped. The snows snowed and trees budded again and grew. Their “Life-Lessons” trained me, fascinated me, and enhanced all of us their enamored grandchildren.
Grandpa Allen tended the livestock, his herd of cows, claves, horses, swine, and poultry . After milking the cows at six AM and six PM he separated some of the milk into cream and skim milk, from his milk in her kitchen, on the DeLavel Separator. He explained that he cranked at precisely sixty crank-revolutions per minute on the clock. This was the perfect speed to separate the cream and the skim milk. The skim milk and the cream poured out of the two spouts into separate crocks.
Grandma Allen keeps busy churning butter and mopping her kitchen floor. Her sister, Aunt Inez during a brief visit, share a chat while mopping the floors. Grandma Allen warmed the cream on her kitchen-table near the windows, to catch the morning sunlight and then churned the cream into butter, paddled it, salted it, molded it into one-pound blocks, wrapped in wax paper, and sold it. She preferred a large wooden salad bowl, as her butter bowl, for expressing the excess buttermilk. Then salting it to taste, mostly for preservation to protect it from becoming rancid, then she molded it in wooden molds for measuring and shaping the butter, before wrapping.
Grandma Allen gives a Pulpit Bible for a college kid’s classes: One Sunday while we were at church, Grandma Allen asked me to come by the farm-home on Monday to have lunch with her. She wanted to give me some things and to talk with me about my future and my college plans. I told her that I had applied to and had been accepted at three colleges, Houghton, Marion, and Roberts Wesleyan. From my birth, according to a little tidbit, she shortly shared with me, she anticipated that I might become a preacher. The next day, she said to me, “When you go to college, you may be able to use these tools”. Grandma Allen then gave to me several Sunday School Bible Lesson books that she had paid many cents for, each, and some challenging missionary stories. She had used these books, marking them quite methodically, I observed, as I thumbed through each one, standing together, with her. This was a tender moment.
Grandmothers dedicate a Grandson to God: She again told me a story about when my other Grandmother, Grandma Dalaba, and she Grandma Allen, had traveled together to visit my mother and me, at my birth. Grandma Allen told me that they laid their hands on me, prayed for me, and blessed me, a new infant. Because, both had together dedicated me to the Lord, right there, in the Glens Falls Hospital, she now encouraged me, saying that it did not surprise her that I was now seriously considering becoming a minister. (Uncle Sam discharged my Dad just two days after my birth, she remembered.)
Grandma Allen again, prays for me. I had mentioned to her about my quandaries about the ministry, whether or not I should become a minister. She again tenderly laid her hands on me, one hand on each arm, while we were standing together. (I mention this standing, because at that time, her health disallowed her much standing.) She fervently prayed for my decisions and my future ministry and me, for the wife I would marry and for the family I would have, and for the life, I would live. Then, and since then, I counted this experience both, as a blessing and as a prophecy. I still cherish those holy moments and that prayer was a sacred gift and as a profound promise from God. I reveled in this blessed, prophetic, and captured moment. She subsequently asked me to share in the value of these items in the box that she was giving to me, items that she cherished.
Grandma Allen said, “I know that you will value and use these items.” “I hope that they will help you.” She continued, “Our pastor, Pastor Robert C. Finley was about to raze our neighboring Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church building, the one just up the road, and she gestured. He gave this Pulpit Bible to me from that Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church. I know that you will value and use these”, she repeated, moist-eyed and sentimentally! I did rely upon that very Pulpit Bible, an 1877 edition, for my college career in ministerial studies. I still have it right here with me. Fortunately, it had several valuable tools not readily available elsewhere, including detailed outlines of every book and chapter of the whole Bible and it gave a superb synopsis of the messages of the entire Bible, by major subjects.
Grandma Allen continued with her brief history lesson of our own church’s background. “That church building had been a vital link in the “Underground Railroad”, she continued, “The Wesleyan Methodist Church” broke from the Methodist Church on that very issue, slavery. We did not appreciate the concept of others being used as slaves, and we did our part to help many slaves secure freedom up in Canada”. “During the time of my own grandparents,” she explained to me, “slaves would come to the local churches before dawn, and leave after dark. She continued this amazing story, “Having been well fed, tended, bathed, laundered, mended, and loved, then they were sent onto their next station, rested and with a bag of abundance for their harsh journey, north to freedom and Canada”.
Just a few short months after my Lunch-Chat with Grandma Allen, she became increasingly ill. She continued to encourage all others and herself, rehearsing Psalms 91. There on her bed, and what became her deathbed, she retold a war story about Uncle Gerald, while on the battlefield during World War 2. She had faithfully prayed for each of her family daily! Nevertheless, on one particular night, she knew that God so convicted her to wake up and to pray, and pray she did, and not for her several sons in the same war, but specifically, to pray for Gerald. She and he, noticed the time, corresponded by mail, and verified that it was at that exact time. He was in a fierce battlefield fight and took a bullet in the chest, while on the far side of the globe, far away from her. She had slipped out of her warm bed; this very same bed, and out into the cold and onto her knees in fervent intercessory prayer for Gerald. We have all heard Psalms 91 used by her as the prayer she prayed for Gerald that night. We have all heard about the pocket Bible he had in his shirt pocket that arrested that potentially lethal bullet. It has been proudly on display for all to see, since then, and it is to the amazement for all of us; to correlate the time of the bullet and the time of her prayer and the Psalm. That the bullet stopped at Psalms 91, right in his shirt pocket Bible, the prayer she believed! I have held it in my own hands. Uncle Gerald displayed his proudest war souvenir token on his mantle clock shelf always. Rightfully so, Grandma Allen glorified God, for that souvenir token was to her, answered prayer. The “Life-Lessons” she taught still teach!
(Psalms 91 New Living Translation) Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. This I declare of the LORD: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I am trusting him. For he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from the fatal plague. He will shield you with his wings. He will shelter you with his feathers. His faithful promises are your armor and protection. Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night, nor fear the dangers of the day, nor dread the plague that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at midday. Though a thousand fall at your side, though ten thousand are dying around you, these evils will not touch you. But, you will see it with your eyes; you will see how the wicked are punished. If you make the LORD your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you; no plague will come near your dwelling. For He orders his angels to protect you, wherever you go. They will hold you with their hands to keep you from striking your foot on a stone. You will trample down lions and poisonous snakes; you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet! The LORD says, “I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue them and honor them. I will satisfy them with a long life and give them my salvation.”
Grandpa Allen calls everyone home to the family farm-home… everyone to come to their farm-home… all the family… all the friends, because she was very ill. Despite her intense illness, she spent her last moments with each one in rich apropos farewells rehearsing pleasantries. Grandma Allen slipped into a peaceful sleep and made her entrance into the heaven she anticipated. What a “Life-Lesson”!
Her passing was at the conclusion of my High School career just a few months before I left for a Wesleyan Methodist College to become a minister, and just short months after our earlier special visit. She believed and had said, “Duaine, you were dedicated to God as an infant, and you are called of God, now, as a man!” I am very glad that we had our visit, when we did! Her death cemented my heart-energies to “The Call” and focused my attention on priorities and her “Life-Lessons”.
Grandpa Allen asks questions of me, about God and faith. Some short years after my college education, ordination, and a little experience in pastorates, I had again returned home for one of many familial visits. Grandpa Allen and I connected heart to heart, as we loved to do, and we pondered together, the much behind us and the much before us. Some long time after Grandma Allen had died; he had married his second wife, Grandma Inez, one of his former schoolmates. They got along famously! I lived away a ways, during most of their marriage, and never had gotten to really know her. Shortly thereafter she too, died. He was feeling quite lonesome. Thereafter, he pretty much stayed on top of his mountain, at home, during this time and would even send others to the store for him. He frequently said, “I’ve got to stay home… I’ve got to tend the home-fires.” During his lonesomeness, he had turned his heart and thoughts towards God and the Bible, more than ever. He told me, “As one gets old and ready to die, it is not a good time to forget about God.”
Grandpa Allen invites us for a Visit. On yet another occasion, during a brief visit back in the Adirondacks, my dear cousin Stella and I went together to visit Grandpa Allen, in his farm-home, as we had done, while children. Amazingly, he asked both of us about our faith and our growth in Christian living. This surprised us both. He often had mentioned God, but not this directly. Frankly, he had left that important stuff, up to Grandma Allen. Always before it seemed that, he spoke more generally, and not so specifically. However, this was quite direct, enough so, that Stella and I both looked at each other and smiled. My beloved, honored, and valued grandfather asked me questions about God, faith, Christian living, heaven, and hell. He said to me, “Duaine, now that you have studied the Bible, in college, received ordination, and have been pastoring, I ask you to share with me some of the truth you have been learning and give to me some insights on these subjects and help me to understand more clearly”. What a daunting request! Though my Grandfather was my senior, he himself was still eager for “Life-Lessons” and insights. He was a continuing student, but I chose to chat with him on these subjects, rather than to presume sermonizing and teaching my own mentor, teacher and venerated Grandpa Allen. He told us that several months ago, he had begun a regular weekly, in-home Bible Study from some pretty devout and wonderful Christian people, and he believed that his faith was growing, but he still had some honest questions. After answering him and sharing with him, we prayed and we departed. I went back to my next assignment. Some months later, I heard that he was very lonesome and quite sick and that Mom, Aunts, Pansy and Harriet, and many others were tending him in his home. He worsened. They procured a hospital bed for his home. Then they had to move him!
Collating “Life-Lessons” from Grandpa & Grandma Allen took a life-time of their influence, learned while we were children and teenagers… I want to reminisce some of these poignant nostalgic memories.
Toy Whistles: He made toy whistles, quite like a recorder, for his grandchildren. In the springtime, he took sapling sticks from the light green/yellow stripped, Lyndon or Basswood bushes, and ingeniously crafted precise whistles for each of us. He taught us to take about a six-inch piece of the sapling stick. Demonstrating, with his sharp pocketknife he cut the bark layer only down to the wood. He made this cut about two inches from the mouthpiece end of the whistle. Then he slipped the cut bark off the wood, saving the bark, and then whittling the exposed wood, he made both a “V-groove” and a breath-notch, from the lip piece to the “V-groove”. Then he returned the bark to the wood by slipping it carefully back onto the whittled wood. Then he finished with a cut for the sound to escape, in the bark, to create the high-pitched whistle. The bark of these sapling wood sticks could only be removed from the wood, while the sap flowed, during springtime, and for only that brief time.
The Ice House, Canning Jars, and Cold Well Water: He harvested ice from nearby lakes with ice-saws and cut huge blocks of ice. With ice-hooks, he hand carried these blocks to the horses’ sleighs or wagons. Back at home, he stored the ice in the ice house attached at the back of his farmhouse. Stored, insulated in sawdust, and ready for Grandma Allen’s icebox cooler. Whenever the ice supply failed or for convenience, whatever foods needed cooling for preservation, which could not be pickled, smoked, or salted, they cooled in the well. I observed that they used glass jars with raised lettering that I traced with my fingers, “B-a-l-l”, “K-e-r-r”, or “M-a-s-o-n”. These very handy canning jars came with lids, and they found many uses and often-stored butter, milk, and any other of many food items. They tied each jar with a small long heavy twine and let it down into the well’s cold water, and tied the small ropes at the far side of the well crank.
Grandpa Allen enjoyed his life, not because he told me so, but because I observed him enjoying life. I saw him angry only a couple of times and rarely frustrated. However only on one occasion, he and she disagreed strongly, very strongly, about something, I know not what, while she stood in the door way of their home and he about twenty feet away from her in the tractor garage, kneeled down working on the tractor, and they had a lively discussion. Though a next door neighbor, and so very often there, that was the only time I saw them upset with each other. I do remember one early-spring day that was very cold, following a long bitter cold winter and the firewood supply was nearly exhausted, and he had to resupply the firewood for the home-fires. In an untypical aggravation, he accused himself for not having planned better. I realized that even with the best-laid plans and preparations, emergencies could still come up. I went with him to load the wagon. Usually, though never caught off-guard or unprepared, he felt that this time he had been. I heard his determination to preclude such a thing again. And that was that!
Grandpa Allen enjoyed his life, I observed. However, mostly, he lived life in an agreeable routine that felt comfortable to him. A pleasant man he was, to all. He appeared principled, energetic, purposed, and directed. His motivation seemed to come from within. He always knew instinctively what was next on the agenda. He was steady, not hurried, not slow. He was diligent. He was focused, conscientious, and ambitious.
Grandpa Allen’s Curiously Quipped Quotes spoke “Life-Lessons”: Quoting famous others, on many subjects, he often quipped a quote. On this occasion, he referred to using the whole tree. “Waste not; want not!” For the bitterly cold days so familiar to his home turf there in the frigid Adirondack’s winters, he prepared firewood. Nevertheless, he also used the occasion to earn cash. He sold the logs, the pulp, and some of the firewood. He wisely cut down the trees and used every part of the tree, often some of the trees’ trunks were for logs, and some parts of those trees’ upper trunks and larger branches were for pulp and the rest of those trees were for firewood. He even dried chainsaw sawdust and shavings for kindling. This amazed me. He even used the light branches and twigs as kindling and some of the leaves for mulch.
We Grandchildren were Running For The Joy Of Life, To Nowhere, For No Particular Reason: I joined cousins and kids in the fun and frolic of running afoot up and down his many, dirt roadways naturally resultant from his activities throughout his woodlands, fields, and clearings for the logs, pulp, and wood. Especially delightful, were the roadways near to Kibby and Mill Creek, and my favorite were those through his dense woods. Sometimes, the roadways were strewn with fallen leaves, bark, and rocks, or with winter snows, spring-mud, slush, and ice. Kids and we cousins, played long, hard, and often, out in Grandpa Allen’s fields, neat woods and their roadways. On a few occasions, we used doodlebugs and tractors and traced these paths. Uncles created the doodlebugs, which were severely modified auto chassis with a shortened frame and driveshaft. Uncles removed the sheet metal and the heavy hoods. The hoods slid down hill in the winter snows, or attached to a long strong rope towed behind the tractor doodlebugs, and transport large loads of firewood, barrels of water or blocks of ice or for the rides of your life. Fortunately, no one was ever hurt! The doodlebugs rear axles were just behind the drivers’ seats. They retained their engines, but supped up and tuned for the power of a tractor and the speed of a jalopy. Grandpa Allen reminded us, “Tractors are tools for work, and they are not toys for play”. “Tractors must be kept for work.” “Play with the doodlebugs, all you like, but after school, and remember work, and chores always come first. However, you must repair the ruts and banks your doodlebugs’ spinning and sliding wheels make on my roads when done! Do you hear me?” Partly jesting and partly not! “Yes Sir!”, chimed in.
Grandpa Allen’s Honey Bees were wild, on the Flowers and in the Trees: He collected honey from wild honeybees. He searched for their hives by following the workers pollinating his crops and field-flowers and his planted rows of sunflowers, along side his tractor garage and chicken coops, on the honeybees’ return trips to their hives, high up in an old tree. He listened intently for the bees humming, in the hive. He adeptly harvested the honey with specialized tools and paraphernalia, following advice from the neighbors, the Almanac and his remembered calendar for the time of the year, so that the bees could rebuild, resupply and survive.
Grandpa Allen’s “Life-Lessons” from His Barns, Pens, and Coups were Valuable: He had two barns, one for his teams of horses and one for his several milking cows. His chicken coops for housed flocks of “Rhode Island Reds” brown eggs and “White Leggers” for white eggs, produced an abundance of poultry meat and breakfast and sale eggs. His several pigpens and sheds housed his herds of field swine, in inclement weather. Producing pork was profitable. He laundered and dried hen feathers for bed pillows and feather beds. From the trees in the low pasture, he collected butternuts and walnuts for drying on the upstairs floor of his garage. Beyond what he grew, he found it to his advantage to buy some of the grains for chickens, pigs, and cows at the local “GLF” or “Grange League Federation”. The fifty and one hundred pound bags of grains came in very nice cloth, which Grandma Allen used as materials for dresses, aprons, curtains, bedding, et cetera. Grandpa Allen always used the natural occasions with the farm’s chores to teach “Life-Lessons” to his grandchildren. So, whether, in the pens, the coops, or the barns, or out in the field’s pastures, gardens and haying acres or out in the woods, where he was lumbering-logs, paper-pulping and fire-wood cutting or meat hunting, or finding and collecting wild-bees’ honey, apples, he taught valuable “Life-Lessons”. We grandchildren eagerly learned and observed these “Life-Lessons”. Now, these “Life-Lessons” are foundational for our lives, throughout, and since then… these “Life-Lessons” that worked in potato patches and haying fields work for me, in mission fields and ministry stations.
Grandpa Allens’ Smoked, Brine-Pickled, and Sugar-Cured Meats satisfy many. He maintained active hog pens, both for selling piglets and for producing pork; smoked, brine-pickled and sugar-cured. He had a large smokehouse that could hold an entire large hog hung by the heel-tendons and produced each meat-carcass smoked with the savory barks of any of several trees, cheery, hickory, maple and other flavors, and smoked to light, medium, or dark. He maintained large stone crocks for salt-brined and sugar-cured meats. He had large earthen crocks in his cellar for these salt-brines and the sugar-cures, and shared his recipes with Dad, and his other sons. Inside the earthen crocks, the cut meats would float to the top, if not weighted down, so he placed oak boards and a large rock on top of the contents of each stone-crock to keep the meats submerged. When time to bring to the kitchen a piece of pork, he’d lay it on the cutting board and carve off a piece as if to verify its perfection, and nod to Grandma, “Okay it’s ready for you to fix, whenever you need it.”
Grandpa Allen enjoyed our help as much as we enjoyed helping him: He routinely called me, or one of his other grandchildren to fetch his cows on every rainy day when the cattle would be as far away from the barn and at the farthest point in the pasture. Like the Huckleberry Finn narratives, Grandpa Allen occasionally allowed us to take turns cleaning the cow stalls and the horse barns. I watched him administer medical liniments to the horses’ legs, a thick salve, called “Bag Balm” on the cows’ teats and carefully cleaning their wounds with warm soapy waters. He took very good care of his livestock. One of the first warm sunny days of a summer vacation, with Grandma, I really enjoyed watching him train a frisky new calf to drink from a pail of milk suckling his fingers approximating its mom’s teats, submerged in the milk. I asked if I might try that, and he said, “It will hurt your fingers!” It did! That little calf sure had a big suck. When the pail was empty, the calf butted it about, playfully. He had several grandsons help him while winnowing and throwing his wheat into a humongous fan powered by the tractor’s “PTO”. The strong wind generated a gale force that blew all of the light chaff up into the air and away with the wind. All of the heavier grains, wheat, barley, millet and oats or what ever else, he was harvesting on that day would fall about the same short distance from the fan making mounds of grain. He would bag the grains in burlap and put the bags onto the wagon to take to the gristmill, for cash, barter, or flour.
Grandpa Allen’s Cellars, Bins, Racks, and Shelves: He kept his cellars dark where he filled his potato bins and apple bins. His bins were about four feet high by four feet wide by eight feet long. I believe that he told me that he could put about forty bushels in each bin. Every autumn his cellar shelves were laden with kitchen-canned goods prepared through the summer. He filled his root cellars with waxed root crops and his cabbage racks were hanging from the cellar ceiling in tightly packed rows of drying cabbage and large onions.
Grandpa Allen’s Fruits, and Berries, Wild and Tame: He picked berries for Grandma Allen to turn into table spreads. In the summertime, he invited us to go with him as he hiked up Crane Mountain to pick the plentiful blueberries, covering the mountain. He took us to the fields to pick strawberries. He took us to the briar patches, over by the old sawmills and up beside the nearby abandoned quarries and mines to pick the raspberries and the blackberries, from the abundant thriving bushes. I asked him if he had planted the briar-berry patches. “No!” “And don’t fall into the quarry; I’d have to leave you there!” In my opinion, his apple orchards were the least well-tended thing on his entire farm, but still fed the table with eating, baking, and sauce apples. On one occasion, he took us to see, his deer drunk with the fallen sour apples, staggering.
Grandma Allen’s kept her own flower garden and her own vegetable garden. She love her lilac bushes and rose bushes for the flowers, and the asparagus plants for the table, she also kept in the flower garden. She maintained her own fine seed vegetable garden. On many occasions, she invited any who came to visit to bring a hoe to her garden and hoe a couple of rows of vegetables, with her. It was like a law to them… They never said “Will you go hoe my garden? No, they both always said, “Will you go with me to hoe my garden?” She warned that if the bean-plants were wet with dew or rain, they would rust and die, if we touched them while they were wet. She took pride it the gardens, and while hoeing, talked about some story from childhood, pleasant incident, humorous anecdote, or a ‘life-lesson’.
Grandpa Allen’s Cedar shingles were for houses mostly and kids: He produced a cedar shingle with a specialized saw-attachment for his table saw powered through his tractor’s “PTO” or power-take-off pulleys via a large, wide, and heavy canvas belt daubed with thick black sticky tar. With these shingles, he shingled his entire home and garage. He also sold shingles to many others. He made a fascinating toy fashioned from a shingle dart for us with a few of these shingles that we all thoroughly enjoyed throughout our childhood. The large flat wedge-shaped shingles he whittled to the approximate shape of a ping-pong paddle. The handle being the thickest part of the dart and was the heaviest part and the pointed end of the flying dart that invariably stuck into the ground upon its return from high in the sky. The fan part was the thinnest part of the dart and became this flying rockets wing. He cut a notch in the crook at the juncture of the handle to the fin in which a knotted rope lodged. The separate piece was the launching tool, held in the right hand… a stick with a rope maybe 18” long attached at one end of the stick and knotted at the other end. With the left hand, he taught, hold the fin taunt, and aim the pointed end towards the sky and with a strong whipping motion of right hand propel the dart up, very high into the sky.
Grandparents both often taught me without me realizing they were teaching me…, as they were prone to do with each of their grandchildren. We all loved to visit with them. I visited them often. I garnered wisdom from them by their precepts and by their examples. They were wise, knowledgeable, and understanding, country-folk. They were practical and as they themselves often observed “having horse-sense” was tantamount to being smart, and probably, “a bit better than being educated, by books, but not clever enough to come in out of the rain”. They could read the Bible, newspapers and almanacs well. They could write notes and letters superbly, both having especially excellent penmanship. They could do arithmetic, to determine charges at the counter, or to settle on the board feet in logs, or an amount owed and due. However, neither had a great deal of education, beyond, “The McGuffey Readers” in their local one-room schoolhouse. Incidentally, I think that those “The McGuffey Readers” would be a challenge for most of us. Very often, I not only heard them both reading the Holy Bible to each other as they did daily after breakfast and praying together, but I heard them in casual conversation remarking about the Bible in relation to the news and recent frequent chat with relevance. Both were capably skilled well in the many facets of their lives’ work required of them habitually.
Grandparents’ Social life was at its’ country-best: On occasions, I traveled with them, and my brothers and cousins, in their little “1960 Ford Falcon”, and heard them both express satisfaction with life. Their discussions were jovial, on these infrequent visits to the stores in Johnsburg and North Creek villages. Grandpa Allen, would roll down his car door window and pretend there was a spittoon out there somewhere, and whenever he rolled down his window we dove for the other side of the car, and no one preferred to sit directly behind him for that reason. In their day, folks would gather around the potbelly stove beside the pickle and cracker barrels, to play checkers, or dominoes and mischievously, to taunt each other at the local general store. Over at the “The GLF” or “The Grange League Federation”, Grandpa Allen would join the men sitting atop the piles of bags of grain, before loading his own. They could be chewing on a cud of new tobacco, or a timothy straw or a “Juicy Fruit” or just the fat. Grandma Allen picked up some staples, from each row and carried on her own conversations with the neighbor-ladies, swapping recipes and progress reports of cellar stock, breads, gardens, curtains, and table spreads. Down at the “IGA” or “The Independent Grocers Association”, they also shopped. Often heard were remarks about the weather, the news, and maybe some recent events possibly something even cataclysmic, and earth-shaking, but usually not, but only routine exchanges.
We lived just about a quarter of a mile down the road from my Allen Grandparents. Grandpa George Fayette Allen was a respected friendly and helpful neighbor there in the rural Adirondack’s countryside where eking out a meager existence required deft, skill and intuitive persistence. At the time, my story begins, my father, Lester Earl Allen was serving Uncle Sam, during WW 2 in the Coast Guard, and two days after my birth he was honorably discharged. Several of my Dad’s brothers were also in the Navy and Army during World War 2, and at the time of my birth, my Allen Grandparents moved within Warren County NY from their farm on Chatimac to a new farm on the Garnet Lake Road in Johnsburg New York. He had moved to this new farm anticipating increased productivity on the larger acreage.
Grandpa Allen was skilled as a sawyer, a woodsman and on a few occasions for brief periods, he also worked for hire on jobs near to his farm both as a garnet miner and as a highwayman constructing and paving dirt roads, especially the road to North Creek from Sodom. However, he was forever, by his preference a farmer. When I think about my grandparents, I think mostly about what they taught me, both by their examples and by their precepts. I recall them as the presenters of “Life’s Lessons”!
Learning Integrity is His “Life-Lessons” for me on this day: From all of us he assumed personal conscientiousness, accountability, and integrity. I learned the differences between, borrowings, takings, and stealing when Grandpa Allen had changed the spark plugs in his tractor and while at his table with Dad and him, whilst they were conversing; I picked up the old plugs lying on the windowsill and played with those old plugs on his table. We heard more sonic booms overhead, from Plattsburg jets, and they were discussing those and other things. Assuming them trash, since he had replaced them with new, I took the old plugs home with me. I did not even put them in my pocket, but played with them in my hands while going home. Upon discovery, even before we got home, my father returned me with the plugs to Grandpa Allen’s home, and immediately, I had to confess to my thievery. This was a hard situation. I had not intended to steal! I did not think that I had stolen. I thought I had Grandpa Allen’s assent. I thought they were trash. I thought that if he were going to throw them away, I could make toys of them. That was so hard; I did not want to be doing this to Dad or to Grandpa Allen. It mattered to both men that I had the plugs. I knew I would never again make such unwarranted assumptions. Taking things without permission could be misunderstood, very easily, as stealing. Grandpa Allen and Dad taught me. I had to confess that I had stolen those plugs! Without declarations of my thoughts or intents and without defense, excuse, or denial, I confessed. After listening to Grandpa Allen and Dad, I felt that I had sinned. I did not have to work up any tears. They flowed. I was so deeply sorry. Dad and He forgave me for my sin. They worked together to make this a “Life-Lesson”! He refused excuses, and demanded honesty, carefulness, justice, and best efforts. He spoke God’s word, “you must avoid even the appearance of evil”. He was kind, but firm! He laid the plugs back on the windowsill, where they lay for years. I think Grandpa Allen left them there to remind me, or maybe that was just where he would know where they were. “When in doubt, don’t!” “Okay, Grandpa Allen”. “It isn’t their worth, it’s the act!” “Yes, Grandpa Allen, I understand!” He quoted, “Ask and you shall have!”
Wisdoms: “Grandpa Allen” taught us, his grandchildren, about husbandry, plants and animals, forestry, and orchards, nuts and fruit. As an Adirondack Mountain-man, he knew the life-saving significance of directions remaining conscious of compass directions, day or night, and keeping orientation of N-E-W-S while in the woods, especially. He taught the necessity of dry matches, a sharp jack knife, and being careful of thin ice over moving water, while following rivers downstream. He taught the value of finding the North Star, at night, and landmarks by day. He taught about the cycle of the seasons, vernal and autumnal equinoxes and summer and winter solstices. He taught about day and night, gaining two minutes of sunlight every day between December 21, the first day of winter, and June 21, the first day of summer, and loosing two minutes of sunlight daily from June 21 to December 21. He taught that the first days of autumn and spring were equal days of sunlight and darkness. He taught about latitude and longitude, and hours of each day measured by meridians. Intrigued himself, he taught us about the Milky Way and he told about the Almanac’s names for at least a dozen constellations of the Zodiac and others of the heavens, while pointing them out to us, on different occasions. He was fascinated, himself, as he named them: Aries (The Ram), Taurus (The Bull), Gemini (The Twins), Cancer (The Crab), Leo (The Lion), Virgo (The Virgin), Aquarius (The Water-Bearer), Pisces (The Fishes), Orion (The Hunter and His Belt), Pegasus (The Winged Horse), The Great Bear (Or the Big Dipper), The Little Bear (Or the Little Dipper). “Constellations of the Zodiac” Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 1998 Illustration © 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. [1]
He educated all of us on many captivating subjects. He spoke about how to read many of nature’s weather signs. “The red clouds of the morning dawning, come with warning, and the red clouds of the night dusking, bring delight.” “The rustling leaves of summer turning up, while the Blue Jays are squawking, announces an impending storm”. “The leaves changing color announces the geese migration”. The “fussy wussy wooly worms” are predictors of deep cold snows. “If the woolly worm’s head is more black (darker) than colored, the coldest winter months are at the beginning. If, however, the woolly worm’s coat is more black than brown, the worse winter is going to be”. “The larger the size of the ground squirrel’s stockpile and the extra bushiness in the squirrel’s tail indicates severe winter weather”. If squirrels start collecting large numbers of acorns early, that is another sign of a bad winter”. “If the hornets’ nests are high in the treetops, there is a mild winter coming, but not true if those nests are closer to the ground”. “If the anthills are high by July, a snowy winter is coming”. “If leaves seem to stay longer on the trees in the fall, it is a sign of a bad winter”. “If onionskins are thin, that means winter is supposed to be mild”. “A warm November foretells of a bad winter, however, if the first snow falls on unfrozen ground, expect a mild winter”. “Once smoke descends, fair weather ends, a smoke rising high might mean more clear skies.” He taught about fun things like training our pet dogs to fetch the cows, sticks and other kids. He answered our “Whys”, about the “salt-licks” that he stuck on a post out in the pasture, “For the livestock’s health”.
“Life-Lessons”, are practical: They never took attendance nor prepared lesson plans, but school was always in session. “Life-Lessons” just naturally emanated; “It is darkest before dawn” “You begin your barn chores at dawn and dusk” “Eat the healthy breakfast, dinner, and supper set before” “You don’t have to like it; you just have to eat it!” “Take all you want but eat all you take!” “Work hard and play fair, and be a man about it!” “Be happy, healthy, and well adjusted!” “Speak your mind, but be sure that your brain is in gear before you wag the tongue.” “Always tell the truth, even if it will get you into trouble!” “If it is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well.” “Discipline yourself and you won’t need someone else to do it for you!” “Take care of your animals first; your lives depend upon them.” “Don’t be afraid of hard work!” “Learn to take the bitter with the sweet!” “Help in carrying the load of others!” “Don’t worry about who gets the credit, just get the job done!” “Don’t fret about the halfhearted efforts of others; Shame their little efforts with your many efforts!” “Always help the weaker!” “The one carrying the load has the right of way!” “Help make it easy for the next person!” “If you open it, you close it!” “If you spill it, you wipe it up!” “If you mess it up, you clean it up!” “If you empty it, you refill it!” “If you turn it on, you turn it off!” “If you take responsibility, you are responsible!” “Take responsibility!” “Be responsible!”
Grandpa Allen teaches “Life-Lessons” about Fences and Hard Work. Lessons just happened. Hard work just was. Property boundaries just were. Certain designated territories, others, and ours, must be respected, and not only people but also animals, like the large pasture belonging to his huge bull. He taught us to, “Work smart, not hard”! “Use the, “Okanogan””. He cajoled us to act wisely and to behave well. He forbade us to conduct ourselves unthinkingly, “Think before you leap!” “Do not wear the bright red color sweater you are wearing, in that huge bull’s pasture. “Wear appropriate clothing for the job you are doing”. Respect property-boundaries marked by big massive rock wall fences between neighbors, built by rock masons. Respect field-boundaries, stone-fences marking out our fields. The field boundaries, on the other hand, are marked by stonewall fences, stones just thrown into piles and rows, from the fieldstones and rocks exposed after freezing and thawing and gathered each spring from the adjacent fields. Those stones were tugged, rolled and thrown onto his horse-drawn sliding stone-boat and thrown off onto the ever-growing stone-fences at the edge of each field along the tree lines. Often, he had remarked, while we helped him, “My farm is one of the best in the Adirondacks… for growing stone fences. Throwing an old pair to each of us, he said, “Wear these leather gloves while throwing rocks”… jesting, “I can get more work out of you!”
He even taught “Life-Lessons” about the worth of little electric wire fences. It was one beautiful Sunday afternoon that I was sauntering my way across the fields and through the woods, up to Grandpa Allen’s to join with the Sunday crowd. They usually gathered out under his front-yard apple tree on such a lovely day as this one was. Sure enough, I crossed the Kibby Creek on an old fallen log, reminiscent of a thousand times before, and just as I broke through the shaded woods, I came out into the sunny pasture. In the distance, I heard their familiar indistinct joviality and felt familiar with their kind of happy playful talking. As I meandered through the pasture, towards them, I must have caught their eye, for they all began to call to me with increasing animation, shouting. At first, I could not understand them, and then I did, “The bull is charging!” From my curious but calm oblivion, I awoke! Looking with them in panic, back over my shoulder, I felt the rushing bull, closing in upon me. A million things began rushing into my thinking. I was running now with breakneck speed, wondering, “Does that monster care about little wire fences?” I catapulted myself to the ground while rolling under that very little electric-wire-fence. Lying there on the grass, I looked back to see Thunderbolt stopping with all four feet, right at the fence, on his side. Now he was snorting, pawing and continuing to threaten me. Grateful for barely visible little wire fences, I picked myself up from the grassy pasture field, to dust off my cherry red sweater, when I exclaimed, “Grandpa Allen, I thought that you always kept “Thunderbolt” in that other pasture!” “He is just having a little Sunday visit with the cows.” Grandpa Allen said this, laughing with all of the uncles and cousins who were having the heartiest belly laughs, laughing and laughing. I tore off my cherry red sweater, rolled it into a ball, and stuffed it under my tee shirt. I had provided them with the Sunday afternoon sport and entertainment for a perfect day! I tried to enjoy this episode, and to see the humor, even though at my expense. I trembled, post facto. I am so very glad that “Thunderbolt” respected Grandpa Allen’s little wire fences! “Oh, Duaine, I trained him to do that with fences!” He explained, “When he’s young, I touched him twice… good for life!” “It goes for kids too!”
He instructed each of us to avoid his habit of “Redman” and “Beechnut” Chewing Tobaccos. He would drink from the fresh cold spring water pail and pass the dipper on to us. He had just gone to the kitchen door and used the spittoon, and pulling his big blue bandanna-handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiping his mouth, stuffing it back into its pocket and then gotten the dipper from the fresh cold spring water pail, for his drink to slake his thirst. When he passed it to me… he observed my hesitation… he asked me, “Do you feel yourself too good to share a cold drink of water with me?” However, I did not prefer to, I did… and for that, I received his approval! I learned at that moment, the worth of his approval was above that of my selfish prejudices. He was teaching us in this and multitudes of other ways to do what we don’t prefer to do… to accept others by changing ourselves without requiring others to accommodate us… to refuse to be judgmental and critical of all others in every way they might differ from our own ways. Despite his bad tobacco habit, he used situations to teach good “Life-Lessons”
Tool Maintenances, Mowing, and Bee Stings: He had just finished grinding and sharpening his tools, using his round stone grinding wheel, powered by a foot-peddle, that he cooled with dribbling water while sharpening each tooth on the mower’s cutter-bar, and his axes, spades, and shovels, and each “Scythe & Snathe”. I watched him replace some broken teeth with new on the cutter-bar using the hammer, chisel, anvil, and rivets with washers, and then he reassembled the cutter-bar. “If it’s broke fix it, ‘n if it ain’t, don’t”
One day Grandpa Allen was mowing with his team and riding the mower. While he was mowing, and with his permission we, niggling grandchildren were walking far behind him when the cutter bar sliced wide open a ground hornets-nest. My little brother Tim, closest to the team, was stung seventeen times. For some reason the others of us were only stung a couple of times. Immediately, Grandpa Allen sized up the screaming-terror behind him. He assumed responsibility. I saw him leaping from the mower, and while running, he swept up my little brother into his arms, while still running, and he carried Tim already much swollen, rushing into the farm home, where he laid him on the kitchen table, “fearing for his life”, he later told us.
He and Grandma Allen prayed softly, as she quickly made a soda paste to paint onto his stings before his transportation to North Creek, the seven miles to our Doctor Grunblat’s office. Taking care of the most important task first, is always most important!” This severe episode showed me that though he had mowing to be done, Tim took precedence. Tim received his loving and caring attention. Sometimes even harnessed horses and haying work must wait, sometimes when something else maybe even more important, than what you would prefer to be doing! His concern gripped me! Even though I thought of Grandpa Allen, as a tough hard working, very strong outdoors kind-of-guy, and though he was a man’s man, he was a good man, with a loving caring heart for all of us, his little bothersome grandkids. “Heart-Touching!” I felt of my stings, “Ouch!”
Whether he was Republican or Democrat, I really do not know… but I do remember hearing him in very animated conversations with some of his daughters-in-laws and others remarking about the 1935 Social Security Act, for some reason back in the news. I did not know what that was, but I knew he did not like it. I was a little intimidated by the intensity of this debate. My parents assured me this debate was only their entertainment and sport, but I remembered that Grandpa Allen finished his end of that conversation with his observation, “When anyone would get to that age and need it, it could very possibly, already have been spent!” “Having convictions, with strong feelings is very important, even if others disagree!”
His Discussions Entertained Us: He believed in private property and personal ownership. I heard the discussions between his company and himself on the subject regarding Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s efforts for the Adirondack National Park Agency, newly formed. I was not aware of all of this, in 1968. The Agency had wrapped itself around his private property and suggested its authority and its new laws, superseded his own rights. According to his discussions, a God-fearing, law-abiding and voting-citizen, he wrestled with his own rights, regarding his land, trees, deer, honey, apples and all else and agency rights. “These are all on my own land.” He had life long fed his family from the prevailing abundance including venison, on demand. I heard him wondering, “Who are these gentlemen down in the city demanding that we go hungry, and so these ‘city boys’ could better determine the methods for deer-herd population control?” Eventually they would all learn to live together in perfect harmony, but, “Wow”, the birthing process, reminded me of the Genesis curse on Eve’s birthing. Around Grandpa Allens Oak Scroll Stove there were many discussions solving all the problems of the world. He often jested, “If they would just listen to me!” During such chats, Grandpa Allen enjoyed munching on his roasted butternut, sunflower seeds or fresh hot buttered and salted pop corn, homegrown and freely offered to all. Though not everyone agreed with him, he maintained his opinions and equilibrium! “Yep, I knew what you think and why, but I also know what I think, and that is what I live by!”
He Casually Spoke About God: He assumed God’s existence and spoke to me so, on several occasions. I know, because I asked him specifically, and he affirmed that our daily lives depended upon God. Those who did not take time to learn the truth may not have considered him a religious man, but though never lecturing, he glorified God with conviction in brief comments, gestures, and faith-statements. While a zealous Bible-thumping teen-ager, I grilled him, respectfully, but persistently. He believed in The Bible, Creation, Salvation through Jesus Christ and Heaven and Hell, because he told me so. Regarding God’s glory replicated in nature all about us, he spontaneously listed the remarkable succession of seasons, the astounding weather patterns, the majesty of our Adirondack Mountains, the awe-inspiring cloud formations. Like this one rare instance, while Dad was backing out of Grandpa Allen’s driveway, he knocked on Dad’s car hood. He exclaimed to all of us, in the car, “You must get out, and see this awesome sight!” He had Dad back his car into his barns’ driveways, about halfway to the barns, in this, the dark of night. We all piled out to observe on that January 31 1961 evening at 6:47 PM, that brilliant blue moon, the rare second full moon in the same month that was just appearing, rising from behind Pine Mountain, just as a picturesque cloud floated into the scene with wispy tails trailing, decorating the night-heavens. I wished then that I had a camera or canvas and brush to capture this instance. The full Moon raising in the east, just behind the Pine Mountain and in front, the cloud’s Majesty struck us all, with awe! All of this beauty and power in nature is way beyond man: the snows, the winds, the rains, the bright cloudless days, the darkest overcast nights. “It is easier to believe He did it than that He didn’t!” “It is here!”
Daily Devotions before Work: After chores and breakfast and before the day’s work, He would read the Bible every morning with Grandma Allen and he would kneel by her red chair where she usually sat and they would pray aloud softly in turn with deep reverence and respect. I felt most honored, to witness them, this and to know their genuine devotion. This affected me very deeply. After their devotions, he removed his slippers and put on wool socks and rubber boots, while admonishing me to be thoughtful and careful and said, “Duaine, don’t just trust everybody who is nice to you, to truly have your best interests at heart. Be smart and keep your eyes and ears open to God. He will guide you. You can trust Him!” Then he said, “It must be nice for you to have a snow-day off from school, but I still have to go to work… come again won’t you!” After he pulled on his heavy barn coat, he was ready to face the cold and the snow. I was surprised that he pulled on woolen lined sheepskin leather mittens and not gloves. I mentioned it. He told me that they were warmer. I felt the chill surge through the front door as he exited, and I saw Grandma Allen shiver with the chilliness, and I jumped over “Lady”, the cow-dog, to get her shawl from the other chair. “We must talk to Him, while we are alive and well, if we want Him to listen when we are not!”
Important conversations just happen and most often, spontaneously: There in rural country life, few kept a social calendar or made appointments for visiting or for receiving visitors, but Grandpa Allen hosted causal drop-ins, family, friends, all neighbors, maybe coming for hair cuts, business associates and partners, the pastors, all with delightful, involved and animated conversation. Nevertheless, he did have his limit with talk. On at least one occasion, I remember Grandpa Allen adroitly saying to me, “Duaine, I hope you never loose your curiosity and your ability to ask questions!” That was usually right after I had asked one too many questions for that day. “There’s a time for talking, and then there ain’t a time for talking!”
Fishing at a New Lake: He took us fishing. Grandpa Allen’s lighthearted fun entertained us, while he taught us. It seemed to me, that whatever he did was natural, easy, fun and the right thing to do next. He seemed infatigueable. “Nothing was too hard! “Nothing was too easy!” “If it had to be done, it had to be done!” After the day’s activities and the evening’s chores and supper, on several occasions, he took several of us fishing. By kerosene lanterns, we, the kids, dug the dunghill earthworms and white grubs, got the poles and tackle boxes ready, and then we all proceeded to any of the many lakes and streams at the foot of, Eleventh, Huckleberry, and Crane Mountains. For us this was fun and sport but for him it was for a next meal. He taught about fish with scales and fish without. He taught about top or surface feeder-fish, clean scalely fish like trout, middle feeder fish, and bottom feeder or scavenger-fish, unclean smooth slippery fish, like bullheads and suckers. He wanted trout! Dad said that he would take any caught… and not to throw them back, but to put them in his fishing Creole-basket. Grandpa Allen might say, “Put him back to grow some-more. I like ‘em bigger! I want mine, filling my plate!”
The Long Walk: I fondly remember one special night when Dad, Cousin Henry, and he, took us fishing at the foot of Huckleberry Mountain at a lake, I had not known, before that night. After the cars had taken us as far as they could go, coming to gully-washed ravines, on these narrowing rutted-dirt mountain roads, we got out of the cars and slipped into the pitch-black misting darkness to relight the lanterns and begin our trek. Grandpa Allen carried his stainless steel milking pail that night, and I asked him, “Why”. He informed me that he needed a large trout to put alive in his fresh water spring to eat all bugs and intruders, back home. Moreover, he did catch a large fish that did live in his spring for years. That trek became a phenomenally pleasant unforgettable and superb long walk. In and out, each, it seemed probably a couple of miles; our swaying lanterns were casting their bouncing shadows. We kids were chattering and bantering with each other, from in line behind the men. They were walking with calculated steps and speaking deliberate thoughts to each other, evidently enjoying this trek as much as the forthcoming fishing. The mingled sounds of our boots crunching the gravel roads with the melodious night-symphonies nature presented were now enveloping us. As they spoke, a gloom began to resonant with their faintly scary “panther” and “bear” stories retold for the kids’ benefit and other yarns of vaguely mysterious animal creatures of the woods, “real and imaginary”. The sounds of the gentle raindrops splattering on the rustling leaves, in the hazily chilling breezes swaying the trees began mingling with my excitement for the fish-catch. This entire scenario etched indelibly upon my mind a valued memory. The preparing for fishing, the going fishing, the fishing, the fishing clean-up and eating the fish were all benefits of fishing and each aspect of our fishing episode was as important as all of the others!
I still cherish this country-life, the kitchen table, with the warmth of their love and this unspeakable atmosphere. I can still imagine the feel of the scales and of the smell of cleaning the caught fish. I can still feel the fried soft delicate fish flavors; moist, rolled in flour and fried in butter and those exceptional frying aroma. From any place, any time those savors, tastes, and sights create reminisces from Grandma Allen’s kitchen. Uniquely loved sensory satisfactions learned then remain deep down, where they reside to delight the heart and the palette. Those savory flavors, proffered with this trout, her fresh sourdough pancakes, served with warm butter, real maple syrup, her griddled “pomme de terre” cakes, offered with new milk gravy or sawmill-sausage gravy. “Always delicious, and nutritious, and making one feel ambitious”. The warmth of these moments and the warmth of the Grandparents’ love equaled the warmth of their home.
Maple Syrup: Annually, for the brief springtime weeks during the crisp freezing nights and the warmer sunny thawing days, when the maple sap would flow, he collected sap in buckets at the tap of tapped maple trees, and boiled down about a barrel of sap for each gallon of maple syrup produced and added nothing but fire. His maple sap-boiling table was outside in nature, out in his pasture in a natural bank and not in a sugarhouse as most others. He built his table on a metal framed stand set into the natural dirt bank to hold and control the heat produced from burning pulp-sized pieces of four-foot long, four inch diameter sticks as fuel for the syrup making. He created a generous supply of pure maple syrup, maple cream, and maple sugar-candy. The collected cold clear sap would slowly flow through a floatation valve in a controlled flow into this convoluted sap table. It had parallel panels as though one long trough, but folded back and forth upon itself. The intense fire boiled the sap in this stainless steal boiling pan and the excess water evaporated. Left behind, was the syrup. The sap flowed through the parallel panels in the stainless steal-boiling pan passing through openings at opposite ends, in the bottom corners, back and forth becoming increasingly thicker, sweeter, and browner and at the catty-corner of the table from the sap inlet; he opened the syrup outlet spickett to fill the next gallon jug with pure maple syrup. He tested the sap/syrup and right when the now ready maple syrup aproned and did not drip off his wooden ladle and on a candy thermometer, at precisely 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the boiling point of water for that day, he would fill jugs, with some of the world’s best light amber flavors, and medium amber savors. Several Cousins, at the end of the run, took over-boiled down syrup and twirled this very sticky maple-jack onto a stick, like a lollipop, of pure caramelized sugar maple flavored.
Collating “Life-Lessons”© by Duaine Allen 1946.03.02
Reverend L. Duaine Allen
Pinnacle Towers – Apartment 509 10 Cole Street – Wellsboro PA 16901-1239 (570)-723-1956

This and the following pictures are of me, my wife and our six children.

This entry was posted on May 1, 2009 at 3:10 AM and is filed under Tagged: 1950-1970s, Antiques, Bible, Christian, Church, Cows, Early American, Rural Farm Life, Family, Family History, Grandparents, Heritage, History, Hogs, Horse Farming, Insights, Lessons, Life Lessons, Pigs, Progress, Underground Rail Road, Values.

2. 1964-1965 Minister at Bakers Mills Wesleyan Church, Bakers Mills NY (Robert L. Finley) (Youth Pastor to 40 fellow-youth)

Blue Sky Lodge an orthodox Jewish Summer Resort on Schroon Lake
Tahawus National Lead Company
Mining both: ILMENITE (Iron Titanium Oxide) & MAGNETITE (Iron Oxide) Railroads, Trucks, Mills: Crusher, Dry Mill Wet Mill, Cinder Mill, Water House, Power House & Tools,
I enjoyed pastoring in…

3. 1965-1966 Minister at College Wesleyan Church, Marion IN (Melvin Gentry) (Youth Pastor to 60 in children’s church)

Retail National Tea Company Stocking Shelves, Produce & Dairy
Manufacturing RCA TV Pictures Tubes
Campus Custodial
Boys Club of America “Better to wear out than to rust out.” Teaching Pool.

I enjoyed pastoring in…

4. 1966-1967 Minister at Sims Wesleyan Church, Sims IN
(Paul Westaver) (Children and Youth Pastor to 35)

I enjoyed pastoring in…

5. 1967-1968 Minister at Lakeview Wesleyan Church, Marion IN (Eugene Cockrell, Robert McIntyre) (Youth Pastor to 100 in children’s church)

I enjoyed pastoring in…

6. 1967-1967 Minister at Wesleyan Church of Rockford, Rockford IL
(Orland Johnson) (Summer Intern Pastor to 100 people)

I enjoyed pastoring in…
7. 1968-1970 Minister at Owosso Free Methodist Church, Owosso MI (Tom Dunn For College Intern Credit) (Pastor to 250 People)

I enjoyed Wesley Smith…
I enjoyed working at GMI
I enjoyed pastoring in… The Owosso Free Methodist Church, Owosso MI

8. 1970-1973 Pastor at Corinth ‘Wesleyan Church, Corinth NY (Charles Dayton) (Pastor to 300 People)

I enjoyed Wesley Smith…
I enjoyed working at Lake Luzerne School Driving School Bus
I enjoyed pastoring in…

9. 1973 1974 Pastor at Charles City Wesleyan Church, Charles City IA
(Don Calhoun) (Pastor to 50 and grew to 120)

I enjoyed Wesley Smith…
I enjoyed pastoring in…
10. 1975-1975 Pastor at Christian Assembly Of God Middletown OH (Arthur Parsons) (Pastor to 40 and grew to 120)

I enjoyed pastoring in…

Dear Stephen,

April 30, 1976 was a momentous day in our family life… you came to live with us! We celebrated your arrival! Your birth and life was a beautiful character-development in our story and this new chapter in our “Book of Life”. You have always contributed greatly to our satisfaction and delight, even from the day of your arrival, long before conscientiously aware of your gifts to bless all others, you still did!

Your entrance fits perfectly into the ongoing saga of our own. On birthdays, and while recounting them offers opportunity to rehearse the familiar hand of God’s writings on our book’s pages, we revel in rereading those precious meanings, happenings and scenarios. Our God is ever-present manifesting His miraculous caring, loving and providing.

Stephen, we had just moved to the Assemblies of God Pastorate on Trenton-Franklin Road in Middletown, OH, observed by Jonathan, one year old, on your big sister’s third birthday on, January 14th 1975, the very same year of your big brother Michael’s birth-day, March 24th, 1975, and what seemed like short months just before your own birthday when I had just completed that same Assemblies of God Pastorate on Trenton-Franklin Road in Middletown, OH.

Michael had been conceived while we were in Charles City IA and departing there we had moved during the winter to this new prospect for ministry. In resilience, divinely imparted, we initiated this ministry with diligence, fervor, and resolve. Forty people greeted us at our beginning services and with the Hand-of-God’s blessings this small band’s growth exceeded a hundred-twenty by the time to move on came and your time to come came.

While there, employing my patterns for the weekly Home Bible Studies, several regular services, the frequent counseling sessions, the development of a youth group, swimming-pool baptismal services, the Biblical preaching on loving Discipleship-Living, the novel introduction of film to that sanctuary with a World-Premiere showing of the then new film, “Jesus” and also for their first time with amplified stereo sound with loud speakers and subsequent movies like, “The Ant keeper” and with frequent musical concerts, with the Printing of Bulletins and News Pieces, on an old “Multilith-Addressograph” with frequent altar calls and long prayer meetings, this congregation grew. This was during the height of the “Charismatic Renewal”. When FGBFI and Aglow meetings, and such seminars at Holiday Inns were frequent, people would flock to hear any new “Charismatic Kid on the block”. It did not take as much effort then, as now. Now it is 180juxtaposition or difficult to the extreme.

While I was at work Pamela had called me from the phone at a neighbor’s house, and informed me of the commence of labor and she had remembered that I should renew the license because this was the last day. She had said, “Please hurry!” So I had spent only a couple of hours in line at the motor vehicles department, all the while debating with myself if I should stay in line or come back. I got home at 4:00PM. Pamela had cooked dinner. She asked me to go and call the Ashers. They arrived very quickly. She went to bed.

Stephen your narrative happens in the context of our own. Awaiting our next assignment from God, we miraculously lived in a borrowed home on Columbia Avenue, there in Middletown, the home in which Dr. Jesus, our great physician, delivered you, into my lovingly awaiting, though trembling hands with the watchful attendance of your delivering mom.

When Mom said for me to lay down the three-page letter I was reading, for you were entering the birth canal. This letter had come from an Iowa chiropractor doctor friend informing how to deliver a baby at home. I had led him to the Lord. When I looked in at you, I first saw the top of your head covered with the natural skin-cream, then after the next push, you and I saw each other for the very first time. You had one eye open and one eye closed, face down, but looking towards me. After the next push, I panicked! I could see the cord over your shoulder and I feared the worst and that you were strangled, and that maybe the cord was wrapped around your neck. “I screamed to God, “Oh Lord God, if you have ever helped me before, so help me now!” But after the next push, you said to me, “Hi Dad, this umbilical-cord is heavy. Would you help me pull this out?”

And after the next push you were in my hands and then my arms. There you were all perfect and pink and beautiful and all covered with this soft creamy substance, I had been informed should be massaged into your lovely baby skin to keep you soft and lovely. I did not spank you! I was afraid to. Mom said, “But I think, you are supposed to”. But we, Mom and Dad both agreed that your whimpers satisfied us sufficiently that you were going to be a breathing, happy and peaceful child. And then on your own, you softly whimpered, then just a little more loudly and then you cried though never really loudly, but more as in, “I was warm and cozy and fed and now I am a little chilly and a little hungry”. So, after finishing your full body-massage, I did the cord-tying and Mom did the cord-cutting and in short order I wrapped you comfortably in a new soft blue blanket awaiting on Mom for just a short bit, and then I gave you to Mom and she lovingly looked at you, and like the present that you were to us she carefully unwrapped you and counted toes and fingers and touched you all over, owning you, and with the warmest kisses she wrapped you again, cradling you, she began to nurse you and you instinctively initiated nursing. I realized that my knees were shaking, and my heart was pounding as I opened our bedroom door into the living room to announce to our friends the Ashers, tending your siblings, that “Stephen Clark Allen” had safely arrived and eagerly, they all came for a “look see”!

December 5 2009 at 12:30pm

Lester Duaine Allen writing to Julie & Lynn,

“I want to tell you a story… it follows…”

Lester Duaine Allen Lynn, our 4th child, was your husband, our little Stephen, as you remember… he was born in our bed at home, with only the “GREAT PHYSICIAN” present. Chalmers and Doris Asher were in the next room tending Rebekah, Jonathan, and Michael, and suggested they would not be able to help out in the bedroom! They said, we will pray for you. We were in Middletown OH. We had finished the AG pastorate, in Middletown OH, and had moved into this borrowed home for one month, when Stephen, was born. Our AG insurance had expired. Our chiropractor friend, Doctor K. Enders, from Charles City Iowa, had written a letter to us… “THIS IS HOW TO DELIVER A BABY!” I sat down in a chair beside Pamela’s bed to read the three page letter, when all of a sudden, Pamela, about to give forth, her fourth, said, Duaine, the baby is coming. I extolled “I have not finished the letter yet!” “Ready of not, he is coming!” With no medication, no attendant but the Lord and me! I saw Stephen’s head’s crown… then I saw his eyes and one of them was closed… then I saw the cord… I feared that it was up around his neck, but it was just over his shoulder, and he said “Dad this is heavy, help me pull this cord!” Then amazingly, plop, he came out of the birthing canal, there in regal glory, covered with in white milky/cottage cheesy goo, called vernix, it covers the baby while it is in the uterus and protects it from being in fluid constantly. As baby’s due date approaches the vernix starts to get rubbed off. Most full term babies don’t have much left, your husband was due May 15th, and he was born April 30th, a little early. So like a body lotion, he was covered with vernix, we just rubbed his entire miniature precious body… he still loves back rubs… he did not cry, and I did not spank him, but he said, “Huh uh”!, only once, so we knew that he was alive and well. Both eyes were open and he was so content. I kissed his cheeks, and cuddled him brief seconds, and then, I laid him on his mommy’s breasts and he felt her breathing and listened to her gentle whispers of love and he went to sleep… in a few minutes he woke up hungry and began to nurse like a ‘pro’. Love ya… I did have a shoe string and boiled water as the letter had suggested, when the cord naturally ceased pulsating, I did tie it in two places, and I did not dare cut it with scissors, so Pamela did. I never did find out what the boiled water was for… I think getting the water was cathartic, so I could think I had something to do with his birth… Lynn, you are going to be fine… the doctors and nurses are important in case the delivery is breech, buttocks, feet, or some other complications, but all things being considered, you are healthy at birth; Stephen was… yours will be too! Love your other ‘DAD’ Duaine
December 5 2009 at 12:30pm •

Noreen MacDonald Conway commented on this FaceBook Note… “This is a lovely story…though, scary… it is lovely…I love you and respect you even more PAMELA.”

December 5 2009 at 1:06pm •

Though at the Realtors Office this property was on sale for a one year contract, on that very day the owners contract had ended, Presbyterian friends, attendees of our weekly Bible Studies in their neighboring village, knowing our plight with the eviction notice from the AG parsonage to be enacted at noon on March 31st 1976, despite three young children and a pregnant mom about to be delivered of you, they had invited us to move in on that Wednesday March 31st 1976. We were to live in this abode safely and securely until it should be sold. We moved in on March 31st and with Mom’s home cooking smells, decorating skills, the soft wafting stereo music and our happy family life, the Realtors next buyers bought that home on that very Friday April 2nd, 1976. We had forty-five days to relocate, before the new owners took possession. We had to receive you from the hand of the Lord in that borrowed home.

En Theos En Agape (In Dynamic Enthusiasm and In Fervent Christian Love)
Dad

1976-1977 Pastor at Calvary Assembly Of God Carthage NY (Almon Bartholomew, was District Superintendent.)
(I was Pastor to 75 my first Sunday and this church grew to 150 on my last.)

July 1976-August 1977
I enjoyed pastoring in… “Carthage NY”
“Or answering trick Questions, that have no acceptable answers”

My Dear Brother Dudley Danielson,

This is a chapter of our lives. Because we do move so very often, we deem it imperative to build substantial relationships, friendships and ministries quickly and stably! I am telling this narrative surrounding this Carthage-Pastorate, as an inside look at my perspective and the Assembly of God in Carthage NY, concurrent with our friendship.

In our most recent conversation, you asked me why I have moved so many times during my ministry, thirty-seven times during the last forty years.

I want to answer your question, honestly. I do not know that there is one answer or an easy answer. Bill Gothard, a Biblical Exhorter, profoundly influences me. Bill Gothard founder of formerly “Basic Youth Conflicts” and presently “Basic Life Principles”, teaches in His Seminar Manual, that God uses the conflicts, pains, adversities, setbacks, resistances to and hindrances in our lives ministries to require perfecting, defining and refining our life-message.

Ministry does not take place in a vacuum, does it? Our maturations develop during the game of life… not before and not after. Questions always arise as to the validity and worth of a given ministry, and now principally my own. Why have I moved so frequently? In rendering a truthful, plausible and accurate answer, what criteria are evaluated? What is the real reason for my frequent Church moves?

I substantiate my self-definition, self-defense and self-analysis based upon the kinds of Carthage-experiences that I lived through. I deem myself neither arrogant nor presumptuous to list myself with persecuted saints, Missionaries preaching in foreign fields of endeavor, faithful Ministers of the Gospel, the Apostles, each having died a martyrs death saving John, exiled to Patmos, the sweet committed to the Lord Jesus Christ characters that line the halls of “Fox’s Book of Martyrs” and multitudes of saints of all spheres of influence, and most Godly men and women who are in love with our Lord and live the life-style of Jesus Christ… not that I had lost one drop of blood, but rather specifically, I join with those prolific multitudes “persecuted for the faith” throughout the annals of Christendom.
(2 Tim 3:12 NASB) “And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” I believe that I and all other Christians “will be confronted” by our, world an “out-of-synchronization with God world” and the more Godly, we are, the more resistance, persecution we will encounter. Some have ridiculed this concept as a “persecution-complex”. However, they are not usually the kinds of Christians that move mountains, get burned at the stake, imprisoned for proclaiming Jesus, win souls for Christ and confront the prevailing world views, as true Christianity must… in my opinion!
These universal wrestlings between good and evil, right and wrong, and between authorities, personalities and situations are set in bold relief in my life, influence and ministry. Jesus is the Creator, the Son of God, the Truth and yet He wrestled with similar people and circumstance, as I have found myself wrestling. He wrestled with the Jewish leaders, Pharisees, Scribes and the Sadducees, who were the garners, protectors and enforcers of the Jewish religion. His conflicts were never with the political, military, medical, financial, academic or legal world. The Truth is Jesus. Jesus is the Truth. His Truth confronted the purported prevailing “Truth” of Jewish assumption. His presentation of “Truth” was correct and yet He thereby threatened the prevailing incorrect religious “Truth” and culture of the Jewish faith, then in vogue.

Dudley, I had loved the Carthage experience. My family and I were very happy there. We made so many friends there, and you and yours were among the closer ones. We were only four short hours of travel time from my childhood home. My parents and family were over near Lake George, on the opposite east-side of the Adirondack Forest Preserve from Carthage; it was great for us that my family and we could travel and be together occasionally.

My ministry in Carthage began while I was thirty, and this was only my fourth pastorate, so, young and quite inexperienced in ministry. I continued my early discovery of the nearly imperceptible spiritual contests waging within most of the churches. Albeit, invisible, I now know these nearly imperceptible spiritual contests exist within all churches and even people with which we have lovingly, prayerfully and diligently served. Now I am looking back over these first forty years of my ministry, spread throughout ten states, as a credentialed ordained minister within eight denominations. I find this, nearly imperceptible spiritual contest as an “a-priori” assumption, yes, true even of myself!

Parenthetically, my very dear friend, AG District Superintendent, Reverend Almon Bartholomew, who had been Zion Bible Institute Colleague and close friend with my Uncle Reverend Ollie Dalaba had delighted to offer to me this “Carthage” opportunity, at first. Nevertheless, he later cautioned me, not to accept this invitation after all, fearing that traumatic intersections were quite likely subsequent to developments. He said he was privy of something on the “invisible grape-vine,” something nearly imperceptible, but a brewing spiritual contest and caring for me, his friend’s nephew, he suggested caution. However, I honestly believed I could pastor this fine congregation, especially with Pastor and Mrs. Simmons, retired clergy elders, with whom we had mutually fallen in love and still alive and well, like my own grandparents they where there for me, and ready to assist at a moments notice… these were their reassurances.

I also was feeling some measure of desperation; my fourth child had just been born in Middletown OH after vacating the AG parsonage. He was born at home and not in a hospital, because the AG insurance had terminated at the end of that pastorate. Our son, Stephen was born with his mom, “The Great Physician and me” in attendance. Chalmer and Doris Asher were tending the older three children, 4, 2, and 1, in the next room. There we were, in a borrowed home’s bedroom. Our Wesleyan In-laws alienated from us over our charismatic-issue, now epidemic nation-wide. Our in-laws are wonderful people, but leaders within our childhood denomination, “The Wesleyan Methodists”. They took great exception to our Charismatic development.

We assured District Superintendent, Reverend Almon Bartholomew that we would seek God’s blessing to do well there, in Carthage. I was trying not to focus on our despicable plight; we were otherwise homeless and penniless. but rather endeavoring to convince him that we were worthy competent pastoral leaders. Whether we were defending our right to exist, or our call to the ministry, or our capability to pastor, we needed people to whom we could exemplify the ministry of Jesus Christ. Also in reality, we needed a home and an income, though at that time in my ministry, I would not even let my mind think of the temporal security… it was anathema! Having just left a raging storm, in OH, my naive assumptions were that any storm this close to my home could be weathered. The weather in NY had to better than in OH, besides I supposed I was most used to it.

My predecessor, Chuck Scramalie and my successor, Walter Schell and I, Duaine Allen, have been through Carthage, both receiving and granting indelible impressions. Residents, like yourselves, have a historical-people-perspective that itinerant pastors, like me, cannot.

However, after the Carthage congregational election, the Church extended a high percentage vote inviting us to come to this lovely place, and pastorate, so, we came. In that day, most other candidates required a unanimous consensus. I have never so been privileged. However moving from Middletown OH, on the very day that we had arrived in Carthage NY, with our “Ryder” moving truck holding our possessions, into the Carthage Parsonage-home, three of the Carthage Church women had met me at this Parsonage-home driveway entrance and while I was backing the truck, one of them tapped on my moving-truck window. Stopping the truck, I rolled it down. They said to me, “There is no need for you to unpack your moving truck. You will not be staying here in Carthage long enough to make it worth your while. We know that this congregation voted for you to become our next Pastor. Nevertheless, twelve of us “have the mind of the Lord.” Moreover, Bonnie Gates has told us and we know with her that, “You are not the man for here.” Therefore, if you do unpack, we will be conducting a monthly pastoral “vote of confidence.” Therefore, you will be moving away from here very shortly, so do not unpack your moving truck!”

Maybe, just maybe the, “We have minds of the Lord” group, used this holy name to envelop secret sins, shroud sexual indiscretions, and conceal ulterior motives of a sordid variety. Maybe they believed that their renaming such would mask, hide and cover the real hearts of the issues, belied by magazines, mails, phone calls, scenarios and other condemning items gradually revealed.

A wolf wearing an expensive new sheepskin coat is still a wolf. A lamb on a cross-spit is still a sacrificial lamb. “Me dost think thou dost protest too loudly”, could come from a Shakespearean Brutus because it is carnally natural for the guilty to disclaim and distance. No, that is not possible! No, they were sincere, honest, open and forthright! No I shall not disparage, ridicule nor criticize them.

The pastoral candidate that she and they preferred, the congregation had already voted down as the new pastor and he subsequently had accepted another call from the next church. This fervent band felt that the “mind of the Lord” had been thwarted. All of this occurred before they even knew of us.

True to their word, they proceeded to conduct a monthly pastoral “vote of confidence”, however, to their chagrin, each month our winning margin continually, grew. I hated that these clouds of dissensions and static tensions had to hang in the atmosphere, from the beginning to the ending of our stay in Carthage. Nevertheless, the emotional tensions, mostly on the shallower side, intensified, and they engaged increasingly drastic measures.

Despite that greeting and realizing that monthly pastoral “vote of confidence”, voting prospect, we did indeed unload our moving truck. Almon Bartholomew, District Superintendent had duly warned me of this frightful prospect and cautioned me, “Please consider this very seriously… do not accept the congregational call to pastor this church family, because I know this church’s history.” He and I stayed in close communication. I felt that I would be willing to accept this challenge if I received his blessing assuring him I would seek God’s blessing. Therefore, I proceeded to accept this call to Carthage, and moved my family. Whether I moved naively or under Divine-inspiration, only God knows for sure.

“The Carthage Assembly of God “was near “The Canadian Border”, “The Thousand Islands”, “The Saint Lawrence Seaway” and “The Adirondack Forest Preserve”, “The Fort Drum”, mines and mills, geography, history and all else, making remarkable impressions.

Blizzard: While living in Carthage, one Wednesday, I believe it was January 12, 1977 in the evening service; we had missionary guests soon to be in route to their mission station assignment in Germany, do you remember? They were staying in our lovely parsonage-home with us that night, in the guest room. This exquisite parsonage-home boasted a motel style deluxe guest room. While we were in that service a snowstorm began. The storm rapidly developed into what became a remarkable ten-day history-breaking blizzard. This unforgettable episode broke all former records for snows, winds, drifts, cold and all other winter weather records. I remember that the Tug Hill National Weather Station reported over 470 inches of snowfall that winter season. The streets and roads of Carthage were closed to all traffic except snowmobiles, foot traffic and military vehicles. One of our church’s young couples needed an eighteen-mile ride in one of Uncle Sam’s Army tanks to welcome their first in the Hospital called The Samaritan Medical Center over in Watertown NY. Near the end of this ten-day hibernation, you will remember, everyone eventually ventured out just for a walk, and we were all amazed observing a marvel happening… everyone was friendly, warmly greeting all others and actively helping each other… It was wonderful… We were snow bound with our missionary guests for the duration of this fantastic blizzard storm.

My Baptist pastor friend called me early during the storm to see how we were doing and thoughtfully enquired if we needed anything. Like most men there in the North Country during such storms, he kind of was looking for valid reason to encounter the fury of the blizzard, mostly to offset the inevitable “cabin-fever”. He mentioned a TV program that he thought we should see. He was surprised to learn that we did not own a television set. But he owned seven TVs. He carried one of his own on a toboggan to our house, trudging through this wild winter blizzard. He brought the loaner into our home and he turned the TV set on and informed us that we should see this. Alex Haley’s bestseller “Roots” was the basis for the 1977 TV premiere introduction to the “TV mini-series” that aired that week. He had also brought some tea to brew for our Germany Missionary guests and together we enjoyed this series nightly.

Chaplaincy: Carthage Parsonage-home is about five miles from one of the gates of Fort Drum, one of Uncle Sam’s military winter-training bases for the US Army. Here I had also served as an Assembly of God, “civilian US Army chaplain” and conducted weekly chapel services. This chaplaincy was an ex-officious honor, duty and distinction granted to the Carthage Calvary AG pastoral position.

This amusing anecdote happened during one weekly Fort Drum Chapel service. I requested the soldiers to observe that this would never happen again in history. I was not referring to the sermon they were about to hear; though I did intend for it to make an appropriate declaration to them for the cross of Jesus Christ, His statute of our liberty and is reminiscent of a patriotic salute to the Statue of Liberty to later find composition in the ©Words and Music by Neil Enloe, for this independence week celebration.

Statue of Liberty Words and Music by Neil Enloe

In New York Harbor stands a lady, with a torch raised to the sky,
And all who see her knows she stands for liberty for you and I
I’m so proud to be called an American, to be named with the brave and the free,
I will honor our flag and our trust in God, and the Statue of Liberty,

On lonely Golgotha stood a cross, with my Lord raised to the sky,
And all who kneel there, live forever, as all the saved can testify.
I’m so glad to be called a Christian, to be named with the ransomed and whole;
As the statue liberates the citizen, so the cross liberates the soul.

O the cross is my statue of liberty; it was there that my soul was set free;
unashamed I’ll proclaim that a rugged cross is my statue of Liberty.

No, the amusing anecdote was this… “It is now seven seconds after seven minutes after seven o’clock on the seventh day of the seventh month in seventy seven.”

At Fort Drum, different military-war games where fought and battles waged. Throughout days, weeks, and months, bomb blasts shuddered the earth, often lightening the nighttime sky. These became familiar fare.

A Traumatic Miscarriage: During one of these, days long war-games, we miscarried twins. These boys would have been our fifth and sixth children. And tantamount to the blasts and flashes of the battlefield, typically, some of the local Godly ladies concerted at the hospital to inform us of birth-control and to recommend total abstinence for a year or longer, while consoling Pamela at her bed-side, siding with her and while addressing me.

Friends in Christ Jesus: In Carthage, we had poured our genuine love and profound efforts into this little corner of God’s most beautiful creation, and into the hearts and lives of some of the finest people upon the planet. Most Carthaginians were exceptionally hospitable folk. Regrettably, we have lost contact with some of our very close and special Carthage friends. Some Carthage people remain dearest friends still throughout the years, even traveling to distant states to visit with us.

Frank Oliver traveled some 3200 miles via Greyhound to Sylmar CA to visit us at our next pastorate. He had become a Christian and he had recovered from alcoholism. He had lost some of the closeness to his family members during his alcoholic years. His heart ached with the regrets pummeling him from without and from within. We loved him and accepted him into our family, sharing many visits and meals. He just loved to drop by at 5:30 PM to chat and frequently joined in on the Parsonage-home goings-on, with our acceptance and urging.

Carmine Burdick is a delightful friend. She, a widow, mothered seven near perfect children, and we emulated her parenting skills. We want to stay in touch with her. Her frequent visits were joyous bright occasions accompanied with exquisite cuisine, and she often toted bags of groceries. We instructed her to come to church prepared to overnight in the Parsonage-Home guest room, on any occasion an evening coincided with the many lake-effect snowstorms. When we were again moving and on to Sylmar CA, we faced the prospects of paying a dollar per pound in Mayflower moving costs, so we could replace our excellent appliances with new for near the cost of moving, we left our appliances with her. She was elated and we felt good.

Bob & Judy Marolf & their family, Bobby & Amy & eldest daughter, for several years running, shared family picnics annually together with us, and during these exceptional picnics and visits, Judy kept us up on our large circle of Carthage friends, each family, as one by one were remembered to us. Despite our frequent moves, they managed to keep up with us, no matter wherever we had moved to next. We learned updates on all, especially including Lila, Judy and their younger sister, our favorite “Passages”, dear girls, reminiscent of Lydia, “the seller of purple”, in Acts to the Apostle Paul, for so they, faithfully blessed us, endeared themselves to us and ministered to us in no small ways. They frequently came to our home to prepare and share meals, babysitting our little brood, packing our stuffs and housecleaning and pretty much all else needful in home and office.

Grandma Bonnie Gates was like the proverbial “mother in Israel” befriending the congregation, I jest at her expense, as the assistant to the Holy Spirit. She was well intentioned and influential. She made pleasant warmhearted and very much appreciated phone calls, including a genuine apology for the cause of the lengthy scenario herein described.

Frances Crabb, a woman of Godly character, befriended us sincerely and greatly. We jested regarding her name, because she was not at all like her last name, but rather she was a sweet woman, gentile and feminine. Her generosity towards missions and ministry proved her Christian moral fiber! Her visits were encouraging and warm.

All of the friends of Carthage remain dear to our hearts. Through busy lives and schedules some of our dearest friends have fallen off our communications calendar, inadvertently. I am sorry brother Dudley. So now we reconvene our dialogue, sincerely hoping to rectify this breach.

Dudley, after your first attendance I became your pastor-friend, and you became my friend, Christian Brother and business contact in Carthage. My reminiscences of our friendship are nostalgic, warm and pleasant. I enjoyed our lively conversations, yours through your imitable soft-spoken deep bass and balmy voice, the perfect radio voice, where your meanings in sensitivity, were with your caring expressions from your insightful caring heart, mindfully spoken in context to our ecclesiastical situations during our youthful ministry. Your counsel was perceptive, gentle and poignant. I appreciated your photography, your Christian Bookstore, your radio programs, your sharing of the three-nails with each Good-Friday worshipper, the several meals, in our homes and restaurants and so many conversations during our coffee-cup chats and drop-in visits. Our friendship, as now, so then, mattered much!

My Uncle Frances Allen is my Father’s eldest brother. He had spent much time welding on the nearby Saint Lawrence Seaway, and had traveled by Carthage and Watertown from his home in the North-Central Adirondacks countless times and He surprised me during one Carthage Sunday morning service, when for a first in my ministry he came to one of my services. Delightfully, we shared after service lunch at the Ponderosa Steakhouse in Watertown. During the dinner-table conversation, he sought from me, his young nephew, the definition of a true Christian, the way to the Lord and the meaning of life, the Bible, and of the Christian life, which somehow had evaded him and his understanding, during his long and good life, not having been a churchman, as his own parents, my Grandparents.

My Parents and Siblings and other family members came for church services and meals in the home and restaurants. Pamela’s parents Bill & June Tice, Treasurer and Business Manager of Indiana Wesleyan University, then Marion College, our Alma Mater, came from Marion IN to take us on our tenth anniversary celebration to Ottawa, Canada, just before they themselves moved to the West Coast and to Westmont College in Santa Barbara CA.

Dudley, as you may very well know, this Carthage congregation had influenced the closing of all of the barrooms and taverns in West Carthage in the recent past. They emphasized Sunday School and all other ministries to children. For the pastor’s family they had built a lovely two-story parsonage-home with five large bedrooms, four baths, a kitchen, two dining rooms, one for family meals and one for formal meals. It had a lovely guest room with its own bath. It had a very large living room with a very large fireplace, a full-basement with its own fireplace. Between the very large garage and the kitchen there was a pastor’s office built within the breezeway, and so on and so forth, more than most of themselves.

This parsonage-home project had brought this committed congregation of extraordinary believers together at “their parsonage-home” for the twenty-months or so of time it took to build it together. From what I could observe, this was now a justifiable excuse to be in somebody’s good company and in sweet Christian fellowship with their brethren. They had loved this privilege and after the parsonage-home had been completed they continued to come together at “their parsonage-home”. Nostalgically they felt of it as “their parsonage-home”, their church family home, as it was, for that is where most of the in-depth ministry in Carthage took place.

Time after time they could and did bring a friend, a neighbor or a family member, or any one else for that matter; coming together for prayer, for counsel, for salvation, for caring nurture and even just for fellowship, which cannot be discounted. They all came freely. They came for coffee breaks, they came before and after work, they came for lunch times, and quite frequently they would be carrying a “potluck” with them, with plenty to share.

There always seemed abundance and effortlessly spontaneously this all just seemed to happen. They prepared, served, cleaned up always. Prayers for grace were often prayed sporadically, frequently involving prayer lists. The “coffee break” people pointed out that we only had a two-cup percolator, and so they gave to us a new “Bunn Coffee Maker” to keep pace, with their own demand. Pamela and I had not drunk coffee regularly, until there, with them.

Some came just to chat. All shared prayer requests and answers to former prayers. Frequently, animated conversations were launched with some news article, a report that they had discovered, or some radio message or a teaching or song that had touched their hearts. The atmosphere exuded a delightful sense of wellbeingness. It was a most busy place and it remained full of activity for the entire time we lived in Carthage.

This congregation grew ostensibly, quit on its own, via this Holy Spirit-vehicle, spontaneous fellowship. I could and did feel free to leave them and return at will and the party just continued, non-scripted, non-organized and non-directed. And quite fortunately not announced, not controlled and not shackled. The Church congregation grew from 75 to 150 in our short months there in that lovely little Black River Village.

We found them easily inspired with each others’ and our own excitement of “The Holy Scriptures”, with our own discovery of the Holy Spirit and theirs, and His Spiritual gifts, fruits, beatitudes and virtues. They were consistently in absorbed attention, as I would share my own spiritual journey and what I was learning.

Never sharing pontifically, but always spontaneously enthusiastically, ardently, from the top of my heart and head, I spoke casually. They were especially in engrossed attention on the important spiritual gifts of evangelism, and hospitality, as though a new discovery for them. The Second Coming of Jesus excited generous input, dialogue, and anticipation. They had been very familiar with other exciting spiritual gifts; the mind gifts, the power gifts and the miraculous gifts. They also loved drama as a vehicle for an expression of their favorite Bible Stories. They enjoyed their Christian life with each other immensely.

Pleasantly, I do report, that we as their pastoral family were very popular, with the vast majority of Carthaginians… whether that was good or not became an issue, a big ugly political issue. We loved them, however, and they loved us.

True to their word, these ones proceeded to conduct a monthly pastoral “vote of confidence”, however, to their chagrin, each month our winning margin continually, grew. I hated that these clouds of dissensions and static tensions had to hang in the atmosphere, from the beginning to the ending of our stay in Carthage. Nevertheless, the emotional tensions, mostly on the shallower side, intensified, and they engaged increasingly drastic measures.

Despite that greeting and realizing that monthly pastoral “vote of confidence”, voting prospect, we did indeed unload our moving truck. My Uncle Ollie Dalaba’s dear friend and college buddy, Almon Bartholomew, District Superintendent had duly warned me of this frightful prospect and cautioned me to very seriously consider not accepting the congregational call to pastor this church family, knowing this church’s history. He and I stayed in close communication. I felt that I would be willing to accept this challenge with his blessing. And so I proceeded to accept this call to Carthage, and moved my family, and whether I moved naively or under Divine-inspiration, only God knows for sure.

God did bless Carthage and us, greatly. We did see much good accomplished. We saw many souls saved throughout the community and within the congregation. Our two weekly radio programs were popular and loved. We aired on Watertown NY radio stations WOTT 1410 AM & WNCQ- 102.9 FM.

There was a phenomenal opening within the public school system. HS Principal Tom was a fellow Kiwanian. Geographically, Carthage had one of the largest school systems in NY State. At graduation time the senior class requested a unique “Bache laureate”. Meeting with the fellow clergy and me, in the parsonage-home, the Christian students, leaders within this public High School, requested that their “Bache laureate” take place, not traditionally, in a church where they feared little participation in this religious service, but rather in a park with swimming, set in a campfire setting, with energetic games and with a picnic feast to beat all others, and then requested us to include inspirational contemporary singing around the campfire and a rousing sermon presentation to shock the classmates with a confrontation of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ unmistakably and an unashamed call for the salvation of each member of their whole class. This was how they thought they should conclude their High School career. They desired to launch all seniors from High School and out into adult life with real meaning and the same Godly purpose they had discovered. This was not their first attempt, to captivate their friends, but they did not want to fail in their last effort. We clergy all agreed, that though novel, worthy. The success was Olympian. God answered prayers most profoundly, theirs, the student leaders and ours the community clergymen.

Shortly thereafter, on the occasion while I was hosting the Local Ministerial, each of us had “brown-bagged” and were in discussion regarding the successful “Bache laureate”. Our mutual affirmations to its success were real, but it dawned upon us that our evaluations were on different premises. I shockingly learned that of the eleven present, the Baptist pastor, the Catholic Priest and me, the Pentecostal pastor were the only three that believed in the Virgin birth, The Authority and Accuracy of the Scriptures and the Deity of Jesus Christ and other Creedal assumptions espoused by The Apostle’s Creed”.

I am beginning to think, that God’s genius and sense of humor delights in engineering scenarios where we own a situation and in some measure of desperation, we beseech Him to intervene in ours. Ultimately, His answer to our prayers accomplishes His agenda. Immediately we learn that He succeeded in getting us on His same page. Our needs are the doors through which he leads us to the realization that He is ever present, interested and operative.

God’s answers to our prayers are absolutely profound, miraculous and decipherable “post-facto”! By example of God’s beneficent hand ever present with us, I share this story which shows how miraculously God moves men and nature, circumstances and events, to His will, honor and glory and for our mutual benefit.

In a monthly board meeting with the “monthly voting segment”, I prayed with them fervently, for a real concern that they realized and propounded, vociferously. Admittedly, my college-days “voice lessons” had not gifted me with melodious talent, but rather only painfully made me aware of what was legitimately their distress in this valid issue, the Sunday morning worship service. I was not a worship leader! Others of their pastors had been quite musical and both played the instruments and sang well.

With the urgency, of food, shelter and clothing, looming in the back of this young father, husband, preacher’s mind, I joined the board of elders, in passionate prayer. I prayed loudly, that God would send to us a “minister of music”, a leader of worship! We each took our turn while on bended knee. I prayed for God to send “a man of God”, “a man who would be submitted to God and pastor”, “a man with an excellent spirit for worship”, “a man to bless the Heart of God and this congregation”, and “a man with a gift to sing”, a man that would be gratifying for all, to worship with and to even take pleasure in” and that God would send him to us.

What is more, I prayed that he would come that next Sunday! I felt a couple of the praying elders turn and look at me, on that request. Moreover, God answered and he did come.

David Gibbs newly transferred by the Army from TX to Fort Drum NY, arrived in our church parking lot, amidst a mid winter snow storm, that Sunday morning. Before he even entered the church sanctuary, that very next Sunday, in my exuberance, I greeted him.

“Do you sing and lead in worship?” Before I had learned his name, I had requested him to lead the morning worship and to sing a special song for us. He chuckled at my unique welcome.

During the next weeks and months, he became our dear friend, sharing rich times with us in home and church, at meals and in prayer and in worship. Well he did sing a special song in solo for us that first Sunday morning and he continued to sing for us for each service and to lead the congregation in worship, accompanied by a most exceptional teen pianist, Carmelita Burdick. David Gibbs ministered for us each Sunday after that, until the very Sunday I left that pastorate, which coincided with his last week at Fort Drum, when he then was transferred to Alaska, I believe.

I still think that he was an angel, sent by God, a black angel and though unique to Carthage, he was our dear brother, David Gibbs. He was a delightful brother, to us. He came to share many meals with those at “their parsonage-home” and with our family. He introduced us to “Evie Tornquist”. He shared excitedly in gospel dialogues. Our hearts soared during his worship services.

The voice of God and the voices of our minds and voices of men conflict on occasion… Typically, I was out and about dropping in on church families throughout the area and I was at the stop sign closest to my office, when the Spirit of the Lord unmistakably spoke to me to turn my car about face and go back to near where I had just returned from. I sat in my car at the stop sign and actually argued with the Lord and myself. Lord, I have promised Pamela, “I will be home for dinner at 5:30 PM, and I will not be late for dinner.” She said you have promised that before. I promised her that I would be on time… this time… I have got just time now to go home and just make it in time and not be late… it is 5:25 PM…

But the Lord’s voice was emphatic, and overpowered my objections. I had often wrestled with the voice of God and felt a quandary, whether or not this was indeed God’s voice or my own thoughts.

I had made a lifetime commitment, that I would sooner obey the voice of God than not and that I would never regret that. So I turned my new 1976 Caprice Classic two-door sedan, about and went back from whence I had come, and I drove into the driveway of the family the Lord had impressed upon my mind. It seemed that no one was home. I knocked on the door and scolded myself for being late for Pamela’s dinner. But again I still sensed that this was a divine appointment and so, conflicted, I knocked louder and a third time, really loudly. I had waited patiently, maybe 30 to 60 seconds between knocks. Just as I was about to turn and walk away the door opened and my friend and brother stood there with a fully loaded pistol in his hand. He said, “Oh Hi Pastor. I was just going to kill myself. I had asked God to send someone by 5:45 PM, if He could still hear me.” I wanted him to send someone to come and talk with me. Well, he and I and the Lord had a very good and long talk together. He had been a Christian since a child, but had lost any sense of validity in his relationship with God. He felt guilty and unforgivable. He expressed frustration and turmoil. He prayed and cried profusely. He made sincere commitments to God. When we both knew he was established I left for dinner… late, again! Oh well! My friend and his family continue to find us wherever we live and come to visit us and to share a picnic, usually annually. We love each other.

Despite that greeting at the moving truck window and those voting prospects announced upon our arrival, we had unloaded our moving truck. Nevertheless, with the constant harangue and harassment of the “monthly voting segment”, and their monthly reporting to the District Office, the District Officers’ finally counseled, typically, for me to give in to this minority. What this group required of me, to resign, “post-haste”, was a severe quandary at best weighing in the scales, on one side both our own family’s temporal concerns, and what we legitimately felt the church family’s concerns and on the other side of this scales, against theirs.

Although they intensely believed in their own minds and hearts that they were closest to God and very righteous, believing fervently that they did have the mind of the Lord! On any one of their several monthly reports to the District Office, I was informed, lists of criticisms were being levied intending to substantiate their assumptions. I never cared to know what items might be listed. Not that I did not care, but that should I satisfy that list they should find yet new items for their next list.

I am not prone to preferring the discovering of this entire tally of deficits listed as negatives about me. This was beginning to challenge all of the nice things I would care to tell you about myself. Tongue in cheek. But I did not know the content of the lists, until the District Officials anticipated forth coming visit for such a purpose. He was coming from the Syracuse Headquarter and he should come to reveal my dearth.

Oh! … WOW… Wow… wow! Normally, a visit from District Officials was Ceremony of “Pomp and Circumstance”, glorious, joyful, but this prospect was frightful at best and devastation at worst. Most clergymen under such visits as I was anticipating have failed morally, theologically, or financially.

That was not me. I am a virgin to my wife still. I practice exquisite exegetical, hermeneutic and systematic theology without deviation. Though poor, I am poor honestly and I have bilked no funds, laundered no monies, nor pilfered any bags.

So if not the major issues, what else? All could only be fearsomely imagined… and at that, the mind boggles with self-doubt, fearful suspicions, dreaded accusations and sinister deceptions… Take that to bed with you, to heretically ponder spending the dismal night with gut wrenching nightmares.

Unbeknownst to me, the District Officials had received complaints, and among them was that I had not polished my dress boots last Sunday. Admittedly the deep and salty snows had worked their havoc on my dress boots. I was unaware of an impending District Officials’ Sunday visit in regard to this and similar concerns. But, “All Praise be to God!” God had sent a fellow pastor to my home for fellowship on the day before and he brought with him two pairs of brand new leather-lined dress boots that he had picked up at a garage-sale that morning for a dollar a pair. Disappointedly, he informed me that they had not fit his feet, but he said for to me to try them on. They were the perfect fit for me! I inherited both pairs. The next morning I praised God as I slipped into the black pair of these Florsheim dress boots.

It had seemed to my very professional, intelligent and Godly District Official-brethren that the constant flow of items for the lists had been legitimate justification to dismiss me from pastoral privilege and responsibility. The District officers arrived for the morning service and after their part, they sat with the congregation to critique my preaching, another new item upon their list. After the service, they met with me in my living room to express their concerns for their lists and for our worship service, for our attendance, for my shoes, and for my preaching. Having heard the worship service, having heard my Sunday morning sermon, having sat with the swelled crowd, they informed me that they had crossed these items off the list. As the long list was read and these typical complaints were voiced, I noticed that the District Officers moved their own feet uneasily about. I sat there with God’s gifts on my feet. And that item too was crossed off their waning list. It seemed miraculous to me that these gargantuan icebergs dissipated into nothingness simply upon their reading… it seemed like they simply evaporated!

All that worry for what later seemed to me, to be like nothing… Do I come across, like what concerns them does not matter, to me? It matters. God knows it matters! I needed and had prayed for and gratefully wore God’s blessings… and do constantly!

The irony that humors me these many years later is “the great gulf that is fixed” between the reasons and the justifications! Because of your shoes leave town. If that had been the problem, then for a few dollars it had been fixed. Why not divulge the factual reasons openly, honestly?

It occurs to me that within every democratically congregationally controlled pulpit and church there will be at least three groups of people within each church;

1> the people who are in love with Jesus, God’s Holy Word, God’s Holy Will, the power of prayer, the righteous activity of their church within discipleship fulfillment of all that Jesus required of His disciples. These are essentially the Theists, seeing life from God’s point of view… The church crept in to the world. These believe with conviction that God’s ways are best and for this they would be willing to die.

2> the people who are in love with people, paper, product, power, pressure, fame fortune, fun, food, frolic, fantasy and prolific politics with “management by objectives business style”, where money, numbers, popularity and acceptance by the masses is tantamount to success. These are essentially the Humanists, seeing life from man’s point of view… The world crept into the church. These believe convenience with consensus that Man’s ways are best and for this they would be willing to fight and argue.

3> the people who are in love with life, liberty learning, living, and the pursuit of happiness. These are essentially the Hedonists, seeing life from man’s pleasure, peace, and an issues point of view… The world crept into the church. These believe nothing for certain and assume every man’s ways are, right, equal and good that their ways are as good as all other men’s ways are best and for this they would be willing to lay out funds, write petitions, and carry on discussions as long as no one is considered an authority and every one is considered good.

Think with me… in honesty, as I now recollect, whenever has the majority of any group been holy, Godly, righteous, scriptural and like Jesus Christ? We have these majorities therefore leading the Lord’s Church, for which he bled and died, but most likely they would not be willing to die for but very willing to argue and fight, write lists and petitions, spend funds and buy votes.

The authorities had counseled me that I should “voluntarily resign” not with scriptural premise and absolute law and order, not even for any infraction of ecclesiastical policy, but in order to clear their very busy schedule, busy with more important things than these, but in order to bring cessation to hordes of marching lists and incumbent frustrations of these items listed monthly, but in order to deal with far more important things than this Carthage-storm, but “What sticks in my theological and philosophical craw” is this, but in order to establish peace not with Biblical assumptions, but with the secular humanistic assumptions “that peace at any price is prerequisite, to premise… that peace is more important than right principle” and that I must allow the disgruntled minority to again be back in charge of the congregation, in order to restore peace. Authorities must already know that peace is not the absence of conflict but a harmony with God, good and right. Carnally I felt like, expendably, I was fodder, fuel, bullets and coin for the fray. But realistically after all, had I not confessed to the Lord my willingness to be a sacrifice for Him? Yes, but Lord please let me choose when and how I am sacrificed… just kidding. The needs of the quiet but settled lot meeting with the Lord in love and harmony were met by the Lord and each other and despite their apparent loss they joyfully embraced in fact and heart all others on both sides of the scales. The others would also as soon as they felt peace, mistakenly lack of conflict.

One of the District Officials handed a ten-dollar bill to me with assurance that that would help me and my family of six, with my family’s living expenses, and moving expenses, until my next pastorate wherever and whenever that might be. Embracing me warmly they kindly assured me that they would graciously extend to me thirty days to vacate the premises and if we ever needed them for any thing, to feel free to call.

God will take care of you and yours in ways you could not imagine…

Before our time of departure from Carthage, God again beneficently, prepared the way to sustain us, the Allens all six of us, for what would turn out to be a two-month transition.

He always did for us what we could never dream nor devise nor anticipate for ourselves.

Later, I learned of a surreptitious agenda and a secret meeting that later ensued between the sweet lady and my wife, Pamela. In 1977, it was not typical or more accurately it never happened by her own confession, that my wife would have a secret from me. But the sweet lady took my wife into a confidence.

Pamela went with her whilst I tended the four young children. During our secure happy marriage we had not had such a situation as we faced on this occasion.

Needless to say, I was very concerned about both their secret agenda and their enigmatic meeting. Their clandestine manner was very unsettling and regretfully, I feared the worst.

Now I was again putting my wife and four young children into a homeless status, with absolutely no known, nor visible means of support, and absolutely no positive direction, for my life and ministry, and feeling self-doubt very intensely I was arguing with myself, profoundest questionings of my very own call from God to the Christian Ministry.

I feared the worst case scenarios imaginable… maybe the sweet lady was helping Pamela to leave such a miserable failure as I felt myself to be at that moment, and not unjustifiably… maybe they were making arrangements in the sweet ladies home for Pamela and the children… ooh these and countless fears and frustrations surged through my raging throbbing heart and troubled mind… I did what I always did… I knelt with the children by the sofa and we prayed… I calmed myself enough so as not to frighten my children to death, but I thought to pray loudly enough for my prayer to reach heaven and the heart of God, as if by shear volume alone… I told them that daddy needed God’s help… I believed that God would hear the simple faithful prayers of my little children even more than me… I asked my children to pray to God to send help right now… They were innocent victims, though they did not understand that… I felt totally helpless… I was to be their protector and provider and more of a good father than I felt myself to be at that moment!

Though with the responsibility for my beautiful family, my wife, Pamela and my four young children; Rebekah 5, Jonathan 4, Michael 3, and Stephen 2, and even though the very last vote was by highest percentage in my favor, I had resigned.

I was still learning the distinctions between the voice of God and the purported voices of God. I was again wrestling with politics. I was wrestling between Theocracy and Democracy. I was wrestling with Theism, humanism and hedonism.

It is remains a given assumption for me, that a pastor must choose to please God or Men but with out compromise it is impossible to do both. I was wrestling between the temporal securities for home, food, money, and clothes versus eternal values. I was wrestling with submission to authority, the authority of the heart and the authority of the church. I was wrestling with the call of God to refuse to compromise on principles, truths, and righteousness; and with the Devil and his legions of evil spirits and carnal hearts. I had been challenged to play politics, compromising on principles and to practice convenience and seek temporal security at the expense of right. I had refused to compromise on Biblical principles always before and so now. I again determined that I would not compromise. “God will take care of me and mine.” I must not defend myself, nor attack others, nor do I trust men, nor do I“… look to mine own understanding”, but trust the Lord God Omnipotent.

I knew so plainly that God had indeed called me and I rehearsed my very own call from God to be His Christian Minister. I called back to my mind promises that God had given to me at that call… that God had promised me while still only twelve years old, and hearing His call to become “a man of God” and not yet fully appreciating what that meant, I knew then and rehearsed again now while there kneeled at the sofa, embracing my little ones, prayerfully sobbing before God that in my inmost being, God had called me with reassurances that He would take care of me and of my family!

My wife soon returned with the sweet lady and both were apparently happy and seemingly peaceful. Well, I took some comfort at that. But I still enquired. The sweet lady comforted me and said that it was needful that I not know of their secret, refusing to grant even one hint… but she reassured me profusely that I would most definitely and wholeheartedly approve… but for some reason that did not flood my soul with peace nor alleviate a throbbing heart. What is more, is that she stressed that she believed that God had told her to not tell me of her agenda.

I had complied with the “pompous popeus edictus absurditous”, though at the heartbreak of the Church family and my own family. I had resigned with no prospects of future ministry known to me. Management by Objectives would “Brand Name” this “Absurd & Bizarre”! Friends and Family would” “Label” this “Incongruous & Incompatible”! The curious novel reader would “Voucher” this “Ludicrous & Ridiculous”!

One sweet lady intended for her gift to my Assemblies of God mission’s campaign to put my campaign in good stead and so as to exceed our goal. There were two poles and both approved of missions, assuredly. But one could not politically freely support my missions-efforts. This sweet lady had donated a designated gift for the missions program I was running. We had risen a little over $40,000 for missions. A private argument happened between this sweet lady and others over her sizable “designated gift”. The other ladies believed that her sizable “designated gift” could not be so designated for missions, but must be her tithe on the sale of her home and therefore belong to the “undesignated general fund”. The argument was serious. Against her usual soft-spoken and quiet manner the sweet lady required then that her “designated gift” funds be returned to her in full, if they would not be placed in the “designated gift” funds for missions. And for all I knew this was a hurtful loss to missions at best and a classic example of carnality winning at worst, or so it at first seemed.

Later, while again alone with me, my wife herself felt it needful to comfort my troubled heart. She confided that the sweet lady had taken her to the bank and had opened an account for Pamela alone and not for me, and she had deposited an amount equal to the “designated funds for missions” amount and declared to Pamela that she believed that the Lord had intended this and that this was for “Home Missions”, but that it was not for Duaine but for Pamela.

The District Officials did indeed call me inquiring specifically if I had influenced the sweet lady to give said funds to me. As she had told Pamela, so I could answer honestly and did say that, “No, I had no such influence!” Again I saw the “Hand of the Lord God” revealed in His own economy and right on schedule.

One day while attending a Holy Spirit Seminar in Springfield MO I was chatting with Uncle Ollie strolling in our Motel corridor. On this subject, I claimed, “Historically I have been as loyal a churchman as there is.” He lovingly retorted, “But you have not been loyal! I quipped in testimony, “I have been as loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Word and His Church as any other man I know!” To that he thoughtfully said, “Duaine I did not say nor mean loyal to the Lord, I meant loyal to the AG Denomination over the Lord. You have always sided with the Lord.”

I had been born and brought up a Wesleyan Methodist and educated in two Wesleyan Methodist Colleges and formerly pastored two Wesleyan Churches. (Noteworthy to churchmen, my wife and I had attended the historically significant merging conference in Anderson IN, in 1968 between the Wesleyan Methodists and the Pilgrim Holiness Denominations. It was at that time the name was changed to Wesleyans.)

We had been truly blessed by God, successfully growing each congregation, living and endeavoring to live an exemplary life as behooved upon me by the “Call of God”.

In the three areas where fellow “Called of God” men might fail.

I had been faithful to God;

in theology and Scriptures,

in finances and money management and

in marriage and morality,

The Beloved AG District Officials had recommended that I move to a pastorate in New York City. With my little children on my mind, and in my arms, the country bumpkin farm boy that I am, I thought…”That New York City is no place to rise up little children!” So I turned down their only offer.

(However, my next pastorate was to Los Angeles County instead.) Life remains a learning process.

Discussing my own history with me, myself, I pondered, “What was my failure with the Wesleyans?” It seemed to be that I had prayed in tongues in the Spirit in my private prayer closet, and for that, break with there tradition, I was excommunicated from the Wesleyan Methodists, or to humor myself I say “, “They graciously extended to me the left foot of fellowship”. The facts that I was loyal lifelong to Christ Jesus since salvation, walking in all known light as they had taught me in living the sanctified Christian life, lived the discipleship life-style, college educated to be a Wesleyan Pastor and successfully pastored and grown two Wesleyan Churches within two different Districts, under Reverend Charles Dayton in the Champlain District and under Reverend Donald Calhoun in the Iowa District. It was from the latter that as a fledgling, I was launched out of my comfortable Wesleyan nest where I knew and was know by most others is this very small denomination. What initially seemed profoundly daunting was a rather phenomenally greater blessing is disguise. “God’s ways are past finding out!” “What the Devil meant for evil God meant for good”. What seemed like banishment from my known world, was an introduction into a unknown world of grandeur and service and opportunity and ministry and resolve and purpose

Subsequently, I had joined with the Assemblies of God, at my Mom’s baby brother’s invitation, Uncle Ollie Dalaba, who lovingly introduced me, an exiled and lonely waif, orphaned from the Wesleyan’s. Now a new Charismatic, these wonderful brethren of the OH District Council of the Assemblies of God, and District Superintendent, Arthur Parsons, became professional friends and brethren. They had an appreciation for my predicament, many of them and extended to me their credentials of ordination and Carthage was my second AG pastorate. After The Wesleyans in Corinth NY, the Wesleyans in Charles City IA, Middletown OH, the Assemblies of God in Middletown OH and now the Assemblies of God in Carthage NY, I was not going to make any move quickly, lest, I repeat this pattern. I sat down with the Lord, more accurately, I fell face down before the Lord, to discuss with Him that even after my best efforts and successes at each church I always managed to conflict with the herdsmen of the invisible Brahmas, stepped onto the thin ice of imperceptible traditions, misread their colloquial-between-the-lines meanings, those known only by the secretly initiated.

I had then prayed to the Lord, “Lord you know all peoples and times and things and places. You know me. I am not going to be presumptuous, and fill out applications, make appointments, and mail out resumes. I want to know that You are leading me. I want to correctly differentiate between the leading of me, or of men, or of You. I am going to completely trust you to open doors, now shut and to shut doors now open. Lord you have got my phone number and my address. If you want me, You call me! You know me and You know where I am, even though this may seem a most remote place and in winter even a most inhospitable place, way out in what seems like the middle of no place, you know me and my family, here in Carthage, NY, in what is really a most exquisite place and amazing corner of your creation. In Jesus Name I pray! Amen!”

In my weakest moments emotionally, I dared to think that it seemed to me then as always, the District Officers allowed evil to rule in that church, by preferring to sidestep true resolutions in a Biblical pattern and instead requiring the righteous to give in to the wicked because the wicked felt so intensely. This is me in my carnality, meanness and in my low-down and dirty moments. But this is not me! This is not how I allow myself to be, think, speak or act. God alone is the judge. And He for sure, does not need my help.
Now I catch myself by the Knapp of the neck and slap myself upside the head, stomp on my own little toes and I says to myself, self, “This isn’t any way to think…” Of course, now knocked back into my senses… honestly now… would it have been better that I had stayed and others would have left or if we had continued to fight on these absurdities…Now of course not! God’s agenda is always primary.

What is His plan anyway?

Even though these people may be the longest standing members and the biggest money people, does that criterion defend dictatorial powers over propriety, or a Godly minority?

But we reloaded our possessions onto a Mayflower moving truck, just thirteen months after arrival, and we moved on and now to Sylmar CA, some 3200 miles west. In jest, it occurred to me to buy my own moving truck and to stay packed. On the day I compile these collections we have since now lived in ten states, thirty-three homes and eight denominations and have completed over forty years following the Lord in faithful Christian Ministry, 1964-2007. This chapter is a norm. There may have been naive moments in earlier ministry when I assumed that should I live a Godly life the pillars of churches would laud my young ministry, Biblically correct assumptions, and twentieth century discipleship. But, Jesus walked on water and walked upstream in His religious realm, fighting against the same religious prejudices, proffered by His Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hates you. (2 Tim 3:12 KJV) Yea, and all that will live Godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

11. 1976-1976 Pastor at Calvary Assembly Of God Carthage NY
(Almon Bartholomew (Pastor to 75 and grew to 150)
July 1976-August 1977
I enjoyed pastoring in… “Carthage NY”
“Or answering trick Questions”

My Dear Brother Dudley,

Ministry does not take place in a vacuum, does it? I am telling this narrative surrounding the Pastorate, an inside look at my perspective and the Assembly of God in Carthage NY, concurrent with our friendship. Dudley, I had loved the Carthage experience. My family and I were very happy there. We made so many friends there, and you and yours were among the closer ones. We were only four short hours travel time from my childhood home. My parents and family were over near Lake George, on the opposite eastside of the Adirondack Forest Preserve from Carthage. As of now, Carthage began while I was thirty, and this was only my fourth pastorate, so, young and quite inexperienced in ministry… I continued my early discovery of the nearly imperceptible contests within most of the churches albeit, invisible, that I now know exists within all with which we have lovingly prayerfully and diligently served, but now my life-long ministry has spread throughout ten states, and eight denominations… while here, and it was great for us that my family and we could travel and be together occasionally.
Parenthetically, my very dear friend, AG District Superintendent, Reverend Almon Bartholomew, who had been Zion Bible Institute Colleague and close friend with my Uncle Reverend Ollie Dalaba, had delighted to offer to me this opportunity, but later, “hearing of something on the invisible grape-vine,” he cautioned me not to accept this invitation after all, however, my fourth had just been born while homeless and penniless, we assured him that we would seek god’s blessing to do well there. We needed people to whom we could show Jesus, a home and an income, though at that time in my ministry I would not even let my mind think of the temporal security… it was anathema! Having just left a raging storm, in OH, my assumptions were that any storm this close to home could be weathered.
The Carthage Assembly of God was near the Canadian border. While living in Carthage, one Wednesday, I believe it was January 12, 1977 in the evening service; we had missionary guests soon to be in route to their mission station assignment in Germany, do you remember? They were staying in our lovely parsonage home with us that night, in the guest room. This exquisite parsonage boasted a motel style deluxe guest room. While we were in that service a snowstorm began. The storm rapidly developed into what became a remarkable ten-day history-breaking blizzard. This unforgettable episode broke all former records for snows, winds, drifts, cold, and pretty much all other winter weather records. I remember that the Tug Hill National Weather Station reported over 470 inches of snowfall that winter season. The streets and roads of Carthage were closed to all traffic except snowmobiles, foot traffic and military vehicles. One of our church’s young couples needed an eighteen-mile ride in one of Uncle Sam’s Army tanks to welcome their first in the Hospital called The Samaritan Medical Center over in Watertown NY. Near the end of this ten-day hibernation, you will remember, everyone eventually ventured out just for a walk, and we were all amazed observing a marvel happening… everyone was friendly, warmly greeting all others and actively helping each other… It was wonderful… We were snow bound with our missionary guests for the duration of this fantastic storm.
My Baptist pastor friend called me early during the storm to see how we were doing and thoughtfully enquired if we needed anything. Like most men there in the North Country during such storms, he kind of was looking for valid reason to encounter the fury of the blizzard mostly to offset the inevitable “cabin-fever”. He mentioned a TV program that he thought we should see. He was surprised to learn that we did not own a television set. But he owned seven TVs. He carried one of his own on a toboggan to our house, trudging through this wild winter blizzard. He brought the loaner into our home and he turned the TV set on and informed us that we should see this. Alex Haley’s bestseller “Roots” was the basis for the 1977 TV premiere introduction to the “TV mini-series” that aired that week. He had also brought some tea to brew for our Germany Missionary guests and together we enjoyed this series nightly.
Carthage is about five miles from one of the gates of Fort Drum, one of Uncle Sam’s military winter-training bases for the US Army. Here I had also served as an Assembly of God, “civilian US Army chaplain”, and conducted weekly chapel services. This chaplaincy was an ex-officious honor and distinction granted to the Carthage Calvary AG pastoral position.
This amusing anecdote happened during one weekly Fort Drum Chapel service. I requested the soldiers to observe that this would never happen again in history. I was not referring to the sermon they were about to hear, though I did intend for it to make an appropriate declaration to them for the cross of Jesus Christ His statute of our liberty, is reminiscent of a patriotic salute to the Statue of Liberty to later find composition in the ©Words and Music by Neil Enloe, for this independence week celebration.
Statue of Liberty Words and Music by Neil Enloe
In New York Harbor stands a lady, with a torch raised to the sky,
And all who see her knows she stands for liberty for you and I
I’m so proud to be called an American, to be named with the brave and the free,
I will honor our flag and our trust in God, and the Statue of Liberty,
On lonely Golgotha stood a cross, with my Lord raised to the sky,
And all who kneel there, live forever, as all the saved can testify.
I’m so glad to be called a Christian, to be named with the ransomed and whole;
As the statue liberates the citizen, so the cross liberates the soul.
O the cross is my statue of liberty; it was there that my soul was set free;
unashamed I’ll proclaim that a rugged cross is my statue of Liberty.
No, the amusing anecdote was this… “It is now seven seconds after seven minutes after seven o’clock on the seventh day of the seventh month in seventy seven.”
At Fort Drum, different military-war games where fought and battles waged throughout days and weeks and months, often lightening the nighttime sky, and bomb blasts shuddered the earth. These became familiar fare. During one of these, days-long war-games, we miscarried twins. And tantamount to the blasts and flashes of the battlefield, some of the local godly ladies concerted to inform us of birth-control and to recommend total abstinence for a year or longer, while consoling Pamela at her bed-side, siding with her and while addressing me.
In Carthage, we had poured our genuine love and profound efforts into this little corner of God’s most beautiful creation. Most of these people were exceptionally hospitable folk. Some remain dearest friends throughout the years even traveling to distant states to visit with us; Frank Oliver traveled via Greyhound to Sylmar CA to visit us, Carmine Burdick stays in touch, Bob & Judy & Amy Marolf several years running shared family picnics annually together, and during these visits, Judy kept us up on our large circle of Carthage friends including Lila, Judy and the younger sister, our favorite “Passages” dear girls who faithfully blessed us, endeared themselves to us and ministered to us in no small ways, were remembered to us wherever we had moved to next, Grandma Bonnie Gates made pleasant warmhearted phone calls, and Frances Crabb befriended us sincerely… we jested regarding her name, because she was rather sweet lady, gentile, and feminine. My Uncle Frances Allen Parents and Siblings and other Family members came for church services and meals in the home and restaurants. Pamela’s parents Bill & June Tice, Treasurer and Business Manager of Indiana Wesleyan University Then Marion College, our Alma Mater came from Marion IN to take us on our tenth anniversary celebration to Ottawa, Canada, just before they themselves moved to the West Coast and to Westmont College in Santa Barbara CA.
This congregation had influenced the closing of all of the barrooms and taverns in West Carthage in the recent past. They emphasized Sunday School and other ministries to children. For the pastor’s family they had built a lovely two-story parsonage with five large bedrooms, four baths, a kitchen, two dining rooms, one for family meals and one for formal meals. It had a lovely guest room with its own bath. It had a very large living room with a very large fireplace, a full-basement with its own fireplace. Between the very large garage and the kitchen there was a pastor’s office built within the breezeway, and so on and so forth.
This project had brought this committed congregation of extraordinary believers together at “their parsonage” for the twenty-months or so of time to build it together. From what I could observe, this was now a justifiable excuse to be in somebody’s company and in sweet Christian fellowship. They had loved this privilege and after it had been completed they continued to come together at “their parsonage”. Nostalgically they felt of it as “their parsonage”, their church family house, as it was, for most of the in-depth ministry in Carthage took place here. They could and did consistently bring a friend, a neighbor or a family member, any one else for prayer, for counsel, for salvation and even for fellowship. They all came freely. They came for coffee breaks, they came before and after work, they came for lunch times, and quite frequently they would be carrying a “potluck” with them and with plenty to share. Prayers for grace were often prayed sporadically, and frequently involved prayer lists. The “coffee break” people pointed out that we only had a two-cup percolator, and so they gave to us a new “Bunn Coffee Maker” to keep pace, with their own demand. Pamela and I had not drunk coffee regularly, until there, with them. Some came just to chat. All shared prayer requests and answers to former prayers. Frequently, animated conversations launched with some news article report that they had discovered, or some radio message or teaching or song that had touched their hearts. It was a most busy place and it remained busy for the entire time we lived in Carthage. We found them easily inspired with our own excitement of The Holy Scriptures, with our own discovery of the Holy Spirit, and His Spiritual gifts. We found them in rapt attention, as I would share my own spiritual journey and what I was learning. They were especially in rapt attention on the important spiritual gifts of evangelism, and hospitality, as though a new discovery for them. They had been very familiar with other exciting gifts. They also loved drama as an expression of their favorite Bible Stories. They enjoyed their Christian life with each other immensely. Pleasantly, I do report that we as their pastoral family were very popular, with the vast majority, whether that was good or not became an issue, a big ugly political issue. We loved them, however, and they loved us.
Dudley, after your first attendance I became your pastor-friend, and you became my personal friend, Christian brother and business contact in Carthage. My reminiscences of our friendship are nostalgic, warm and pleasant. I enjoyed our lively conversations, yours through your imitable soft-spoken deep and balmy voice, where your meanings in sensitivity, were with your caring expressions from your insightful caring heart, spoken in context to our situations and in our youthful ministry. Your counsel was perceptive, gentle, and poignant. I appreciated your photography, your Christian Bookstore, your radio programs, your sharing of the three-nails with each Good-Friday worshipper, the several meals, in our homes and restaurants and so many conversations. I loved our coffee-cup chats, drop0in visits. Our friendship, as now, so then, mattered much! My predecessor, Chuck Scramalie and my successor, Walter Schell and I, Duaine Allen, have been through Carthage, both receiving and granting indelible impressions. Residents have a historical-people-perspective that itinerant pastors cannot.
However, after our congregational election to come to this lovely place to be their pastor, and on the very day that we had arrived in Carthage NY, with our “Ryder” moving truck, while moving in from Middletown OH, with our possessions, three of the Carthage church ladies had met me at this parsonage driveway entrance and tapped on my moving-truck window. I rolled it down. They said to me, “There is no need for you to unpack your truck. You will not be staying here in Carthage long enough to make it worth your while. We know that this congregation voted for you to become our next Pastor. Nevertheless, twelve of us “have the mind of the Lord”. Moreover, Bonnie Gates has told us and we know with her that you are not the man for here. Therefore, we will be conducting a monthly pastoral “vote of confidence”. Therefore, you will be moving away from here very shortly, so do not unpack your truck!”
True to their word, they proceeded to conduct a monthly pastoral “vote of confidence”, however, to their chagrin, each month our winning margin continually, grew. I hated that these clouds of dissensions and static tensions had to hang in the atmosphere, from the beginning to the ending of our stay in Carthage. Nevertheless, the emotional tensions, mostly on the shallower side, intensified, and they engaged increasingly drastic measures.
Despite that greeting and realizing that monthly pastoral “vote of confidence”, voting prospect, we did indeed unload our moving truck. My Uncle Ollie Dalaba’s dear friend and college buddy, Almon Bartholomew, District Superintendent had duly warned me of this frightful prospect and cautioned me to very seriously consider not accepting the congregational call to pastor this church family, knowing this church’s history. He and I stayed in close communication. I felt that I would be willing to accept this challenge with his blessing. And so I proceeded to accept this call to Carthage, and moved my family, and whether I moved naively or under Divine-inspiration, only God knows for sure.
God did bless Carthage and us, greatly. We did see much good accomplished. We saw many souls saved throughout the community and within the congregation. Our two weekly radio programs were popular and loved. We aired on Watertown NY radio stations WOTT 1410 AM & WNCQ- 102.9 FM.
There was a phenomenal opening within the public school system. HS Principal Tom was a fellow Kiwanian. Geographically, Carthage had one of the largest school systems in NY State. At graduation time the senior class requested a unique “Bache laureate”. Meeting with the fellow clergy and me, in the parsonage, the Christian students, leaders within this public High School, requested that their “Bache laureate” take place, not traditionally, in a church where they feared little participation in this religious service, but rather in a park with swimming, set in a campfire setting, with energetic games and with a picnic feast to beat all others, and then requested us to include inspirational contemporary singing around the campfire and a rousing sermon presentation to shock the classmates with a confrontation of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ unmistakably and an unashamed call for the salvation of each member of their whole class. This was how they thought they should conclude their High School career. They desired to launch all seniors from High School and out into adult life with real meaning and the same godly purpose they had discovered. This was not their first attempt, to captivate their friends, but they did not want to fail in their last effort. We clergy all agreed, that though novel, worthy. The success was Olympian. God answered prayers most profoundly, theirs, the student leaders and ours the community clergymen.
God’s answers to our prayers are absolutely profound, miraculous and decipherable “post-facto”! By example of God’s beneficent hand ever present with us, I share this story which shows how miraculously God moves men and nature, circumstances and events, to His will, honor and glory and for our mutual benefit.
I am beginning to think, that God’s genius and sense of humor delights in engineering scenarios where we own a situation and in some measure of desperation, we beseech Him to intervene in ours. Ultimately, His answer to our prayers accomplishes His agenda. Immediately we learn that He succeeded in getting us on His same page. Our needs are the doors through which he leads us to the realization that He is ever present, interested and operative.
In a monthly board meeting with the “monthly voting segment”, I prayed with them fervently, for a real concern that they realized and propounded, vociferously. Admittedly, my college-days “voice lessons” had not gifted me with melodious talent, but rather only painfully made me aware of what was legitimately their distress in this valid issue, the Sunday morning worship service. I was not a worship leader! Others of their pastors had been quite musical and both played the instruments and sang well.
With the urgency, of food, shelter and clothing, looming in the back of this young father, husband preacher’s mind, I joined the board of elders, in passionate prayer. I prayed loudly, that God would send to us a “minister of music”, a leader of worship! We each took our turn while on bended knee. I prayed for God to send “a man of God”, “a man who would be submitted to God and pastor”, “a man with an excellent spirit for worship”, “a man to bless this congregation”, and “a man with a gift to sing”, a man that would be gratifying for all to worship with and to even take pleasure in” and that God would send him to us.
What is more, I prayed that he would come that next Sunday! I felt a couple of the praying elders turn and look at me, on that request. Moreover, God answered and he did come.
David Gibbs newly transferred by the Army from TX to Fort Drum NY, arrived in our church parking lot, that Sunday morning. Before he even entered the church sanctuary, that very next Sunday, in my exuberance, I greeted him.
“Do you sing and lead in worship?” Before I had learned his name, I had requested him to lead the morning worship and to sing a special song for us. He chuckled at my unique welcome.
During the next weeks and months, he became our dear friend, sharing rich times with us in home and church, at meals and in prayer and in worship. Well he did sing a special song in solo for us that first Sunday morning and he continued to sing for us for each service and to lead the congregation in worship, accompanied by a most exceptional teen pianist, Carmelita Burdick. David Gibbs ministered for us each Sunday after that, until the very Sunday I left that pastorate, which coincided with his last week at Fort Drum, when he then was transferred to Alaska, I believe.
I still think that he was an angel, sent by God, a black angel and though unique to Carthage, he was our dear brother, David Gibbs. He was a delightful brother, to us. He came to share many meals with those at “their parsonage” and with our family. He introduced us to “Evie Tornquist”. He shared excitedly in gospel dialogues. Our hearts soared during his worship services.
The voice of God and the voices of our minds and voices of men conflict on occasion… Typically, I was out and about dropping in on church families throughout the area and I was at the stop sign closest to my office, when the Spirit of the Lord unmistakably spoke to me to turn my car about face and go back to near where I had just returned from. I sat in my car at the stop sign and actually argued with the Lord and myself. Lord, I promised Pamela that I would be home for dinner at 5:30 PM, and that I would not be late for dinner. She said you have promised that before. I promised her that I would be on time… this time… I have got just time now to go home and just make it in time and not be late… it is 5:25 PM…
But the Lord’s voice was emphatic, and overpowered my objections. I had often wrestled with the voice of God and felt a quandary, whether or not this was indeed God’s voice or my own thoughts.
I had made a lifetime commitment, that I would sooner obey the voice of God than not and that I would never regret that. So I turned my new 1976 Caprice Classic two-door sedan, about and went back from whence I had come, and I drove into the driveway of the family the Lord had impressed upon my mind. It seemed that no one was home. I knocked on the door and scolded myself for being late for Pamela’s dinner. But again I still sensed that this was a divine appointment and so, conflicted, I knocked louder and a third time, really loudly. I had waited patiently, maybe 30 to 60 seconds between knocks. Just as I was about to turn and walk away the door opened and my friend and brother stood there with a fully loaded pistol in his hand. He said, “Oh Hi Pastor. I was just going to kill myself. I had asked God to send someone by 5:45 PM, if He could still hear me.” I wanted him to send someone to come and talk with me. Well, he and I and the Lord had a very good and long talk together. He had been a Christian since a child, but had lost any sense of validity in his relationship with God. He felt guilty and unforgivable. He expressed frustration and turmoil. He prayed and cried profusely. He made sincere commitments to God. When we both knew he was established I left for dinner… late, again! Oh well! My friend and his family continue to find us wherever we live and come to visit us and to share a picnic, usually annually. We love each other.
Despite that greeting at the moving truck window and those voting prospects announced upon our arrival, we had unloaded our moving truck. Nevertheless, with the constant harangue and harassment of the “monthly voting segment”, and their monthly reporting to the District Office, the District Officers’ finally counseled, typically, for me to give in to this minority. What this group required of me, to resign, “post-haste”, was a severe quandary at best weighing our own family’s temporal concerns, what we legitimately felt the church family’s concerns against theirs. Although they intensely believed in their own minds and hearts that they were closest to God and very righteous, believing fervently that they did have the mind of the Lord! On any one of their several monthly reports to the District lists of criticisms were levied intending to substantiate their assumptions. I never cared to know what items might be listed. Not that I did not care, but that should I satisfy that list they should find yet items for the next list. I am not prone to preferring the discovering of this entire tally of deficits and these many lists of negatives about me was beginning to challenge all of the nice things I would care to tell about myself. Tongue in cheek. But I did not know the content of the lists, until a District Official’s anticipated visit from the Syracuse Headquarter should come to reveal my dearth.
Oh! … WOW… Wow… wow! Normally, a visit from District Officials was “Pomp and Circumstance”, glorious, joyful, but this prospect was frightful at best and devastation at worst. Most clergymen under such visits as I was anticipating have failed morally, theologically, or financially. That was not me. I am a virgin to my wife still. I practice exquisite exegetical, hermeneutic and systematic theology without deviation. Though poor, I am poor honestly and I have bilked no funds, laundered no monies nor pilfered any bags. So if not the major issues, what else could only be fearsomely imagined… and at that the mind boggles with suspicions, accusations and deceptions… enough for gut wrenching nightmares.
Unbeknownst to me, the District Officials had received complaints that I had not polished my dress boots last Sunday. Admittedly the deep and salty snows had worked their havoc on my dress boots. I was unaware of an impending District Official’s Sunday visit in regard to this and similar concerns. God sent a fellow pastor to my home for fellowship on the day before and he brought with him two pairs of brand new leather-lined dress boots that he had picked up a garage sale that morning for a dollar a pair. Disappointedly he informed me that they had not fit his feet but he said for to me to try them on. They were the perfect fit for me! I inherited both pairs. The next morning I praised God as I slipped into the black pair of these Florsheim dress boots. The district officers arrived for the morning service and after their part and they sat with the congregation to hear my preaching. After the service, they met with me in my living room to express their concerns for my shoes. As the long list was read and this typical complaint was voiced, I noticed that the district officers moved their own feet uneasily about. I sat there with God’s gifts on my feet. And that item too was crossed off their waning list.
All that worry for what later seemed to me like nothing… Do I come across, like what concerns them does not matter? It matters. God knows it matters! I needed and had prayed for and gratefully wear God’s blessings… constantly!
The irony that humors me these many years later is “the great gulf that is fixed” between the reasons and the justifications! Because of your shoes leave town.
It occurs to me that within every democratically congregationally controlled pulpit and church there will be at least three groups of people within each church;
1> the people who are in love with Jesus, God’s Holy Word, God’s Holy
Will, the power of prayer, the righteous activity of their church within discipleship fulfillment of all that Jesus required of His disciples. These are essentially the Theists, seeing life from God’s point of view… The church crept in to the world. These believe with conviction that God’s ways are best and for this they would be willing to die.
2> the people who are in love with people, paper, product, power, pressure, fame fortune, fun, food, frolic, fantasy and prolific politics with “management by objectives business style”, where money, numbers, popularity and acceptance by the masses is tantamount to success. These are essentially the Humanists, seeing life from man’s point of view… The world crept into the church. These believe with consensus that Man’s ways are best and for this they would be willing to fight and argue.
3> the people who are in love with life, liberty learning, living, and the pursuit of happiness. These are essentially the Hedonists, seeing life from man’s pleasure, peace, and an issues point of view… The world crept into the church. These believe nothing for certain and assume every man’s ways are, right, equal and good that their ways are as good as all other men’s ways are best and for this they would be willing to lay out funds, write petitions, and carry on discussions as long as no one is considered an authority and every one is considered good.
The District Officers counseled that I “voluntarily resign” in order to restore peace and to allow the disgruntled minority to again be back in charge of the congregation. I was handed a ten-dollar bill by one of the brothers and assured that that would help me and my family of six, with my family’s living expenses, until my next pastorate wherever and whenever that might be. Embracing me warmly they assured me that they would give me thirty days to vacate the premises and if we ever needed them to feel free to call.
God will take care of you and yours in ways you could not imagine…
Before our time of departure from Carthage, God again beneficently, prepared the way to sustain us, the Allens all six of us, for what would turn out to be a two-month transition.
He always did for us what we could never dream nor devise nor anticipate. One sweet lady intended for her gift to my Assemblies of God mission’s campaign to put my campaign in good stead and so as to exceed our goal. There were two poles and both approved of missions, assuredly. But one could not politically freely support my missions-efforts. This sweet lady had donated a designated gift for the missions program I was running. We had risen a little over $40,000 for missions. A private argument happened between this sweet lady and others over her sizable “designated gift”. The other ladies believed that her sizable “designated gift” could not be so designated for missions, but must be her tithe on the sale of her home and therefore belong to the “undesignated general fund”. The argument was serious. Against her usual soft-spoken and quiet manner the sweet lady required then that her “designated gift” funds be returned to her in full, if they would not be placed in the “designated gift” funds for missions. And for all I knew this was a hurtful loss to missions at best and an insane example of carnality winning at worst, or so it at first seemed.
Later, I learned of a surreptitious agenda and a secret meeting that later ensued between the sweet lady and my wife, Pamela. In 1977, it was not typical or more accurately it never happened by her own confession, that my wife would have a secret from me. But the sweet lady took my wife into a confidence and she went with her whilst I tended the four young children.
Needless to say, I was very concerned about both their secret agenda and their enigmatic meeting. It seemed to me, that their manner was very clandestine. I feared the worst. To again put my wife and four young children into a homeless status, with absolutely no known nor visible means of support and absolutely no positive direction for my life and ministry, and feeling self-doubt very intensely and arguing profoundest questionings of my very own call to the Christian Ministry from God.
I feared the worst case scenarios imaginable… maybe the sweet lady was helping Pamela to leave such a miserable failure as I felt myself to be at that moment, and not unjustifiably… maybe they were making arrangements in the sweet ladies home for Pamela and the children… ooh these and countless fears and frustrations surged through my raging throbbing heart and troubled mind… I did what I always did… I knelt with the children by the sofa and we prayed… I calmed myself enough so as not to frighten my children to death, but I thought to pray loudly enough for my prayer to reach heaven and the heart of God, as if by shear volume alone… I told them that daddy needed God’s help… I believed that God would hear the simple faithful prayers of my little children even more than me… I asked my children to pray to God to send help right now… They were innocent victims, though they did not understand that… I felt totally helpless… I was to be their protector and provider and more of a good father than I felt myself to be at that moment!
Though with the responsibility for my beautiful family, my wife, Pamela and my four young children; Rebekah 5, Jonathan 4, Michael 3, and Stephen 2, and even though the very last vote was by highest percentage in my favor, I had resigned.
I was still learning the distinctions between the voice of God and the purported voices of God. I was again wrestling with politics. I was wrestling between Theocracy and Democracy. I was wrestling with Theism, humanism and hedonism.
I was wrestling between the temporal securities for home, food, money, and clothes versus eternal values. I was wrestling with the call of God to refuse to compromise on principles, truths, and righteousness; and with the Devil and his legions of evil spirits and carnal hearts. I had been challenged to play politics. I had refused to compromise on Biblical principles always before and so now. I again determined that I would not compromise.
I knew so plainly that God had indeed called me and I rehearsed my very own call from God to be His Christian Minister. I called back to my mind promises that God had given to me at that call… that God had promised me while still only twelve years old, and hearing His call to become “a man of God” and not yet fully appreciating what that meant, I knew then and rehearsed again now while there kneeled at the sofa, embracing my little ones, prayerfully sobbing before God that in my inmost being, God had called me with reassurances that He would take care of me and of my family!
My wife soon returned with the sweet lady and both were apparently happy and seemingly peaceful. Well, I took some comfort at that. But I still enquired. The sweet lady comforted me and said that it was needful that I not know of their secret, refusing to grant even one hint… but she reassured me profusely that I would most definitely and wholeheartedly approve… but for some reason that did not flood my soul with peace nor alleviate a throbbing heart. What is more, is that she stressed that she believed that God had told her to not tell me of her agenda. Later, while again alone with me, my wife herself felt it needful to comfort my troubled heart. She confided that the sweet lady had taken her to the bank and had opened an account for Pamela alone and not for me, and she had deposited an amount equal to the “designated funds for missions” amount and declared to Pamela that she believed that the Lord had intended this and that this was for “Home Missions”, but that it was not for Duaine but for Pamela. The District Officials did indeed call and they asked me specifically if I had influenced the sweet lady to give the funds to me. I could answer honestly and say that, “No, I had no such influence!” Again I saw the Hand of the Lord God revealed in His own economy and schedule.
I had complied with the “edictus absurditous”, though at the heartbreak of the Church family and my own family. I had resigned with no prospects of future ministry known to me. Management by Objectives would brand name this “Absurd”! Friends and Family would label this incongruous! The curious novel reader would voucher this ridiculous!
Historically I have been as loyal a churchman as there is. I had been born and brought up a Wesleyan Methodist and educated in two Wesleyan Methodist Colleges and formerly pastored two Wesleyan Churches. (My wife and I attended the merging conference in Anderson IN, in 1968 between the Wesleyan Methodists and the Pilgrim Holiness Denominations. It was at that time the name was changed to Wesleyans.)
We had been truly blessed by God, successfully growing each congregation, living and endeavoring to live an exemplary life as behooved upon me by the “Call of God”. I had been faithful to God;
1. in theology and Scriptures,
2. in finances and money management and
3. in marriage and morality,

the three areas where fellow “Called of God” men might fail.
The Beloved District Officials had recommended that I move to a pastorate in New York City. With my little children on my mind, and in my arms, the country bumpkin farm boy that I am, I thought…”That is no place to raise up little children!” So I turned down their only offer.
Discussing my own history with me, my failure with the Wesleyans seemed to be that I had prayed in tongues in the Spirit in my prayer closet. For that I was excommunicated from the Wesleyan Methodists.
Subsequently, I had joined with the Assemblies of God, at my mom’s baby brother’s invitation, Uncle Ollie Dalaba, who lovingly introduced me to wonderful brethren who had an appreciation for my predicament and extended to me their credentials of ordination and Carthage was my second AG pastorate. After The Wesleyans in Corinth NY, The Wesleyans in Charles City IW, Middletown OH, and now Carthage NY, I sat down with the Lord.
More accurately, I fell face down before the Lord. I had then prayed to the Lord, “Lord you know all peoples and times and things and places. I am not going to be presumptuous, and fill out applications, make appointments, and mail out resumes. I want to know that You are leading me. I want to differentiate between the leading of me or of men and of You. I am going to completely trust you to open doors, now shut and to shut doors now open. Lord you have got my phone number and my address. If you want me, You call me! You know me and You know where I am. Though this may seem a most remote place and in winter even a most inhospitable place, way out in what seems like the middle of no place, you know me and my family, here in what is really a most exquisite place and corner of your creation. In Jesus Name I pray! Amen!”
In my weakest moments emotionally, I dared to think that it seemed to me then as always, the District Officers allowed evil to rule in that church, by preferring to sidestep true resolutions in a Biblical pattern and instead requiring the righteous to give in to the wicked because the wicked felt so intensely. This is me in my carnality, meanness and lowdown and dirty. But this is not me! This is not how I allow myself to be, thing speak of act. God alone is the judge. And He for sure, does not need my help.
Now I catch myself by the Knapp of the neck and slap myself upside the head, stomp on my own little toes and says to myself, self\, “This isn’t any way to think…” Of course, now knocked back into my senses… honestly now… would it have been better that I had stayed and others would have left or if we had continued to fight on these absurdities…Now of course not! God’s agenda is always primary. What is His plan anyway?
Even though they may be the longest standing members and the biggest money people does that criterion defend dictatorial powers over propriety? But we reloaded possessions onto a Mayflower moving truck, just thirteen months after arrival, and we moved on and now to Sylmar CA. In jest, it occurred to me to buy my own moving truck and to stay packed. On the day I compile these collections we have since now lived in ten states, thirty-three homes and eight denominations and have completed nearly forty years following the Lord in faithful Christian Ministry, 1964-2004. There may have been naive moments in earlier ministry when I assumed that should I live a godly life the pillars of churches would laud my young ministry, Biblically correct assumptions, and twentieth century discipleship. But, Jesus walked on water and walked upstream in His religious realm, fighting against the same religious prejudices, proffered by His Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hates you. (2 Tim 3:12 KJV) Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

12. 1977-1981 Pastor at Sylmar Free Methodist Church, Sylmar CA & 1977-1981 Superintendent at Light & Life Christian School Sylmar CA (Virgil Raley)
1. (Pastor to 75 and grew to 175)
2. (Superintendent of School with 250 Students – Added: 24 Junior High Students & a Preschool & with 45 Students)

I enjoyed pastoring in… The Sylmar Free Methodist Church Sylmar CA

Yes, I had been the Assemblies of God Pastor in Carthage NY and it had been consummated. Life is filled with new chapters.
Dr. Virgil Raley, the District Superintendent of The Southern California /Arizona District of the Free Methodist Church initiated a dialogue with me during a Sunday Morning telephone conversation.
He called me! I make this point. I did not call him. Though I was looking for the will of God for my life and for my next pastorate, I had not sent any resumes nor filled any applications. He spontaneously invited me to become a FM pastor in his district, some 3200 miles from where I then was. I remember saying to him, “Dr. Raley, do you realize that I am an Assemblies of God Minister, and I am talking to you on the telephone in an Assemblies of God parsonage? Do you realize that the Wesleyans, a sister denomination to yours, took great exception to my Holy Spirit Theology and if not excommunicated at least ostracized me for my “Holy Spirit Theology and my spiritual gifts”, position? Is your denominational position on Holy Spirit Theology the same as the Wesleyans? Why then are you calling me?”
He explained. At the prior midweek prayer service, my Wesleyan Methodist in-laws, newly moved from Marion IN to Santa Barbara CA, and not surprisingly not finding a Wesleyan Church, were attending Reverend Dennis Weyman’s Free Methodist Church, near Westmont College. As caring parents are prone to do, they had presented a prayer our request for me, their son-in-law and their daughter Pamela and our family, in upstate New York. The next day Reverend Weyman, while in meeting with Dr. Raley mentioned this recent prayer request. Acting upon that Dr. Raley requested me to consider being a pastor of the Sylmar CA FM church on that very count; he continued, “Because in Sylmar CA, about one third of the congregation members are charismatic, of the Pentecostal flavor. He informed that he did not have another FM pastor to appoint there. He had learned that I had grown up, as a Wesleyan Methodist, and that I was now an Assemblies of God Minister, therefore it occurred to him that I was an ideal candidate for that church. He energetically invited me to consider this ministry and to meet during that week at the Free Methodist headquarters in Winona Lake IN with him and the Bishops for a discussion with me.
“What were my proclivities currently on “The Holy Spirit Theology issue?” “ Could I, an AG preacher, pastor in the FM Denomination?” In this session, we were to make unearthing to determine whether we could work in harmony, or was I too Pentecostal for this notoriously non-charismatic Denomination, District and Local Church. I wondered then, if they should desire to clip my feathers, or if I should be the tool in the hands of God to guide them into greater growth and maturity in their own walk as a denomination. (Tongue-in-cheek!)
Later that week when I did meet with them, I told them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as I unraveled the storyline of my life’s journey and my chronological testimony. I rehearsed my own spiritual journey as a continuing discovery throughout my deeply religious life. I myself balance any credence to experiential theology, with Biblical Theology and Systematic Theology. I continue in my maturing relationship-development with God, my Father, with my best friend and savior Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit my comforter and tutor. I remain in the study His beloved Holy Word.
I assured them that I was not yet a finished product. However, there were many voices speaking to me, on the several sides of this apparently gnarly issue. With some measure of distrust for the motivations of the authorities on the several sides, I preferred to do my own thinking, praying, and hearing from God, not as a rebellious child, nor as an independent thinker, but as man of faith hearing from his God.
Nevertheless, with a fervency to know the Truth, I knew I could not trust the opposing poles’ opinions. How could there be such good and well-informed people holding such contrasting views of the Truth? Certainty, the ones yelling most loudly did not intend to convince me by the shear volume alone or did they? Their arguments seemed more emotion than Truth. I did not care to exchange pairs of colored glasses, to see more perfectly some polarized conception, that might be most appealing, at any given instance. I wanted the Truth! The most accurate source of this truth was God’s own Holy Word, even more than denominational edicts more emotionally charged than reasoned and seasoned deliberations.
I had been born, brought up, and college educated Wesleyan and pastored two Wesleyan Churches. My salvation and my sanctification experiences had demanded total commitment, including all of my life and without reservations.
The issue before me seemed to be a defense for the authority of the Word of God over the authority of a committee well intentioned, yet ill informed. Albeit, included within the ruling committee’s rank and file there were Bishops, Superintendents, numberless Authors and countless Friends. The Holy Spirit Theology seemed clear enough to me. However, to some the issue wrought phenomenal debate, conjured up threatenings of burnings at the stake and emotional accusations, deprecations and character assassinations hurled in rapid succession.
My Mom’s family and my maternal grandparents were Pentecostal Holiness; they seemed most sane healthy and normal, even delightful people, to me. My Dad’s family and my paternal grandparents were Wesleyan Methodists; they too, seemed most sane healthy and normal, even delightful people, to me. What is more, they were themselves best of friends and lived as harmonious cooperative farm families and neighbors. Their Adirondack Village Churches shared the same parking lot and in more ways than one.
In juxtaposition to the modern prevailing argumentative assumptions there is a phony split, held by Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals, by Charismatics and non-Charismatics that one is superior and one is inferior, each side claiming the opposite.
The “nons” believed that most of these were more than slightly touched in the head and not so much touched in the heart. My grandparents saw no such phony split as the new generation’s reaction to the worldwide charismatic revival was proffering and fostering. I knew the teachings of my grandparent’s churches. I knew all of the people from both and even closely blood related to most in both.
When for the first time, I did indeed pray in the charismatic spiritual gift of tongues or prayed in the Spirit, something happened far more than what happened in my own private prayer life and to me personally. From the Wesleyan Methodist’s denominational point of view, that fact that I prayed in my own spirit to God in a spiritual prayer language or a tongue as a real language of the heart and whether of men or of angels, made me one of those other guys at whom askance looks were the norm.
It seemed our leaders’ judgments took leave of Biblical foundation. Somewhere along the way, the Biblical issue plainly spoken of became shrouded with a mysterious emotional blanket that precluded reasoned discourse. This whole thing became tied up in ethereal realms of intense emotion. No longer were reasonable assertions absorbing the nether worlds elicited atmospheric violently raging storms. Most on either side of these mountainous issues ran for cover, sandbagging their reinforcements, rehearsing past achievements, as a defense to keep jarred yesterday’s manna. At the time, some chose to make my private prayer life publicity stunt, an academic critique and an issue. The Wesleyan Methodists demanded that I renounce that kind of prayer life as of the Devil and to cease and to desist. I could not for about a jillion reasons, not the least of which was that for me the Bible was bedrock foundational for all matters of faith and Christian living. Not alone sentimentally, but a precipitate and arbitrary issue-adoption on my part would most likely have far reaching shockwaves. It was never intentioned to wrestle over trivial issues. When in such an occasion there maybe ones who might look for scapegoats to focus attention on rather that upon the real issues. Until circumstances shouted a clear clean-cut issue that would necessitate such hard choices and such life-changing commitments, rest. There were just too many Scriptural passages relative to this volatile issue, regarding The Holy Spirit Theology not only needing my perusal, but also demanding most intensive exegesis. Not only mine, but all others in this debate. I chose to make a profound statement with sacrifice. I took my own Ordination Parchment for which I had so hard worked since twelve years old when I answered the “Call of God” upon my life. On its reverse-side I penned my confession of faith, sanctification and commitment, declaring my love for God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I rehearsed my gratitude for the salvation message delivered to my young heart and the entire sanctification message believed and that demanded a comprehensive commitment including my tongue. In the spirit of love, the price of sacrifice acting out of such a commitment as entire sanctification, I sent this parchment to my friend and former Sunday School Teacher Dr. Robert W. McIntyre, then a newly elected Wesleyan General Superintendent. He had inherited the dubious decision penned by the former Generals while in a motel room while on a road trip in Michigan.
What was most remarkable, to me and to my tens of thousands of counter-part brethren was how we, the young and the innocents were assumed the divisive forces by our very leaders that should have been championing the defense of the Holy Spirit Theology and the Holy Scriptures, that had been our denominations hallmark, seal and distinctive.
All those like myself, still young in our walks with the Lord, still early in our ministries, still zealous for the work of this office, still intense with heart-felt devotion, still passionate for the lost and still growing in the faith, still eagerly learning now not as much as new facts as new realities, relationships, and renewals sponsored by heaven, not in the sense of disgruntlement, but in this sense of looking to God and to His Word that all teachings of the Scriptures should be as real to us now in our own ministries as in the ancient pages of Holy Writ and in the lives of the authors and subjects of these challenges to our hearts. We were still energized in urgency aware of overwhelming potential and overpowering and phenomenal magnitude in ministry to the whole world all yet out there, in front of us. of these converts and the nurturing of the saints,
My own dear Father advised me to consult with Uncle Ollie Dalaba, an Executive Presbyter with the Assemblies of God, and to very seriously consider joining with them, should that be possible. I did. They did. God bless them. They grabbed up this lonely waif.
The FM Bishops of Winona Lake Indiana accepted me as one of their FM pastors. Though already an Ordained Elder, with the Wesleyans, The Assemblies of God, and The Pentecostal Holiness, they did tell me I would have to be again ordained, but through their denominational processes, including the ordination as deacon and then the ordination as elder. The first would take two years. They asked me to move my young family clear across the country, from one end to the other. They asked me to fly with my wife to CA and to meet first with the CA/AZ District Officials and next with the local church officials in Sylmar CA. In Indiana the FM Bishops and their Officials, in Redlands CA the FM CA/AZ District Officials and the FM Local Church Officials extended a call to us to pastor that FM Church in Sylmar CA. We returned back home to Carthage NY and packed our possessions and proceeded to move by Mayflower from the North East coast across country with our four young children 5, 3, 2, & 1, Rebekah, Jonathan, Michael and Stephen to the West coast.
When we arrived in CA we soon realized that even this FM holiness denomination suffered from a severe case of the intestinal politics with full blown symptoms, including severe prejudices and ostracizing rashes and criticisms aches and cramps against any who may be charismatic and Pentecostal.
It was either going to heal slowly yet with full recovery or relapse into the fatal disease and eventual demise. The intestinal politics worked on the majority vote ruling system, but with the underlying assumptions held by a strong minority that should there be a disgruntled infectious minority they felt that they themselves should still lend their most concerted efforts and influences upon all others to assure their own way because they just felt that strongly. I was there for four years. At the end of my second year the minority lobbied on the District Conference floor for the replacement of the District Superintendent Dr. Virgil Raley, because he had brought me to Sylmar. His successor, Mr. Earl Schamerhorn, had been his assistant, but led the minority mutiny and began a campaign to purge all spiritual health from the system lest the interest in Holy Spirit Theology win and be again established. Typically, the minority prejudices and assumptions reared their ugly heads, and belly aches. They who were anti-charismatic and anti-Pentecostal and believing as very strongly as they did, they were behooved to act on their fallacious assumptions, swiftly.
Historically, though changing, the Wesleyan Methodists and the other holiness denominations including the Free Methodists had by and large unlearned and untrained clergy. To whom, should they read a couple of books a year and write a few papers, ordination credentials were issued. There was a necessary reaction for the clergy to become educated, and I agreed emphatically. Some of the most vociferous voices against the Holy Spirit Theology and against the unlearned clergy were behaving in noteworthy fashion making their own “edjamacation” seem spurious. I had an earned BA, and two of three years completed on my MA degree. Their assumptions believed that if I prayed in tongues privately or gave credibility to the Holy Spirit gifts that I must be an ignoramus uneducated clergyman. The Schamerhorn minority issued to me five questions as an ultimatum, certain that my Holy Spirit Theology and answers to these questions would be their substantiation. Should I satisfy their assumptions that I indeed did not truly understand the gravity of such wisdom as theirs nor comprehend the issues as they did, they would have recourse and justification for releasing me from my credentials and from my pastorate and from my livelihood. From the date of issue of the questions, I had to respond in person for an oral inquisition on these items on the third day. This was similar to the earlier one with the Bishops. I prayed and the Lord enabled me to prepare for the oral interrogation with the answers here attached. With the assistance of The Westminster Confession, The Augsburg Confession, The Free Methodist Discipline, the Holy Bible, myriads of ‘jotted down notes’ carried through years of travels and with a fervency in my own heart, I compiled these answers to their questions.
Question 1a… What is my theology regarding the Holy Spirit?
I believe that the Holy Spirit is God of very God. There is only one living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection. He is a most pure and Holy Spirit. He is invisible, without body, parts, or passions. God, the Holy Spirit is immutable, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, omniscient, omnipotent, and most absolute. The Holy Scriptures inspired by the Holy Spirit declare further that He is love, truth, sovereignty, justice, and infinity. The Holy Spirit works all things according to the counsel of God’s own will, for God’s own glory. He is the Spirit of the Fattier and of Jesus Christ most loving, gracious, merciful, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and forgiving iniquitous transgression and sin; and the rewarder of them that diligently seeks God. He is most just and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and Who will by no means clear the guilty. I believe that God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself, and He is alone in and of Himself alone all sufficient not standing in need of any creatures which He has created, nor does He desire any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He alone is the fountain of all being, of Whom, though Who and to Whom are all things. He has absolute sovereign rule over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever He pleases. In His sight, all things are open, and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, infallible and independent upon the creature. He is absolutely Holy in all His counsels, in all His commands, in all His works, in all His promises. To Him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience He is pleased to require of them.
I believe that God is a trinity in unity, and that God is a God-head being three persons of one substance, power, eternity, will, essence, consciousness, and perfection. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is one God, one Lord. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit is eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.
The Father is the Father, and not the Son, and not the Holy Spirit. The Son is the Son and not the Father and not the Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit and not the Father and not the Son.
Question 1b… What is my theology regarding the Holy Spirit as He relates to the life of holiness, and the spiritual gifts?
I believe that the scriptures in John 14:16,26; John 15:26; John 16:7-15 impart the teaching of Christ regarding the ministry and work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian’s life as it relates to holiness. The Holy Spirit dwells in the disciples as Comforter, Counselor, and Advocate; to teach all things, to recall what Jesus said, to testify of Jesus, to reprove the world of sin, of the righteousness of 7esus required of all, and of the soon coming judgment, to guide the disciples into all truth, not to speak of Himself, but only what He hears, to exalt Jesus Christ, to show disciples things to come, to glorify Jesus Christ by showing the things of Jesus to them. I believe that the Deity of the Holy Spirit is taught in Acts 5:3,4 and elsewhere. He works in my life to perfect holiness, perfectness, maturity, separation from evil, and to make me complete, wholesome, righteous, obedient, submissive and responsive to the living and true God. The Holy Spirit applies the work of Christ to my life. I believe that the Emblems of the Holy Spirit signify the ministry of the Spirit to a Christian to make sanctification complete, to make holiness real and practical in this present life. Fire, wind, water, dove, oil, seal, fruits, gifts are used to express works fire speaks of His consuming purifying power in the heart of a believer; Wind speaks of his power, His hidden depth, and His power to regenerate; water speaks of His refreshing, His life sustaining power, His filling and overflowing of the believer with spiritual life and vitality; dove speaks of His gentleness, tenderness, peacefulness (for the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension); oil speaks of His anointing for service, of His healing, and of His presence; seal speaks of His ownership of us now; fruits speak of His nature producing in our lives likenesses and realities of similitude to the nature and image Christ, sweet, satisfying, nourishing; gifts speak of useful tools for service to minister to others in cooperation with Him.
I believe that the sins against the Holy Spirit hinder, cripple, or destroy a person. The sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is ascribing to the devil what God alone can do or ascribing to God what the devil has done. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness. The sin of resisting the Holy Spirit is committed when He convicts and one refuses to obey. The sin of grieving the Holy Spirit is committed when a believer does not yield full control of his life to God for the glory of Christ. The sin of quenching the Holy Spirit is committed when known sin is unconfessed and unforgiven. The sin of lying to the Holy Spirit is mocking God and is only self-deception. It is born of jealousy, selfishness, and pride. I believe that the Holy Spirit has sanctified me. He enables me to love God with all my heart, mind, soul, body, strength, and He guides me as I grow in God’s grace. He enables me to love my neighbor as myself.
I believe that the work of the Holy Spirit convicts me of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. The Holy Spirit regenerates my life and indwells my heart. He places His seal upon me. The Holy Spirit witnesses with my spirit and that I belong to God. Jesus baptizes me in water for salvation. His Holy Spirit baptizes me in Himself for service. The Holy Spirit infills me, and He empowers me; He leads me, He administers fruits, gifts, virtues, beatitudes to my life to bring me into full compliance with the precepts and examples of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit has been given control of my life and as much of my life that has not yet learned full obedience, submission, understanding and maturity, I pray to be made complete in and through Him.
I believe that the fruit of the Spirit in my life is love. Joy is love’s strength. Peace is this love’s security. Patience is this love’s endurance. Kindness is this love’s conduct. Goodness is its character. Faithfulness is this love’s confidence. Gentleness is its humility. Self-control is this love’s victory! My life is Spirit controlled, sanctified and holy as I remain dedicated to God and remain totally yielded to Him, as I walk in all known light, obey every known command, cherish and claim every precious promise, perform every required duty, bear every fruit, exercise every gift, preach every truth, minister in every opportunity, love unconditionally, serve sacrificially, teach by precept and example. Ephesians 4:11-16 and He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ; till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
Question 2… What is your theology regarding the church?
I believe that the visible church of Christ is the congregation of faithful believers who lives pure and holy following in the footsteps of Christ. I believe that the church is, the body of Christ that hear the Word preached and preach the Word to the world. I believe that the church is the body of Christ that faithfully administers the sacraments to the believers within the body. I believe that the church is the visible body of Christ upon the earth doing now what Christ would do if He were walking our earth again. I believe that the true church is universal in scope and ministry; and that the church reaches across denominations, cultures, generations, boundaries, governments, races, nationalities, to include all who believe in the Gospel as presented within the Holy Scriptures. I believe that within the church there will be the broad spectrum from babes in Christ to children in Christ, to young men in Christ, to mature men in Christ. In the church, each believer has a special part and talent to contribute to serve Christ and the others in the body. I believe that the true church includes all faithful believers, some of whom have gone to be with the Lord and others of whom remain on the earth, having renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil, and are committed unto His church, till He come. I believe that the local church is a body of believers formally organized on Gospel principles meeting together regularly for the purposes of evangelism, worship, edification, instruction and service.
I believe that the Free Methodist Church is a denomination consisting of those members within conferences and local churches who as members of the body of Christ hold the faith taught in the Holy Scriptures, and who subscribe to the tenants of the Book of Discipline and who submit to the ecclesiastical authority of the denomination as those appointed by God to safeguard the church.
Question 3… What is your theology regarding discipleship?
I believe that as Jesus Christ chose 12 disciples and required of them godly discipline, allegiance, loyalty, sacrifice, attention, obedience and service; so God requires this of me and all who would hear the voice and the call of God. This is not to say that discipleship-is required only of ful2-time, professional ministers, it is rather to say the high and holy calling of sanctification, holy Christian living, and consecrated discipleship is God’s voice and call to every heart believer. I believe that this kind of discipleship will make every believer a full-time disciple in every situation. I believe that discipleship will evidence in one’s life through salvation; by doing good at every opportunity to all men, and especially to those of the body of Christ. I believe that a believer who is living a life of discipleship will minister to the bodily needs by giving food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, visiting those that are sick or in prison, ministering to the widows and the fatherless. I believe that a disciple will by precept and example minister instruction, practice spirit worship, reprove the facts, and exhort the commands, all in love, and with all diligence, that the Gospel be not blamed. A disciple will run with patience the race that is set before him; he will consider himself a slave willing to obey all of the Master’s commands; he will deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow close to Christ; he will be willing to suffer for the sake of the Gospel of Christ will ever keep and respect the Ten Commandments loving God and loving his fellow man with a whole heart. I believe that a disciple will abstain from all forms of spiritism, witchcraft, astrology, and all forms of the occult. He will abstain from all sins including drug usage, overindulgence, idle curiosity, evil speech, materialism, sensuality, unholy ambition, evil thoughts, worldliness, evil desires and lustful passions. I believe that a true disciple of Christ Jesus will abstain from humanism, cults, heresies, and secret societies. A disciple will respect individual human rights of all persons; He will live, talk, think, and do circumspectly, justly, and righteously in all of his responsibilities and contractual obligations. He will respect all duly constituted authority in the home, church, and the state, except when to do so violates the clear Word of God. A Christian disciple will strive for the advancement of God’s kingdom and for the mutual edification of fellow believers, in holiness, knowledge, and love; and he will walk in Christian fellowship in carefulness giving and receiving admonition with meekness and affection. He will pray for others and offer his aid to one sick or in distress; he will cultivate Christian sympathy; and he will demonstrate purity, charity, faith, hope, courtesy and respect.
I believe that a disciple will be careful in his dress, manners, habits, attitudes, motives, purposes, conversation, and stewardship of time, tithe, and talent. I believe that a disciple is a faithful and consistent student utilizing the opportunities to learn to be a better servant by reading, traveling as opportunity opens, studying under the tutuledge of the able and experienced. I believe that a disciple will preserve the sanctity-of the home, and respect the Biblical laws and requirements for marriage and child rearing, and the care of the sick and aged of the family.
Question 4… What is my theology regarding preaching?
I believe preaching is declaring God Is Word as recorded in the Bible. Preaching is declaring this truth with conviction, understanding, and spirit. I believe God would have me preach with preparation, with a specific premise. I believe I should know what I want my audience to know, or to do, or to be, as a result of having heard a sermon that I have preached. I believe a sermon will entertain, though that is not its purpose. I believe a sermon will inform, though that is not its highest purpose. I believe a sermon is to declare the truth of Jesus Christ and His claims and to require from the audience a response to accept or reject that truth. There are many forms of sermon and preaching styles. Each of them has unique strengths. The expositional, topical, biographical, didactical, doctrinal, practical, special occasion, evangelistic, and the missionary are among the more popular forms of sermon delivery styles. Each preacher is familiar with these several types, and most preachers use them all on different occasions. I personally prefer the expositional style though I am not restricted to that style. I also enjoy both the didactical and the doctrinal styles and feel very comfortable with them. I believe each preacher develops his own most perfect style with maturity, experience and influence.
I believe every sermon should always be a declaration of God’s truth and always based upon the Bible. Some sermons that I preach are developed through several Homiletical styles including these: typical example, comparison, discussion, aspects, cause/effect, time sequence or chronologically, advantage-disadvantage, explanation, observation, storyline, creative, imaginative, practical, realistic, proposition and application.
I try to be exciting in my preaching. I believe that my life is preaching a louder message than my sermon, therefore I trust God to make my life a message to His glory. I believe that true preaching is God’s word to man rather than man’s word about God. I believe that God’s word will be so indelibly impressed upon my spirit that I know I am speaking His words and not my own. I believe that the success of preaching is not in my skill, but in the power of God’s Word. I believe that when I am pure through the cleansing of the blood of Christ, when I am indwelt with the presence of Jesus Christ’s Holy Spirit and when I am under the anointing of God Is Holy Spirit, the message that God has to give to my audiences and congregations will enter their hearts and challenge their commitment, spark their faith, inspire their devotion, warm their love, thrill their hearts, instruct their minds and move them to action. I believe with Paul that is not with enticing words of men’s wisdom, but in the simple, powerful beauty of the preached word!
Question 5… What is your theology regarding the pastoral ministry?
I believe that it is a calling of God to be a Pastor. I believe that it is a spiritual gift to be a Pastor. “and He gave some Pastors” Ephesians 4:11. I believe Acts 20:18-21 in Paul’s farewell address to Ephesus is a clear concise definition of the Pastoral ministry, I was with you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which came upon me and how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying of repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. I believe this is a caricature of my theology of the pastoral ministry personally. I believe I must minister to the old and young, to the poor and wealthy, to the ignorant and learned, to the loveable and to the unlovely, to the sick and the well, to the sinner and the saint, to the church member and to the neighbor to the church, to the family, to the married and to the single, to the happy and to the frustrated to each and every one that God brings across my path. I believe I am full-time. I am ministering as people have needs whether it is convenient or not. I must care for the lonely, the widows, the fatherless, the parents, the children, the families; I must admonish them to live right, to tithe, to serve, to correct their courses of action to hold on when they want to give up. I believe I must serve them as a shepherd does his flock. I must serve them as a willing loving slave as Jesus said. My ministry must be intimate, personal and caring to each one. They must feel that I am caringly approachable, genuinely concerned, Biblically and academically qualified, compassionate, informed with current events and affairs. I must be a strong leader. I must example what I speak. I must be willing to share not only my strengths but also my weaknesses and show them how God has power to forgive, heal, correct, and use failures for good. This encourages the people of God, and they realize that the challenge and goal of Christian perfection and holy living is attainable. I am not Jesus Christ, but I believe I must live as close to Him, be as much like Him as I can be so that as Paul said, “Imitate me!” In my life, they will have a living object lesson to example the message before them. I must pray with them, laugh and cry with them, care about their interests, and family, listen to them as well as talk to them. I must rebuke and console them, and protect them; I must oppose their false ideas. I must know God, and know them. They must learn of God from me, and they will love God and me as I love them. I believe love is the quality and color of my role as a pastoral minister. I love my calling. I pray God to make me to excel in it through His grace, strength, and blessing. I remained in that pastorate another two years.
EN THEOS, EN AGAPE Reverend L. Duaine Allen Sylmar CA 1977-1981 Sylmar Free Methodist Church Pastor, & Light, and Life School Pastor/Superintendent Sylmar CA

13. 1981-1981 Minister at Gardena Valley Assembly Of God Gardena CA (Warren Hill & Everett Stenhouse) (Family Life Minister to 125 young families)

I enjoyed pastoring in…

14. 1981-1984 Pastor at Gardena Valley Assembly Of God Gardena CA (Everett Stenhouse) (Pastor to 125 and grew to 375)

I enjoyed pastoring in…
1. 1981-1984 Superintendent Gardena Valley Christian School Gardena CA (School 650 Students)

I enjoyed pastoring in…

15. 1984-1985 Minister Gospel Lighthouse Assembly Of God Hudson Falls NY (Lawrence Larson) (Pastor to 75 and grew to 375 People)

I enjoyed pastoring in…
16. 1985-1987 Pastor at Presbyterian Whiteside Church, Cambridge NY (Almon Bartholomew) (Interim Pastor to 8o People)

I enjoyed pastoring in…

Administrator & Pastor at Agape Covenant Ministries 1964-2004

17. 1968-2004 Agape Covenant Ministries
1. USA Weekly Bible Studies, Bible Counselor & Authoring Books

I want to tell you…Peter
Monday, May 21, 2001 07:06:05 AM 915 Stonewood Road, York, PA 17402-8112
(To be read aloud, slowly, thoughtfully, and dynamically with emotion.
Please savor every thought, and meaning stated and implied.)

To My Very Dear Son, Peter,
This letter is from a father’s heart that is filled to overflowing with delight, satisfaction, pride, gratitude, wonder, confirmation and prayer. Peter, though prone to superlatives, on an occasion that could rightfully warrant superlatives, this is such an occasion. This phenomenal occasion is the successful completion of your High School Career. The suggestion that this letter be written, and be read while on your class trip does not negate, nor indicate pretension for, the contents now put forth here, that were wont to be said from the heart, should any such occasion arise. When time is taken to reminisce, ponder and think of you, I will draw in deep breaths. I will slow myself down for some very serious solicitude.
I will lean back in a most comfortable position in my favorite chair. I will conjure, collate, conjecture and compile these expressions from my heart to yours.
“I want to tell you…”
“About Your Birth and Life in California”:
March 1983-August 1984 in California
(Birth to 17 months)
In Torrance on March 30, 1983 you were born to us, our fifth, now of our six children. You were perfect, ruddy pink, with ten of each and all parts working. You had joined the line up of blue-eyed blondes, though our darkest. Peter you were a direct prayer-request answered by Heaven’s creative genius. You are the fulfillment of our veracious prayers. The God created life you are was the blessing to us you are, beyond our most profound ability to pray our most fervent requests, long, sincere and intense, you were conceived, born, and live!
“I want to tell you…”
“You were Divinely Appointed!”
It was at a zenith in our own lives, that you were born to us, while we were pastoring one of our largest ministries, had the most health, wealth, and serenity. This was just before the next major chapter that was to be the antithesis. God presented you to us, for this next season of our lives! The blessing you are to us is inexplicable!
“I want to tell you…”
“About Your Early Family Life”:
There are many California pictures of you and your elder siblings, together with, Rebekah (1972), Jonathan (1973), Michael (1975), and Stephen (1976). They loved you and delighted in you. You would get into the middle of them and whatever it was they were doing by natural recourse, e.g. (Exempli Gratia) You would sit in the middle of their books, as they would all lay on the floor, relaxing, doing homework, while watching, “Little House On The Prairie”, and “The Waltons”, eating after school snacks. You would get nibbles and tickles and giggles from each of them in turn. You have always been in the family atmosphere of loving, nurturing, caring, sharing and Christian tutoring. At home, you had six tutors.
“I want to tell you…”
“About Your Very Active California Family Life”:
Though very young, you enjoyed the family weekends including several family trips: to Magic Mountain, Disneyland, and Knotts Berry Farm. You ate your family meals in restaurants and at Mom’s home cooked table-spread. Saturday mornings the sibs often requested breakfast at McDonalds for food and fun land. They desired stops at any one of the scores of parks. USA hosted the LA Olympics in 1984, and one of your family’s last official acts in LA was to host Christians from around the world coming to the LA Olympics to witness for Jesus Christ. You met many of the ones who were at our facility. You carried one of the Duncan Donut boxes to these friendly strangers. In your patriotic outfit, Peter, you were a very convincing donut salesman. You attended the Yugoslavian soccer match at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. You rode the event bus with family and friends. With enthusiasm, you expressed the airborne vivacity, and you waved your flag, clapped your hands, blew on your whistle lollypop, and enjoyed the snacks from everybody.
Grandpa and Grandma Tice took us on visits to the Santa Barbara Zoo where you fed animals snacks at every station, and to a Santa Barbara Water Zoo, where you fed fishes to the seals and got soaked with animal splashes. You and we also visited the LA Zoo, the Busch Gardens, the Queen Mary, the LA Harbor, and the then largest mall in the world, the Del Ammo Mall. You took all this in the security and comfort of your ultra modern, eight-wheel stroller, or the loving arms of each of the family vying for the next turn to care, hold and play with you. We visited the Universal Studio, The Forrest Lawn, The LA Griffith Observatory, The Rail Road Museum, The Long Beach Grand Prix, and the creation places of “The Little House on the Prairie” and many other Movie Sets and TV shows creation places.
Nearly every Sunday you enjoyed family feasts at the Queen Restaurant in Long Beach, where we routinely invited one, two or three other families to join us, different families weekly. You enjoyed parades and fireworks, conventions and seminars, concerts and rallies. It was during this time that we were busy pastoring our largest church, administering our largest school, and just before your birth, Mom was busiest, teaching fifth grade, and managing the home and family. After your birth, Mom worked at home caring for you, the home, the family, and the church. During this period, I was continuing my graduate work until the completion of ten years of formal education past high school, to secure bachelors, internship, masters, and doctorate. Mom and I traveled to the Holy Land, in March 1984 and while in the Amman Hotel, Jerusalem, Israel we called on the telephone, to speak with you for the price we were charged $200.00, to tell you that “We loved you!” In addition, you were given to our family to love us and to be loved by each one of us, Mom, me, and each of your siblings. Peter, you were cute and precious! You were and have always been much loved.
“I want to tell you…” Parenthetically
“A Brief History of the Moving Chapter in your life”
August 1984 until September 1997
(17 months old until 14 years 6 months old)
“Your first move in CA from Hew Hampshire Avenue to Marigold Avenue was because our family grew.” Your second move was from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from CA to NY, from Los Angeles to Glens Falls. You flew with the family from Los Angles, CA to the Glens Falls, NY area, while I drove our new Chevrolet Caprice Classic station wagon across country. I attended a conference in Springfield. MO, sought ministry counsel from my uncle, and enjoyed all this country had to offer, sightseeing, touring, eating and especially the photography opportunities of the entire countrywide trip. You would live in NY until September 1997, when you would be 14 years 6 months old. By the time you would move from New York to Maryland, you would have grown through the stages of the toddler, the young child, the child, the junior child, the preadolescence child, and into the puberty child. A book for each stage would be possible in your very busy, happy, and adventuresome life.
“I want to tell you…”
“You were A Student of Education”:
You enjoyed a broad education, in the classroom and out, in cultures, and in mores. In academics, you studied both in private Christian School, at Mountainside, “The Kings School”, beginning Kindergarten with Mrs. Harr, at “Victory Christian Academy”, in home school, and at “Agape Covenant Christian School”.
“I want to tell you…”
“Of Unmitigated Excellence”:
You have always proven scholarly performance to be your minimum standard. Enjoying your elder sibling legacy and knowing the competitive challenge, from my vantage point, you were subtly attacking their highest achievements as your minimum.
“I want to tell you…”
“Of appalling and Miraculous Moves”:
Though in the same Lake George, Adirondack Mountain, historic area of upstate New York, you lived in many different homes, as we continued our Missions work and Ministry in this beautiful four-season resort area in the three counties, Warren, Washington, and Saratoga. During this time, you were ceaselessly involved with us in this high-energy pursuit, to fit all of life’s demands of family, ministry, and school, with the other necessity and to wrap it all with fun, fascination, faith, frolic, and to not leave out even one little iota! You learned to live and adapt with less than the CA chapter, known by the elder siblings. In this NY chapter, you and we knew frequent moves, where changes were the norm, and yet, you continued to thrive in the security of home and family and friends. You gleaned a perspective and a maturity and an axiology, beyond your years, necessitated by austerity, and paucity, during my experimentations in church ministry, church growth, and church plantings.
“I want to tell you…”
“Of Family Meals”
You ate your family meals home cooked. You relished all Mom put forth and your favorite meal was always that meal. Mom’s weekly Sunday dinners rivaled annual holiday celebration feasts. Every evening meal was my favorite, “Bread, Meat and Potato”. At a very early age, you had a voracious appetite rivaling mine, and that astounded me. Not only appetite for the food, but also for the usual fellowship. To you food was with others! Moreover, food was often served with guests, family, friends, and ministry people. You were never lonely, and it may have been even impossible to be alone should that thought have dawned.
Now back to the progression…
“I want to tell you…”
“Of Your Uncle Tim’s House @ 357 Ridge Street”:
August 1984-June 1985 in Glens Falls, New York
(17 months old to 2 years 3 months old)
You lived with us, as houseguests of your Uncle Tim and Aunt Cindy, for that school year August 1984-June 1985. They had invited all my seven and Sarah Beth in the womb to come for that school year. We were Associate Ministers at one of the Assemblies of God’s largest churches, in Hudson Falls. The new sanctuary capacitated 1100. We assisted them in Church growth and educational consultation and counseling. Peter, there are several pictures of you, and Aunt Cindy’s little dog pulling on the same knit blanket that you both wanted to sleep on. Other photos show you going around the table at a mealtime to sit on different laps to catch flavors from each plate. Together, and regardless of the weather you and I collected: the mail, the milk, the flower, the bug, the frog, the feather, the toy and the thing. Peter, you delighted all of the adults in your world, with your growing awareness and fascination with life and all that it offered, including puddles of water, snowflakes , petals on flowers, bugs and birds, leaves on trees, mountains and clouds, planes and trains and tools and toys. Little sister Sarah Beth came into our lives just before your second birthday.
Moreover, we gave her to you and you have taken very seriously that gift and responsibility. You two are unique in your wonderful camaraderie, heartfelt communication, and genuine caring. One thinks you both truly love each other. Prepared so by tried, tested and proven love you both are best readied for eventualities when you each will become someone’s mate.
“I want to tell you…”
“Of Your Vacations with me like this one”:
For a two-week vacation in June 1985, we stayed in Jon and Jan Ashley’s lovely villa. Here you and I enjoyed frolic in the lovely yards and woods, observing the forests creatures, scouting terrain, investigating nature, and learning senses. We enjoyed a weeklong patio deck picnic-feast with friends and families. You and I often had “Prayer Walks” from your earliest days and so here. We both did the walking and I did the praying. For the next vacation week, we visited Grandpa and Grandma Allen’s in the heart of the Adirondacks, where we have photos of Grandpa teaching you how to drive his garden tractor, and teaching you about things way above your head, and of Grandma giving you her special cookies, and her hugs.
A favorite story at their home is of you taking a little pocket Bible and laying it on Grandma’s stepstool, as though your pulpit, and you began a long energetic discourse in your own language, coaxed on by the sibs, to Grandpa and Grandma’s delight and to our amazement.
Frequent visits would subsequently reveal a delightful pattern of activities at my childhood home, that you and sibs adopted, including investigations of the frog pond, the Kibby Creek, an annual Mountain climbing of Crane, trees, bikes, games, family visits, and strolls though their woods.
“I want to tell you…”
“About the Very Big Farm House”:
August 1985-June 1987 Cambridge, New York
(2 years five months through 4 years 3 months)
You moved to Cambridge for August 1985-June 1987, with your pastoral family for the famous American Artist Grandma Moses’ Church, “The Whiteside Church”. You delighted in the old and very large farmhouse, its dairy cows, it wild deer, its pond, and busy family life.
“I want to tell you…”
“About the Citation @ Camp Triumph”
June 1987 until October 1987
(4 years 3 months old to 4 years 7 months old)
In June 1987, we purchased a 35 Foot Travel Trailer, a “Citation”, the only home we have ever owned, in which all eight of us vacationed and lived for that summer and the next.
What delight! It was while at the desolate Camp Triumph that the Black Bear came to visit us! Remember the story? It was during this time in the rural Adirondacks that we created “
Agape Covenant Ministries” with home Bible studies, and began conducting regular services in the camp ground dining hall, from there launched throughout the three neighboring counties and very frequently, you were my traveling mate.
“I want to tell you…”
“About Halls Cottage Down On The Hudson River”:
September 1987 through April 15, 1988,
(4 years 7 months old 5 years 2 weeks)
We moved into the Halls Hudson River cottage right on the river for that school year. Here we conducted energetic Bible studies well attended by churched and unchurched. They came from along both sides of the Hudson as far North as where it began and as far South as Albany. Even when you were this young you paid such close attention I suspicioned you could substitute on any lesson, chart, or sermon for me. You and I enjoyed frequent strolls out the cottage door. Across the deck and down the stairs to the river’s brink, you would scurry, to throw and skip stones, to pick up driftwood and other beautiful stones. You were elated by each new experience. You were curious. Out under God’s big Heaven, you enjoyed listening to nature’s orchestrations, melodies, harmonies, rhythms and timbres, whether day or night thundershowers, or the bird’s
morning sun-anthem, or crickets and frogs in the bedtime dark cadence. You were exuberant while in this Lake Luzerne region.
“I want to tell you…”
“About the Citation @ Corinth Camp Ground, Down On The Hudson River”:
April 15, 1988 September 1988
(5 years 2 weeks old to 5 years 5 months old)
We chose to vacation for as much of the spring, summer and fall as possible, in our new camper and did so until September 1988 . All the while, we continued “Agape Covenant Ministries” around the countryside and began Church services in the Glens Falls National Bank Community Room and worked at Mountainside Christian School. You learned to ride your bike. You enjoyed playing “badminton”, “air hockey”, and “hide and seek”. Picking flowers became a daily routine.
“I want to tell you…”
“About the formal beginning of your school career at Mountainside”
September 1988 through June 1992
(5 years 5 months old to 9 years 3 months)
You started Kindergarten at Mountainside, and continued there through the end of your third grade. You developed new social skills with peers. Your musical talents began to bud.
“I want to tell you…”
“About Lake Luzerne Morticians Assistant’s Home @ Brewers Funeral Home”:
September 1988 through February 1989
(5 years 5 months old until 5 years 11 months)

We moved into the Lake Luzerne Morticians Assistant’s home September 1988 Mom continued to teach
at your school and all siblings went with daily. During this busy time, one highlight that stands
out most was the Allen’s annual Christmas Family Celebration with Christmas feasts, gifts, and
parties. Our vacation trip to Kansas for the Tice Family reunion was another memorable highlight.

“I want to tell you…”
“About Peniel Bible Conference”
February 1989 until June 1989
(5 years 11 months old to 6 years 3 months)
Short months later we moved to the famous Peniel Bible Conference Center. Mom continued
the fourth grade classroom education and you all traveled with her. The three county wide Bible
Studies continued.
“I want to tell you…”
“About Whitehall”
June 1989 August 1989
(6 years 3 months until 6 years 5 months)
Then we moved into Whitehall, New York the birthplace of the American Navy, all the while, we were continuing this agenda of sledging out “Agape Covenant Ministries”. Unlike the other residences, this was more than an hour’s drive for you all, but you all continued your enrollment in Mountainside. You had no other life than this to live, so to you these changes were as natural as breathing.
“I want to tell you…”
“You are uniquely mine”:
Before your birth, and for your elder siblings the most demanding schedule prohibited me, the depth of bonding, absorbing, and leisurely discipline that you have always known. The sweet times of fellowship, computer technical support, and boating are ours uniquely. You make your father rich!
We shared camping, hiking, mountain climbing, traveling, and computering episodes that are invaluable. You and Sarah Beth made experiences most delightful. Our visits to the Albany State Museum of Natural History, to the Blue Mountain Lake Museum of Adirondack History, and to Libraries everywhere remain most favorably memorable. The concerts attended, where most pleasant, including “Carmen” and “Petra” in Albany. Visits to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, to feed the ducks, and to drink mineral water, and to share park bench picnics were remarkable. Among other highlights not recounted is our touring the Saratoga Battlefields with class field trips with your teacher-Mom lecturing. Our picnics, Crane Mountaintop, countryside, lakeside, and riverside, with swimming, our Indian Lake Cottage Vacation while I was Guest Evangelist at this Camp and where you where baptized, our family holidays, our family visits were joyful. Our tours of the Garnet Mines on Gore Mountain, of the Tahawus National Lead & Iron Ore Mines, and Titanium Mines in Newcomb of Sawmills, of a furniture factory by the Delaware and Hudson Train Depot of the Paper Mills: Fynch & Pryun, Scott, Crown Zellerbach, International, of Howe Caverns, Fort William Henry, Fort Ticonderoga, Fort Edward Locks were entertaining and academic. You enjoyed roller-skating, and bike riding along the Barge Canal. You solicited lawn-mowing jobs for money. Mom recalls one memory where you had ingeniously connected your mower to your bike and traveled up and down neighborhoods soliciting mowing jobs. Your very first customer saw you, and your bike and mower in tow on the sidewalk. She requested your services and gave you a $20.00 bill or was that $2000.00? You enjoyed movies, of the high-energy and action packed variety. Favorites on TV included “The Discovery Channel”, and “The Learning Channel”, magic shows, comedies, intense dramas and these captured your fascination. You also enjoyed mealtimes, and bedtimes. You especially enjoyed the visits home of returning elder siblings. Fireworks, both public and private enthralled you. Cousins together playing and challenging each other energized you. “Chess” fascinates you. “Axis and Allies” marathons were holiday convention. Monopoly, Jeopardy, All Night Lock Ins, Church Skate Nights, the opening night movies are warm memories in abundance. Even sewing and cooking are among your skills and talents, for which you are applauded.
“I want to tell”
”About Henry Hudson Townhouse Apartment 35 F Hudson Avenue Glens Falls NY:
August 1989-August 1997 New York
(6 years 5 months through 14 years 5 months)

In August 1989 and through August 1997 we lived in Glens Falls, New York.
August 1990 (7 years 5 months old) Rebekah went to Messiah College.
August 1992 (9 years 5 months old) Jonathan went to Messiah College.
August 1993 (10 years 5 months old) Michael went to Messiah College.
August 1994 (11 years 5 months old) Stephen went to Nyack College.

So in very short order, the elder siblings vacated. The structure of family and home life changed dramatically from eight to four. Now for the first time you were the eldest sibling in the home and for the next seven years and admirably you conducted that office, no doubt having had four excellent predecessors. You knew how to entertain yourself always, and most often, you treated schoolwork as though fun, as well as your responsibility. Pacing yourself, and rotating your activities and your attention, you quite methodically completed each task in a timely and efficient manner. Your internal self-motivation was exquisite. You never acted bored, nor has it been heard that you ever were bored. You have enjoyed life, in general and in specific. Managing to tackle hurdles with resolve and finesse, you guided peers gracefully, more by example, though capable with precept. You appear as confident in conversations with adults as with peers. Your personal prayers at family altar were always earnest, genuine, spontaneous and meaningful. Your comprehension of the more difficult theologies that you so oft heard in dialogue has prepared you well for the inevitable discourses life promulgates. You are very conscientious about work, study and all responsibility. Your stewardship of finances, your time management, and your acceptance and fulfillment of your responsibilities is utterly impressive even challenging to most others and me. Capability on the computer with both hardware and software made you “a kid in demand”! Challenging the “Steaming’ Demon” at “The Great Escape” and other adult-scary rides put you in respect with the bravest. Fixing things with tools and hodge-podge, with craftiness, and ingenuity prepares you well for your preferred course of study in engineering. On collation of photos throughout your young life you are most often figuring things out, fixing things, and making things, e.g. bull dozers, cranes, hover crafts, electric motors, switches; and they all work. Your character traits are developing nicely too: integrity, truthfulness, honesty, responsibility, consistency, punctuality, devotion, appreciation, gratitude, charity, thoughtfulness, commitment and attentiveness. Observation finds you helping Mom in the kitchen, the laundry room and about the home. On every whistle, front and center, and in an instant you are ready for battle! Or duty!
“I want to tell you…”
“About Broomes Island, Maryland”
August 1997-June 1999 Maryland:
(14 years 5 months old through 16 years 3 months)
In August 1997, you helped your family move more belongings than would fit into the moving truck, into other vehicles and said good-bye to family, friends, and neighbors. Moving from the home where you had lived the single longest period, 8 years, of your wonderful, moving-life was bitter sweet. On the first day that we visited Lexington Park Christian School, in Southern Maryland, they fell in love with you and your sister, and you both fell in love with them. Before you came home from school that first day, you both had made good friendships with most at the new school. After some many months home-schooling, you both skirted thoughts of trepidation. However, with much prayer, confidence building, careful consideration, and encouragement, you both again soared to the top of the classes in that, yet another school.
Comprehension of the tenacity, the perseverance, and the industry, with which you tackled the schoolbooks in each subject every single day of the school year, including weekends, is doubtful! But while here you found pleasures in boating, fishing, the trampoline, friendships, sports, the computer, changing brakes and other mechanical repairs, movies, Church and school activities. One of the highlights of the “Maryland Chapter” was the Drivers License, and what a momentous event that was, for both of us as we traveled in your 1984 Peugeot, family sports car, with leather interior, and with you driving your first miles from the Waldorf MVA to Lexington Park to get Mom from the classroom and Sarah Beth from Study Hall.

“I want to tell you…”
“About York, Pennsylvania”
June 1999-August 2001 Pennsylvania
(16 years 3 months old through 18 years 5 months old)
In June 1999, we caravanned 7 vehicles behind the Ryder moving truck including the tractor, the VIP boat, the blue wagon and all of the others.

“I want to tell you…”
“About the Cross-Country Trip for Vacation, Reunion, Kuriakoses”

“I want to tell you…”
Sam Schwartz

“I want to tell you…”
“You honest compliments” You have always been so very dependable. I never had to coax or force or urge you to work or help. If it needed to be done then that is what you would do. You have never been rebellious. You have always been obedient, lovingly. You always manifest a good nature, a happy spirit, and a sweet attitude. If you may not want to do thus and so, and you are requested to do so, you just do it, and get it done with, so that you might just get on with the next rewarding prospect. One of the most profound blessings in your very short life has been Elizabeth Town and Mount Calvary Christian School.
“I want to tell you…”
“About SUMMA CUM LAUDE”
“About the call of God on my life”

Your grade point average remains at 4.0. You merit “summa cum laude” with the greatest honor. You receive expressions of the highest academic distinction with highest praise. Your induction into the “National Honors Society”, and into the “Who’s Who”, which contains a short biographical sketch of you as one of the most outstanding persons in a field and as one of the most outstanding or best-known persons of a group. For the thirteen years of the agonizing hours of seemingly endless assignments, textbooks, tests, papers, recitations, dramas, games, clubs, groups, concerts, trips, events and et al., now have their additional rewards and blessings.
The $20,000.00 in grants, scholarships, awards and et al., is considered deserved pay for such dedication, perseverance and commitment! Now Son, when I compliment you on, “A job well done!” believe it. For those join me better than me, more knowing than me, more traveled than me and more successful than me, and you know how good, smart, traveled and successful I am. (Ha, ha, ha!) What is more, is this that fact that I believe fervently; I felt called of God to the Christian Ministry while I was 12 years old. I believed that God promised this to me: “That He would take care of all things needful for me and my family!” I was only 12, and knew not then the now told story, my life would write, involving you. However, I said, “Yes” to God. I have received confirmation that “I was called by God”, throughout my life and in countless ways. In my opinion, not the least of which is this gift, “SUMMA CUM LAUDE”. Despite the hard childhood our ministry life-style demanded of you, you have succeeded, and not only in completing high school, but in doing so in style! You did not arrive at this victory called graduation, by a late decision, but by your life-style, commitment to diligence and to God and to His will for your life. No one with less lofty motivation, goals, discipline and wholesome intentions could have arrived to this high plateau, from which you may now rest, and scan these broad panoramic vistas from these scaled heights not so many others know. From here you will energize for the next mountains and valleys afforded in this life. Your current success blesses me more deeply in my confirmation than I can express. You bring the honor, prestige, and distinction not only to yourself, but vicariously upon your father, your mother, your family, your friends and your God! You are my son! Yes! However, you are also my life long and committed friend. We enjoy the security that we are committed to each other. I know that I can trust you to say, do, and think the right from the “Christian World View”. Pressure makes a lump of coal bright and more valuable. It can turn it into ashes or diamonds. You choose.

YOU HAVE DONE VERY WELL!
YOU MAKE ME VERY PROUD OF YOU.
I AM VERY GRATEFUL TO GOD FOR YOU.
I SHALL CONTINUE MY PRAYER VIGIL TO OUR ALMIGHTY SOVEREIGN GOD FOR YOU!

August 2001-August 2005
Matriculate to Messiah College (18 years 5 months old)
Graduate from Messiah College (22 years 2 months old)

En Agape Covenant Ministries, and Love from the depth of my heart, Dad
“As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!” Pastors L. Duaine & Pamela J. Allen 915 Stonewood Road York, PA, USA 17402 717-600-0910

To: jr.asparagus@lycos.com
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 09:55:33 -0400
From: “LeDuaineAllen & PamelaJeAllen”
Reply-to: duaine@lycos.com
Subject: Peter this is an outline version with out the photographs.
18. 1984-2004 Administrator & Pastor at Agape Covenant Ministries
1. Post Office Box 575 Glens Falls NY (Evangelistic Ministry)
i. 1987-1997 Agape Covenant Ministries (Pastor to 500 People)
ii. The Upstate NY Tri-County Ministry Period: Saratoga County/Warren County/Washington County
iii. Corinth, Bakers Mills, Saratoga, Ticonderoga, Whitehall, North Creek
iv. 1987-1997 Pastor at Agape Covenant Christian School Glens Falls NY (Superintendent to 25 Students)
I enjoyed pastoring in…
19. 1997-1999 Administrator at Agape Covenant Ministries
1. Post Office Box 205 Broomes Island MD
I enjoyed pastoring in…
20. 1999-2004 Administrator at Agape Covenant Ministries
1. Post Office Rural Delivery 915 Stonewood Road York PA (Evangelistic Ministry)
2. 1997-1999 Pastor at Broomes Island Wesleyan Church, Broomes Island MD (Interim Pastor to 20 and grew to 75)
i. 2000-2001 Pastor at Resurrection Evangelical Lutheran York PA, (Interim Pastor to 20 and grew to 80)
I enjoyed pastoring in…
ii. 2001-2002 Pastor at Snyder’s Bible Chapel Hedgesville, WV (Interim Pastor to 75 and grew to 150)
I enjoyed pastoring in…
iii. 2002-2004 Supervisor & House Parents Cornerstone Maternity Homes York PA
I enjoyed pastoring in…
I pray this for you…”Sarah Beth” Page One

To my very dear baby,
To my wonderful darling daughter Sarah Beth,
To my special, young, and cherished friend,

I pray this for you!

I love you perfectly and completely, my dear child.
I have been in prayer continually for you throughout your current 4400-mile journey.
As you traveled with the American Christian Youth Chorale,
you have served the Lord valiantly.

I also continue to pray for God in HIS wisest providence:
1> to tailor your life to reflect HIS glory,
2> to perfect your character into HIS image,
3> to utilize your unique and special gifts to HIS honor,
4> to employ you in HIS purposes throughout your whole life
miraculously weaving what becomes the tapestry of your life, and
5> to develop your full potential to fullest expression to HIS exaltation.

As you wend your way across our beautiful country, and
as you wend your way through your most delightful life
from beginnings to endings,
and through all time and through all eternity,
I pray that you succeed in your endeavors to please God,
to please God with a whole heart full of joy, love, devotion and music for HIM!
For each of the successive little journeys,
That will compound to make your big life-long journey,
You will now become increasingly aware that HE has
Dynamically gifted you,
Imparting multi-talents to you,
and imparted an especially delightful spirit to you.
As though in your travel cases, and always right there when needed
you will take these along with you in this life-long journey.

I pray for God’s warmest smiles of approval to ever be upon you.
I pray HIS most profound blessings to shine over you.
I pray HIS loving care and guidance to direct you safely and securely.
I pray you will be aware of HIS presence
throughout your journey in this maze called life.

I pray this for you…”Sarah Beth” Page Two

I pray for you, Sarah Beth, that
where conation or volition and will,
where affection or emotion and feeling,
where cognition or learning and knowing,
these, the very essences of your soul are involved
that you will walk confidently, willfully, knowingly, and with feeling,
exactly in the center of HIS Holy will!

I pray that your growth will crescendo throughout your life,
the length of your long, wonderful, healthy, happy, and productive life,
to HIS glory!

As surely as your Bus Driver Friend follows the maps
of the country’s highways, by-ways, roads and streets,
and plots his course decidedly on a certain calculated plan
to arrive at each successive destination
punctually, preparedly, and safely,
so too, be very studious to determine
where you are and
where you are going, and
where each successive destination is to be,
so that you too, will arrive at your each and final destinations
punctually, preparedly, and safely.

Sarah Beth, do not just let your life ramble and happen.
Do not let people, places, things, events and circumstances just happen.
Intentionally make them each and everyone to have purpose and meaning.
Live with direction and purpose.
Focus your energies and abilities to successive accomplishments.
Be prayerfully aggressive.
That is, take responsible command of your life.
Conscientiously submit to the challenges HE requires.
Handle the labors HE affords to you.
Lovingly live surrendered to HIS control.

Sing with HIM, sing HIS Song, sing on HIS beat and sing on HIS pitch.
Be always obedient to HIS still small voice.
Do not allow the din and dong of life to over power HIS still small voice.
HE will never sing the same melody of the world. Neither shall you.

Refuse to compromise on principles and convictions.
On the other hand, study cooperation
on all preferences, opinions, and things not eternal.
Be willing to stand with the right even if all-alone!
Do not live with regrets.
I pray this for you…”Sarah Beth” Page Three

Rather always practice and perform in the concerts of life, well rehearsed!
One never need be on the wrong sheet of music, beat or note.

While you still have that decision before you,
whether left or right, right or wrong,
the opportunity to accept or reject,
and the privilege to say, to do or to be,
determine what is right, and live it out reliant upon HIM.
You know you will never regret making the right decisions!
Choose the right not the easy!
Choose the right not the popular!
Remember you have the freedom and power to do what is right.
Your freedom is not a right to do what you want,
but your freedom is the power to do what is right!

Do not depend on others,
When it is clear from God that HE wants you depend on HIM and You!
Nevertheless, learn the wise distinction of depending on others
when it is clear from God that HE wants you to depend on HIM and others.
Live with conviction.
Live with purpose.
Live with distinction.
Refuse to be ordinary.
Live challenging your self to excellence!
Live with a realization of your worth in HIM!
In HIM, you alone have worth.
Your are the Lord’s servant.
HE created you uniquely.
AS every other perfectly healthy, and normal individual has, so you too have idiosyncrasies.
Do not waste valuable time trying to erase God’s fingerprint on you.
These idiosyncrasies serve like fingerprints, to identify us uniquely before God.
Delight to learn God’s purposes in your idiosyncrasies.
It is not a Christian concept “to be alike to everyone else”, but to the contrary,
You are yourself unique, one-of-a-kind, special and precious.
You are designed by God to be exactly alike to no other.
HE allows us to be in HIS image, and to be most like HIM, more than alike to others.
Not everyone in your life will recognize this as fact.
However, even that is OK.
To be alone right, when all others may be wrong, may seem to make you appear weird
However, that would be weird only in the eyes of those who are wrong.
In GOD’s eyes, you would be blessed.
They may erroneously insist that you say,
I pray this for you…”Sarah Beth” Page Four

do and be like them and agree with them.
Not for any reasons to be argumentative, nor disagreeable, nor abrasive,
However, for the sole purpose of thoughtfully living out HIS will.
‘Choose this day whom you will serve!’
However, you just remember, that to God,
to Dad & Mom and to your big family,
and to all of your very large and growing circle of friends,
you are yourself, unique, one-of-a-kind, very special and truly precious.

And the more unique a diamond is the more special, precious and valuable.
HE has a role, life, ministry and service for you,
and that ministry is one that is uniquely yours.
No one else could, should, or would be like you.
You are Special!
If you fail to accomplish this, HIS will for you,
then that WILL for your life will be left undone.
What GOD has entrusted to you to say, to do, and to be,
is both your privilege and your responsibility!

Again my very dear Child, and affectionately, my Baby, my Sarah Beth,
I love you.
This is your first trip without me and it has been a very, very
long………………………………………………………………………………………………trip!
I have managed to live though it………………….though just barely. (HA, Ha, ha!).

I thank you for your calls, correspondence, love, and thoughtful prayers
for me and us!
I rejoice with you for the phenomenal blessings you have learned in this momentous opportunity!

Today is Thursday, and this Sunday
I will see you again in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
I truly anticipate holding you in my big strong fatherly arms.
I am very glad that you have gone on this wonderful trip,
but I have missed you immensely!

We will be vacationing from Snyder’s Bible Chapel this weekend at our request.
We will be at Michael and Carol’s home Friday evening and Saturday.
We will enjoy the concerts, partly sponsored by Michael.
There will be seven Christian bands including:
the band of Sanjeev, Jonathan, & Peter.
We will be camping and boating with the Ralon’s in their WV cottage next week.
We will share all meals with the Ralons and Allens
Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
We will try to make your Sunday evening concert.
I pray this for you…”Sarah Beth” Page Five

If not, then maybe next tour.
(Just kidding I will be there with Mommy,
front and center and we both will hug you vociferously.)
We will be with you this Sunday, our God willing.

En Agape,
DAD

PS Some MD Friends called my cell phone to learn of your concert details for Friday!

Thursday, June 28th, – July 15, 2001
Pastor L. Duaine Allen
Snyder’s Bible Chapel
Rural Free Delivery Route 3 Post Office Box 4250
Martinsburg / Berkeley Springs Road Route 9
Hedgesville, WV 25427
304-258-3930 & 717-495-7025
lduaineallen@mindspring.com
I exhort you… or about “ENGLISH LEATHER “ Page One

To my Darling Daughter Sarah Beth,
I bring my warmest and most loving greetings.
Sarah Beth, there are many occasions throughout my life, thus far, when I am moved by my thoughts, decisions, and feelings to take my pen in hand
to make my “heart to heart” communiqué
for the glorious sake of reparation, reconciliation and reimbursement
with those most dear, special and precious to me as you are.
This is one such occasion!
I consider this a need, and not a want.
I need to do this.
I do not want to do this.
What is more, I consider this my duty as your affectionate, amorous, devoted, loving and caring father to bring into focus
something that came into our relationship, for the very first time.
This is not like you! This is beneath you!
This is not welcome, now, nor will it ever be.
This relates to character.
There are other people, who might speak to others
disdainfully, haughtily and contemptuously.
Other people might speak to others
arrogantly, judgmentally, or critically,
but not you.
You have not, and you must not.

AHDictionary Disdain means “To regard or treat someone else with haughty contempt”“,To consider or to reject someone else for any reason as beneath oneself”, “To express a feeling of contempt and aloofness”“,To speak to someone with scorn, or to regard with contempt or scorn: I despise all cowards and flatterers.” “ To dislike intensely, to loathe: despised the frigid weather in January. “To regard as unworthy of one’s interest or concern: despised any thought of their own safety.”

When you spoke to me yesterday, about my “ENGLISH LEATHER” cologne,
it hurt me.
It felt to me that you spoke disdainfully.
I honestly doubt that was your intention.
You spoke regarding my cologne, and you just expressed your dislike for it.
You did not speak regarding me.
You did not say, “Dad, I do not like you!”
I exhort you… or about “ENGLISH LEATHER “ Page Two

You did say that you did not like my cologne.
Even that is fine.
Moreover, believe me this is not the issue.
That is not wrong.
What is wrong is the scenario that followed.
You instantly realized that you had spoken a comment to me, hurtful to me.
At this point, you could have just as loudly and quickly spoken an apology, and I could have just as quickly forgiven you.
“And, on with the program.”
Nevertheless, you defended hurting me, and
what is more you blamed me for being hurt.
It is as though you stomped on both of my little toes, and hit me up both sides of my head, and then you said, “Dad that should not hurt you!” I can freely say any jolly thing I please and express my feelings and even if it seems disdainfully, but you cannot react to it, or be hurt by it.
At this point, I observe, that this kind of comment may just as well have been spoken by me, or by any of us. Inadvertently, we all may and sometimes do make comments that happen to hurt someone else.
Please consider revising your reaction
to my reaction that your comment solicited from me.
I shall consider, not reacting to comments, that feel critical so faultily. However, almost no one would prefer to hear critical statements in front of others, and especially other family members.
In my home, I love to feel loved, approved, accepted, and appreciated, because out there, it is a “dog-eat-dog” world and one does not expect nor want approval from outside the home. Consider this.
What was your motivation and intention?
You are not prone to thinking or speaking with out purpose.
I admire you in that.
Thus, your words possessed great weight, to me.

One month ago, your mother herself bought that cologne for me from the Rite Aid Pharmacy in New Cumberland, PA. I had found it there for the first time in about twenty years. I had put some on my person from the display sample and then on three separate occasions during that hour, before the purchase, I had asked Pamela to smell this fragrance, to inquire whether or not it was acceptable to her or not, now. Each of the three times she did not know the name of the fragrance, though she recognized it, she could not place it,
though I knew in the past she had rejected it, because Pamela’s
former college boyfriend Anibol Soto Vasquez had used it.
She did however express pleasure and acceptance.
I exhort you… or about “ENGLISH LEATHER “ Page Three

I had used “English Leather” in college, on several occasions. Pamela’s former boyfriend was my friend and roommate and he had used “English Leather”.
He and I had shared all of our colognes.
I had shared:
my “Jade East”, a profoundly sweet, a romantic and an enduring fragrance,
my “Faberge Brut”, a pungent-sweet, an even forceful masculine fragrance,
and my several Avon’s, all romantic fragrances.
(I was the only male Avon representative on Marion College Campus,
because the college would not permit the Avon girls to sell in the Men’s Dorm)
I had also shared my cheaper “Old Spice” and “Mennen”.
He had shared his “English Leather”.
It was a strong, forceful and very abrasive masculine scent.
Nevertheless, it lasted even through two for more showers.
We shared the “Musks”, the sweets and the “Citrus” scents.
We even shared others that were especially for intimacy and romance.
We had fun in this silly manner.

Men wear different smells, for different occasions.
Choices depend on the different days activities.
“Different smells for different events.”
Some smells are for male aggression, and dominance…
Some smells are for romance and tender affection…
Some smells are for working and close relationships.
I am careful to use the correct smells for each occasion.
Yet, conflicts do occur during transitional times.
At crossovers from one theme, occasion and purpose to the next…
Some are well rounded and for general purpose…. Some are quite specific…
Some, smells especially lend themselves well to the professional scene,
e.g. like church greeting, or altar work, or counseling, or preachers at breakfast.

I value personal hygiene, and appropriate smells matter a great deal to me.
These scents should be there, but subtly, maybe even not quite distinguishable. Some should catch your attention. Some should cause a reaction.
Usually, these smells should be pleasant, but not demanding attention.

Sarah Beth, I want to tell you a couple of amusing anecdotes.
These anecdotes regard the impact of smells, agreeable or disagreeable!
This is a vital anecdote & scenario that influenced my life on smells.
My father was a wonderful, gentle man, hard working, & very loving.
He never knew the impact of this story. I was the oldest of his eight children.
I exhort you… or about “ENGLISH LEATHER “ Page Four

Because he worked fifty hours at the Tahaus NY titanium and iron ore mines & fifteen hours on the family farm weekly,
we all reveled in the rare moments when he would relax,
Usually while reading “The Grit” or after 1960, when we got our first TV, watching “The News”.
We would crowd around him as tightly as we could manage.
It was most delightful, heart-warming and pleasant for all of us kids.
I was not certain how rewarding it may have been for Dad, however.
I was sensitive to him and preferred that we not frustrate him,
in his rare leisure moments.
As the oldest kid, I conscientiously assisted and tended
my young siblings, hopefully, inconspicuously.
I would be certain for their clean hands and faces, for dry and unsoiled diapers.
On this tender moment, I myself, while tending them offended my father.
Before indoor plumbing personal hygiene was most difficult. Smells happened.
Apparently, more difficult then.
My father smelled and deducted from one by one that I was the offending kid.
I had to go out of this warm circle. What an impact smells have on life.

There is a second vital anecdote & scenario that influenced my life on smells.
While I was in the eighth-grade science class.
A very nice young lady, Rose Clardy and I were assigned to be laboratory partners by alphabetical lottery at our double-wide lab-desks.
(Very far back in time,
when we were both in the same first grade class in our one-room school,
I had liked her about as much as a first grade boy could like his second cousin, and that was a lot.
Her maternal grandmother and my maternal grandfather were siblings.)
Well, on this science lab day she turned to me and spoke disdainfully to me.
She announced loudly enough for the teacher and the entire class to know that she thought that I still smelt like the cow-barn, the pigpen and the chicken-coop. Our father’s farms were near neighbors.
She demanded reassignment to a different lab partner.
I was sorry for her that the teacher declined.
But that would be the very last day that my smells should be offensive to her.
Yes, as long as I could manage to do anything about it,
I would intend to smell pleasant!
Well, the next morning after the farm’s barn, pen and coop chores,
And before breakfast and before the school bus came;
I took a dishpan bath in the tepid water from the snow that I had put
on the potbelly stove, to melt during chore time.
I exhort you… or about “ENGLISH LEATHER “ Page Five

Our well pipes, though several feet deep had frozen during this bitter winter.
That solitary scenario also influenced my life!
Is it not crazy how little events in life can impact us so extremely?

I truly apologize to you.
Admittedly, I am way too sensitive about smells, typically overcompensating.
My momentary reactions on this smell point
were more accurately overreactions, to you.
You knew of neither of these anecdotes. That would have mattered to you.
Sarah Beth I am truly sorry, for my emotional behavior.
That made me a bit of a “woose”!

On the day of our recent altercation,
I was going out to a computer-counter.
I would definitely be with loud and aggressive men.
These men where sure to be intense and in masculine competition
and rivalry, all subtly, of course. They always were.
Wearing pleasant or forceful colognes is a subtle body language and tool,
a “woose” like me, employs.
I think other men employ such smells as surely as clothing.
This is an unspoken male-ego one-up-man ship, mania-thingy.
You my darling daughter are dainty and tender and
unsuspecting of such commonplace battle tactics happening in a “man’s world”.
In a “women’s world “ battle plans are laid out quite differently, I suppose.
When I don my heavy masculine black leather coat,
My black Timberland Boots and my black leather gloves
I am intending to speak… “attach and win”… even if without words…
As surely as my clean or new wool suits, my polished leather-lined dress boots,
my pressed shirts and with my heavy wool topcoat, I speak without words…
When I am well-groomed and wear strong smells,
and appear confident, aggressive and friendly,
all added together, I tend to give a superior, powerful and dominant impact.
I bolted you over just passing though the house, didn’t I?
I had very carefully plotted this, as I do, most of the time.
I was not trying to seduce the feminine gender,
with nuances of subtle sweets, gentle erotics, nor warm romantic smells.
The smell of the “English Leather” is one tool among men employed
for male influence, aggression and dominance over other gentlemen.
Sarah Beth, this diatribe is of course, tongue-in-cheek, ya know?

I exhort you… or about “ENGLISH LEATHER “ Page Six

Mind you well, that to have, hold and express
your feelings and thoughts, is as right for you as for me.
May I point out to you, that you remain free as ever to express yourself to me.
Your thoughts, approach and feelings matter to me.
I behaved badly didn’t I? I want to work on this! I need to work on this!
Maybe you will not like my or any other person’s perfume,
you do not always have to express it.
You may not know for what a person’s aroma is intentioned.
You may not be cognizant of this “man’s world” thing.

You have never heard me say to you…“
“Your breath smells bad…”
or “I smell your unpleasant body odor…”
or “Your hair smells unkempt”.
I shall never.
First, because it is never true.
Second, because I know of my father’s words impact upon me.
Nevertheless, please notice I vociferously reinforce compliments to you.
You are always pleasant, beautiful, sweet, and tended!
I also know that there are times, and these times are usually only at home,
when I and everyone else on the planet needs a shower and a perfume.
This is a momentary condition and is usually not fatal.
We usually and quickly recover.
Next time you pick up a scent from me and it is obnoxious,
would you please whisper in my ear,
(that is if you can get that close)
instead of making a pronouncement in front of the family.
Allow me to whisper in your ear.
“I shall attend to this matter posthaste.”
My very dear Child, Sarah Beth, I value your input.
I take your compliments and your criticisms very seriously.
I naturally crave and prefer your approval, acceptance and love.
I educate you with only two of my anecdotes, of several.
I share them for your understanding of my own idiosyncrasies.
You already know, I am a little weird. Let us keep that secret!
One might ever know how far that might go, ya know.
Accept all of this for my emotional and
foundational concerns and reasons for my discussion on smells.
While you are young you will not know of older folks concerns.
As I grow older, like all others, my body becomes older.
Undesirable changes occur, and I never want to have unpleasant tang.
I exhort you… or about “ENGLISH LEATHER “ Page Seven

You do know me, sweetie, sometimes, in my exuberance, I over compensate. On occasion I have even done so with strong fragrances. These are just thoughts that would not have occurred to you. You are still young, healthy, beautiful and sweet smelling. You seem to naturally be. Sarah Beth I expect you to speak respectfully. I do expect kind, good spirited and genuine statements from you. This is more like you…Isn’t it?
En Agape, Dad
Love, Dad

PS I love you Sarah Beth! LDAd

Copyright © I exhort you… or about “ENGLISH LEATHER” By Lester Duaine Allen
Thursday, January 10, 2002 3:33 PM By L. Duaine Allen
Agape Covenant Ministries
10980 Martinsburg Road Hedgesville, WV 25427-9423
1-304-258-3930
I testify this… “MY TESTIMONY” Page One
“MY TESTIMONY”

“What will you do with the Lord Jesus Christ?”
“I choose LIFE”
“I choose the LORD JESUS CHRIST!”
The essences of the tests in this life are my choices.
“I choose the LORD JESUS CHRIST!”
I am not ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is my Lord and Saviour.
I consider what Jesus Christ said.
“If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father.”
I do not hesitate to declare my testimony.
When Jesus asks me, “Who do you say I am?”
I confess with Peter “You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God”.
“I depend upon my Lord Jesus Christ!”
“For I, the Son of Man, must suffer many terrible things,” he said.
“I will be rejected by the leaders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law.
I will be killed, but three days later I will be raised from the dead.”
Then he said to the crowd,
“If any of you want to be my follower,
you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross daily, and follow me.
If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it.
But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life.
And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world
but lose or forfeit your own soul in the process?
If a person is ashamed of me and my message,
I, the Son of Man, will be ashamed of that person
when I return in my glory and in the glory of the Father and the holy angels.
And I assure you that some of you standing here right now
will not die before you see the Kingdom of God.”

Though I do not want to, I shall be willing to be rejected by the religious leaders.
I do choose to be His follower and I knowingly lay me down before Him!
I choose to make my life to praise and glorify the Lord, my God.
I determine to never be ashamed of Jesus Christ;
Not in any circumstance, not with anybody, not for any reason!
I shall see, know, and live in full comprehension of the Kingdom of God!

I renew my confession and say this, emphatically, “Yes, I do love God.”
I renounce the Devil and all of his lies, sins, evils, pomp and circumstance.
I renounce the Devil and all of his fears, temptations to evils and to sins.
I renounce the Devil, the lusts of the eyes, and the lusts of the flesh & the pride of life.
I renounce the Devil and all of his greed, violence, lawlessness and deceptions.
I refuse to grant permission to the DEVIL & Evil to any part of my life.

My body, soul and spirit, belong to my LORD and Saviour Jesus Christ!
I testify this… “MY TESTIMONY” Page Two

My past, present, and future, belong to my LORD and Saviour Jesus Christ!
My time, tithe and talent all belong to my LORD and Saviour Jesus Christ!
My Life, My Being, My Purpose, & My Effort all belong to Him!
I choose these of me, all volition, cognition, conation,
all of me over which I have power to belong exclusively to Him,
He who is my LORD and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is my reason for existence. He created me.
Jesus Christ is my hope of salvation. He saved me.
Jesus Christ is my best friend. He chose me & I chose Him.
He is my creator, HE is my Savior, HE is my best friend, and HE is my Lord.”

He is my source of being, the power of my purpose the origin of all my provision.
“In Him, I live, move, and have my being.”
“HE keeps me alive, singing, talking and walking each and everyday.”
As in Gaither’s song,
“Without Him, I will be nothing, without Him, I am nothing.”
But with Him I can do all things through Jesus Christ Who strengthens me.” This is my testimony, “I love God, and I am not ashamed of Him’”!
I devote my life to Him!
Although sin is rampant and many around me are selfish, self-seeking,
self-serving, proud, arrogant, evil, even full of sin and are very ungodly, I choose to join the ranks of God’s family of faithful, stalwarts.
I join with those who refuse to be bought with a bribe or sold for pleasure, or greed!
I join with those who refuse to fear death, evil, others or Satan!
I choose to live by conviction, principle, Biblical Standards.
I join with those who refuse to be guilty of the seven abominable sins.
I will not be guilty of breaking GOD’s heart nor His commandments.
I am among those who endeavor to live out the life-style of JESUS CHRIST!
His Beatitudes establish His Kingdom and counter this world’s world-view.
I adopt His world-view knowing that this makes me alien to this world.
This world’s world-view is an anti-Christ world-view.
I intend to live out the life-style of Jesus Christ in thought, word, and deed.
Yes today, when not only we are in Heaven, but also here and now.
I intend to live out the life-style of Jesus Christ.
I endeavor to fulfill the Spirit of the Law and the Heart of Jesus.
I choose to live throughout every day constantly mindful of Him.
I choose to live endeavoring to win His smile of approval.

On the staircase of this life, my endeavor is to combat the mad-rush down its spiraling staircase, as this world is hurrying Pell-Mell toward hell.
I endeavor to go up this staircase of life, against the flow & the forces of evil!
I am depending on Him pushing ever upward!
I will succeed!

I testify this… “MY TESTIMONY” Page Three

I am continually pushing relentlessly against the flow and my own sinful bent.
I continue pushing relentlessly against the inherited fallen nature from Adam & Eve.
I fight against the plentiful temptations, constantly rearing their ugly heads.
They are intending to kill me, if I so much as take one juicy bite.
I confess my daily dependence upon Him with “Whom I have to do!”
I do not see myself as any better than all others on this same staircase in the choices of this life.

No, but rather I see myself as one of those
who have chosen to take this staircase in the right direction.

I intend to, “KEEP THE SON IN MY EYES!”
(Dr. Virgil Raley FM Redlands, CA)
(That is Jesus Christ, who is the SON of God the Father.)
We all see and know the same wrestlings and temptations.
With all others, who are on this same staircase, I, too, must choose.
However, I choose to keep my focus on the Eternal and not on the Temporal.
I endeavor to choose the right from GOD’s point of view.
This is made clear to us in His HOLY WORD.
This way is clear and available too and to everyone equally.
I do not choose the convenient, not the easy, not the popular but the RIGHT!
I know Him. I know Heaven. I know Hell. I know the realities of both.
I know how to get to both.
I know how to help others find their way of choice, to HEAVEN or to HELL.
NOBODY goes to HELL, but by CHOICE! I do not choose HELL!
NOBODY goes to HEAVEN, but by CHOICE. I choose HEAVEN!
We have the same power to make our choice, HEAVEN, or HELL!

I fight against all else.
I knowingly, consistently choose Jesus Christ and His HEAVEN!
The Lord Jesus Christ is soon coming to establish His Kingdom.
The anti-Christ is soon coming to set up his kingdom.
Let us join prayerful spiritual forces for Jesus Christ!

En AGAPE, your Brother in our lord Jesus Christ,
LeDuaine Allen

© Copyright Sunday, September 21, 2003
This is my testimony in Jesus’ Name, Amen
LeDuaine Allen
I Pray This… “MY PRAYER” Page One
“MY PRAYER”
“I thank You…”
My Dear Lord, I thank You for this day.
I thank You for this life, my life; life in body soul and spirit.
I thank You for my body’s seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, and touching.
I thank You for my soul’s breaths and beats, thoughts, pleasures and choices.
I thank You for spirit’s being, knowledge, wisdom and understanding.

I thank You for spirit confidence, communion and fellowship with you.
I thank You for soul friendships, for worths, for dignities, and for purposes.
I thank You for life as You meant it to be lived, ……according to Your Bible.
I thank You for a life to be lived by faith, by facts and by feelings.
I thank You for a life in Your Son, in His love, in His mercy, in His grace. I thank You for a life to be lived by submission to Your absolute authority. I thank You for a life cognizant of your power, purpose, plan, and presence. I thank You for a life to be lived dependant upon Your creative energy. I thank You for a life secure in obedience to Your heart. I thank You for a life in sweet spirit communion in the Spirit-realm. I thank You for a life in context of time and prospects of eternity. I thank You that You have taught my heart to believe. I believe you, Oh, God can change other people because You have changed me. You, Oh God have changed things for me, so with confidence I pray for others.

“I am blessed…”
I am blessed because You are a loving God.
I am blessed because You are a forgiving God.
I am blessed because You are a merciful God. You do not treat me as I deserve, like Hell!
I am blessed because You are a gracious God. You do give to me what I do not deserve, like heaven.
I am blessed because You are an understanding God. I am blessed because You are the God of all wisdom.
I am blessed because You are the God of all knowing.
I am blessed because You are the God of all provision, food, shelter and clothing.
I am blessed because You are the God of all provision, salvation, & sanctification.
I am blessed because You are the God of all holiness, health and maturity.
I am blessed because You are the God of all well-being.
I am blessed because You are God!
You have done everything for me!
You bless me and You keep on blessing me.
I have sinned, and yet You forgive me!
I Pray This… “MY PRAYER” Page Two
“Forgive me…”
Forgive me still for everything I have knowingly done wrong.
Forgive me still for everything I have unknowingly done wrong.
Forgive me for everything I have knowingly not done that I know is right to do. Forgive me for everything I have unknowingly not done that is right to do. Forgive me please, for my arrogance, my pride, and my rebellion. I have said words, thought thoughts, and done deeds, which affront you. I have chosen choices that are dissatisfy you though they are pleasing to me. I ask you, Oh God, “Will You please forgive me?”
“I am tempted…”
Please keep me safe from all danger and harm. I am tempted to do harm and danger to myself and to others against you. I have a desire to put myself before others and you. I am tempted to be selfish and utilize all for me. I am tempted to prefer favor at the cost of compromise. I am tempted to challenge others for my temporal advantage. I am tempted to offend others with words and actions. I am tempted to defend myself carnally, rather than trusting You. I am tempted with greed for stuff and I desire more than needed. I am tempted to criticize, to disparage and to blame others. I am tempted exaggerate, prevaricate and embellish the Truth.
Help me to climb upon the cross with Jesus Christ daily.
Help me to honestly; sincerely and intentionally die, with Him, to myself.

“Help me to remember…”
Moreover, when this world seems to overwhelm me; with its cares, with its responsibilities, with its sins, with its frustrations, with its pains, and with its injustices help me to remember.
I pray to You Dear Lord, cause me to remember my Savior Jesus Christ
and His example to slip away and to find a quiet place to pray. Make me to obey Jesus’ lifestyle, calling, walk and work. Help me to live like Jesus lived with an eternal perspective in focus. Help His response to be my response! When the Serpent tempted Your Son, my Saviour, Jesus, Jesus quoted Your Holy beloved and known Word. Help me to remember Jesus’ willing sacrifice of Heaven to walk this ball of dust. Help me to remember Jesus’ sacrifice of angelic worship for the curses of men. Help me to remember Jesus’ surrender of the perfections of heaven. Help me to remember Jesus’ submissions to the imperfections of earth. Help me to remember Jesus’ sacrifice and the pain of the cruel cross. Help me to remember that it was not the Romans nor Jews, but me that I nailed Jesus to that tree.
I Pray This… “MY PRAYER” Page Three

“Enable me…”
Enable me to make the best of every day, of each opportunity afforded to me. Enable me to make every encounter with others valuable. Enable me to hear You speak to me in Your “Still small Voice”. Enable the broadening of my mind. Enable me to have the mind of Christ and not the mind of this world, nor myself. Do not allow me to whine and whimper, grumble and complain, fuss and fume, over things You allow and cause and over which You have not given me control. Enable me to see sin to be as evil as You declare it to be, Oh, God. Enable me to acknowledge my own sin to be as evil as it is to You Oh God. Enable me to hate my own sin as much as You hate my sin. Enable me to hate my own sin as much I myself, hate the sins of others. Moreover, when I am sin and when I commit sins, enable me to admit it to my self, first, then, to do so, without defense, without excuse and without denial. Enable me to accept my responsibility. Enable me to confess to You in shame, sorrow, and remorse. Enable me to cease and to desist, all sin even my most favorites. Enable me to live repented, “having turned about face, from hell to heaven”. Enable me to live repented from Satan toward you. Enable me that rather than being selfish and living to my glory, honor and satisfaction, I may practice Jesus’ lifestyle.
Enable me to clear my mind from my ungodly thoughts, so that I can think Your Godly thoughts.
Enable me to live with a new attitude to You, Your attitude.
Enable me to live with a new gratitude to You, Your gratitude.

“I confess…”
I confess with my mouth, with my actions, with my heart and with my mind. I have done wrong. I confess I have done wrong in my doing, in my being, in my thinking, and in my speaking. Please forgive me. If You do not forgive me, I shall suffer in hell. For I know that I have sinned. I confess to my to both, sin and sins worthy the eternal flames.
May I receive Your forgiveness, Oh God. I confess with the meditations of my heart thoughts & intents acceptable to You.

I Pray This… “MY PRAYER” Page Four

“I read your Word…”
Make me so very familiar to Your Holy Word that I too, will have:
“Thy Words hidden within my heart, that I might not sin against Thee”.
When I am pushed beyond my comfortable and familiar and preferred limits, I will pray, as Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but Thine be done”.
I know that when I do not pray, You still listen to my heart. I know that when I do not read Your Word You still speak to my heart. You know my thoughts, what ever they are. You observe my deeds, holy or unholy. With King David I pray, “Melt me, Cleanse me, Mold me, and Use me. Use me to do Your will, Oh God, my Saviour and My Redeemer”.
“Bless me…”
Continue to bless me, because I need Your blessing.
I do not deserve Your blessing!
I know that I am not worthy, but for Jesus’ sake, bless me!
Make me a blessing to others, as most others are to me.
Make me to live my life pleasing to you, Oh God.
Please make me strong in Jesus Christ.
Bless me so that I may help the weaker than I, as the stronger than I help me.
Would You uplift me so that I may speak words of encouragement to others?
Others have spoken words of encouragement to me.

“I pray…”
I pray for those that are lost and cannot find their way.
I pray for those who are not looking for Jesus Christ and His Cross.
I pray for all those; that are misjudged, misinformed, misrepresented, misguided and misunderstood. I pray for those who do not know You intimately, for nurture, solace & comfort. I pray for those that do not believe in You, Your Word, and Your Son. I pray for all my sisters and brothers, for families and households. I pray for peace, love and joy to be in their homes, lives and families. I pray that they will learn and obey Your stewardship principles.
I pray that all their needs will be met, as they will live out Your life-style. I pray that everyone will know that for every problem You have the solution. I pray that everyone will know that for every question You have the answer. I pray that everyone will know that for every need You have the provision. I pray that everyone will know that for every circumstance You have the grace, the mercy and the power. You have the miraculous power to guide everyone through this maze of life! I pray that everyone will know You are the greatest and there is none greater. I pray that they will the “Shequina Glory of God”. There is no situation, no power, no place, nor person greater than you! Oh, God, I commit every battle of my life into Your hands.
I Pray This… “MY PRAYER” Page Five

Help me to fight wrong, sin and evil, doing my whole part
and remaining utterly reliant upon You for the victory.
Make this prayer to arise to You Oh Lord.
Make my words to be received into Your heart.
Cause me be your humble servant
You have created me for Your purposes.
For Your glory I live, move, and have my being in Jesus Christ.
Help me thus to live. Cause my mouth to confess willingly, “You are Lord”!

This is my prayer, in Jesus’ Name, Amen
LeDuaine Allen

© Copyrighted Friday October 25, 2002 This is my Prayer LeDuaine Allen Agape Covenant Ministries 27 North Belvidere Avenue York, PA 17404-3345

iv. 2004-2005 Pastors Lighthouse Chapel Ministries Lucas OH

I enjoyed pastoring in… To My Very Dear Friends
Monday, April 11, 2005

My Brother, Doug, and My Sister, Laurie

I greet you warmly in the Name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I acknowledge you both in His Mercy and in His Grace. This letter is my apology to you for my sins, failures, stupidities, failed-methods and disappointments. I shall make neither explanations nor defenses for myself, for in fact there are none and neither should any reproach come to the Lord for my wrong.

I wish to express my sincere Christian love to both of you. I love you, Doug. I love you, Laurie. I also hold confidence that your Christian love for me holds fast, and that I do not doubt!

I know that we are going to resolve a frictional conflict that has arisen within our tight loving Christian-fellowship. I know that I have very deeply offended you both. And though these offenses were never intended, nor even imagined; they are, none-the-less, very real offences.

I loaned by cellular telephone to Jesse to use in my office, during services through a period of time that you had forbidden him communication with his own father, Paul Raber, until a time when Paul Raber would initiate a call through you first and then he should be allowed to communicate with Jesse.

In this fact, I broke Christian-confidence with you and you lost faith in my ministry to you and to your family.

I am truly sorry for offending you on this extremely crucial point. I was wrong. Will you please forgive me for this infraction in my Christian-ministry to you and to your family?

I know that I further offended you both and also very deeply. And again, though never intended, this offense is also, very, very real. I employed a series of counseling techniques and some of these techniques offended you very deeply. I spoke to each of you in authoritative voice and commanded apologies from each to each. I also made statements that were aggressive, insensitive and offensive.

For these offenses, I humbly and sincerely apologize. I was wrong! Will you forgive me, for my statements that were aggressive, insensitive and offensive to you please?

And what is more, and as if that were not enough already, in subsequent visits at the altar and while on the telephone, you sincerely felt that I interrupted you during your conversations with me.

I am so very sorry for my rude behavior for which there can be no defense. I am so sorry that in our animated conversations I rudely interrupted you, on several occasions. Will you please forgive me these crude and rude interruptions?

I do truly apologize to you and to your family for my failures, hurts and pains that I have caused to you in these and all other areas known and real to you. I beg your full forgiveness and seek and desire heartfelt restoration and the full ministry of reconciliation. Will you please forgive me for my failures, hurts and pains that I have caused to you in these and all other areas known and real to you?

May we be still close friends, and Christian family members together?

We need you in our Lighthouse Chapel Ministries and in our services. We need and value your faithful presence. We value your family and your ministry with Lighthouse Chapel Ministries. This little church needs everyone including all of you.

If you folks stay at Lighthouse Chapel Ministries, or if you go from Lighthouse Chapel Ministries now or ever, please do not let me be the reason for any such decision. This is your Church Family! These are also your family! You need each other in this terribly fragmented world. Please do not allow this episode to fracture your family, hearts or peace of mind any longer.

En Theos En Agapé (In Dynamic Enthusiasm and In Fervent Christian Love)

Pastor L. Duaine Allen

Post Script: I shall maintain Professional Pastoral Counseling Confidentiality and request that you be advised that should the content of The Hergatt’s counseling sessions be told that that telling would be from other than me.

From: Pastor L. Duaine Allen Saturday, October 25, 2005
1-717-318-2551 Cellular 1-419-892-2060 Home Office

To: My New and Dear Friends, of Lighthouse Chapel Ministries,

Introduction: It is a world-class anecdote that a pastor only works an hour a week. Well, since this is my first letter to you from the pastor’s office… and I thought about making a general introduction of my pastoral ministry anyways, I will fill in some information about the other 59 hours in the typical minister’s week. It occurred to me that almost everyone would want to know about my pastoral ministry and how I understand my role and what I see my relationship with you to be, since I am now your pastor.
This introduction is long, but most letters will be one or two pages after this one.
What does that mean? Well, I suspect that this was a self-discovery on my part, of no small magnitude. But when I share this with you…I believe that this will help you, to know me a little better and maybe we can learn to know God little better together. I was still 18 years old when I formally began preparations for ministry and I have now completed forty years of active duty in the Christian pastoral ministry.
• What are my philosophy, theology and understanding regarding the pastoral ministry?

One of the areas often of concern for failed ministers is in the realm of Ministry and activity or inactivity and so it is needful for me to make this declaration.
This is a Definition of My Ministry – I am and have been full-time in the Christian ministry for forty years since July 7th 1964. I have a life-long average of twelve to sixteen hours per day actively involved in the many aspects and facets of the Christian ministry. As all Christians do, so I too, daily spend my own private time with God, with Bible reading, with prayer and with the study of Christian Literature from way back when I became a Christian, as a twelve-year-old boy… from then until now, also in July on the 7th in 1958, during a church program called “Daily Vacation Bible School”. I intend to daily live as a disciple of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Throughout my professional life, while answering the “Call of God”, I have diligently performed the duties of the pastoral Christian ministry, with excitement, commitment and sincerity, even with a sense of urgency, recognizing the God Who calls me as the One to whom I am most accountable.
Counseling Sessions: One of the most important aspects of my work is counseling. I practice counseling sessions. Early in my ministry, I utilized the standard professional counseling techniques. But for most of my mature ministry I have employed Biblical Counseling Methods. When any occasion should arise and you wish you just had someone to talk with about almost any situation, would you call me?
I am convinced that Biblical answers and Biblical principles are the best:
Answers to probing questions, > Provisions for desperate needs, > Solutions to gnarly problems, > Decisions during conflicts.

The Human tragedy, drama, and crisis are all most perfectly satisfied with God’s foundational assumptions. Admittedly, physical, soulical or spiritual maladies may need specialized care in administering this truth.
(Acts 2:42 NASB) And they were continually devoting themselves to
#1 the apostles’ teaching and apostolic doctrines and
#2 to caring, nurturing and genuine fellowship,
#3 to the agape feasts and breaking of bread with communion or refreshments and snacks and
#4 to prayers of faith for healing and intercession.
Bible Studies: I prepare and conduct weekly Bible studies, at one or more locations. I have practiced this method for forty years. Usually involving three or four church couples, I request each of them to bring another, either unchurched or unsaved. The gatherings roughly follow the outline in (Acts 2:42 NASB) “And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” These sessions are for the discovery of Christian discipleship and learning Christian living applications. These sessions are usually in eight-week or thirteen-week increments. The intent is that at least one of the original couples will then, graduate to a leadership level and multiply the church’s ministry, and conduct similar studies. Records of growth… doubling, tripling and quadrupling growth substantiate a noteworthy pattern, throughout my ministry. The services that I have presented in the pastoral Christian Ministries throughout my life have opened many new opportunities in each place for additional ministry.
Care-Groups: I attend to care-groups: Anonymous Groups, “et al”, the singles, the bereaved, the unmarrieds, the divorced, the college groups, the career groups, the single-parent groups, the geriatrics group, the several age level youth groups, the children’s groups, the men’s groups, and the women’s groups, and the occupational groups.
Business Meetings: I prepare for and conduct business meetings. I prefer to present a prepared agenda and adhere to it, and therefore request that any items to be included upon any monthly board session be given to me in advance of that month’s agenda preparation, the Sunday before.

Clergy Councils: I am routinely active with three clergy councils in most communities, including, the evangelical brothers, the Denominational brothers and the mainline denominational & community brothers. These three groups of brothers usually meet for coordinated ministry, mutual fellowship and Christian encouragement. I represent our Church-Family within the Christian community.
Service Clubs: I am usually involved in the local Kiwanis, Rotary, Lyons and Jaycees service clubs, and though new here, I worked with the local clubs this recent Holiday Season speaking at the Christmas tree lighting, helping us and the communities school children understand our own Folklore, customs, music, holidays and their significance in Biblical context.
Local Governments: I am customarily involved with the local governments and their issues, concerns and activities always relate to our church family and our community and so I have been involved here in Lucas OH, lobbying against witch-craft, pornography, x-rated activities and drug sales in our small community, intensely addressing community concerns, making our Church’s Godly influence for righteousness addressed.
Pastoral Calling: I have routinely performed pastoral calling. I like to utilize a schedule and call by appointment. I have endeavored even within my largest pastorates to visit personally all families at least annually. Some pastoral visits, callings and meetings take place in restaurants some in homes, as mutually preferred. Whenever an immediate need should arise, I habitually attended to pastoral calling immediately, regardless of the time. I also do home visitation as a matter of recourse in follow-up work after guest’s Church visits. As a pastor I want to know everyone personally. May I have such a meeting with you?
Visitation: I attend to hospital visitations religiously. I especially appreciate the elderly and work geriatrics with conviction. I visit nursing homes. I visit the imprisoned. I visit the orphanages. I visit the shut-ins and the widows. I love to drop by folks in their working environs. I enjoy impromptu visits and scheduled visits. If anyone needs a visit from me, please inform me, would you? I will come and hopefully be a Godly friend for you, too!
Community Missions and Ministries: I assist with clothing and food ministries attending to the hungry and to the needy. I cooperate in Chaplaincy programs, in the hospital, in business place and on college campuses. I participate in Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary and such other service clubs to know the local businessmen. In most pastorates I am involved with the local government, in the town councils and often this has included the reading of Scriptures and the praying of prayers for these Sessions and these were often televised.
Continuing Education and Group Ministries: I attend seminars, conduct and attend youth rallies, I benefit from Sunday School conventions. I always have lead camps, retreats, and outings. I participate in the Association of Christian Schools International and Mid-Atlantic Christian School Association. I work on continuing education. I work weddings and related counseling, funerals and related ministries, Christian Concerts and related altar work. I prepare for and conduct the local church’s business sessions. I conduct Church Services. I do the church’s business with the public. I have ministered via television, radio and the newspaper mediums.
I spend time writing. I am currently concluding the writing and coming to the publication stage for three volumes… #1 “A Compilation of Letters”… “Talking to my Kids” or “From a Father’s Heart” #2 “Trichotomy – Spirit, Soul and Body – The Nature of Man- A Study in Christian Growth” #3 “Contrasting World-Views – ‘His – Theirs’”.
Office Work: I do office work for communication and correspondence with “Kith, Kin & Kountrymen”. I perform planning sessions and calendar work. I do reading and research for all public and private presentations. I am learning computer applications like Microsoft PowerPoint for Bible Study and Sermon presentations. I have done churchyard work. I have done church custodial work. I have done routine Church-maintenance. Among other duties and ministry activities multitudinous in number, I employ myself in the Lord’s work that I love and that I am devoted to. I am a family man and I love the roles of husband, father, and grandfather… brother, son, nephew, uncle, colleague and friend!
• What are my philosophy, theology and understanding regarding the Spiritual Gift of Pastor and the pastoral ministry?

Pastor – I believe that it is a calling of God to be a Pastor, as I have just been sharing, with you. I believe that it is a spiritual gift to be a Pastor. “And He gave some Pastors” Ephesians 4:11. I believe Acts 20:18-21 in Paul’s farewell address to Ephesus is a clear and concise definition of the Pastoral ministry. “I was with you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which came upon me and how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying of repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” I believe this is a caricature of my philosophy and theology of the pastoral ministry personally. I believe that I must minister: to the old and young, to the poor and wealthy, to the ignorant and learned, to the loveable and the unlovely, to the sick and well, to the sinner and saint, to the church member and church neighbor, to the family, to the married and single, to the happy and frustrated, to each and every one that God brings across my path.
I believe I am required by God to devote myself completely; body, soul and Spirit. I am dedicated to the work that our Lord has called me to. I am ministering as people have needs, whether it is convenient or not. I must care for the lonely, the widows, the fatherless, the parents, the grandparents, the children, the families. I must admonish them to live right, to tithe, and to serve. I must help them to correct their courses of action and to hold on when they want to give up. I believe I must serve them as a shepherd does his flock. I must serve them as a willing and loving slave as Jesus said. My ministry must be intimate, personal and caring for each one. They must feel that I am caringly approachable, genuinely concerned, Biblically and academically qualified. They must know that I am compassionate, wise, experienced, ardent and ambitious. I must be informed with current events and history in Biblical context. I must be a strong leader. I must be reasonable. I must example what I speak. I must be willing to share not only my strengths but my weaknesses also and show them how God has power to forgive, heal, correct, and use failures for good. This encourages the people of God, and they realize that the challenge and goal of Christian perfection and holy living is attainable. I am not Jesus Christ, but I believe I must live as close to Him and be as much like Him as I can be, so that as Paul said, so I too can say “Imitate me!” In my life, they will have a living object lesson to example the message before them. I must pray with them, laugh and cry with them. I must care about their interests, family concerns, and listen to them as well as talk to them. I must rebuke and console them. I must protect them; I must oppose their false ideas. I must know God, and know them. They must be able to learn of God from me, and they will love God and me as I love them. I believe love is the quality and color of my role as a pastoral minister. I love my calling. I pray God to make me to excel in it through His grace, strength, and blessing.
• What are my philosophy, theology and understanding regarding the preaching and teaching the Bible?

Sermons: I make sermon preparations and deliver sermons for inspiration.
Teachings: I make lesson preparations and deliver teachings for information.

Preaching and Teaching – I believe preaching and teaching is declaring God’s Word as recorded in the Bible. Preaching and teaching are declaring this Biblical truth with conviction, understanding, and Spirit. I believe God would have me preach and teach well prepared, with genuine communication, face-to-face and heart-to-heart. I should have a specific premise. I should know what I want my audiences to know, or to do, or to be, because of having heard a sermon that I have preached, or a lesson that I have taught.
I believe a sermon will entertain, though that is not its purpose. I believe a sermon will inform, though that is not its highest purpose. I believe a sermon is to declare the truth of Jesus Christ and His claims and to require from the audiences a response to accept or reject that truth.
Homiletical Preaching Styles – There are many forms of sermon-preaching and lesson-teaching styles. Each preacher is familiar with these several types, and most preachers use them all on different occasions. I personally prefer the expositional style presented in a storyline. I also enjoy teaching topical subjects as in a lesson plan developing the subject to understanding, though I am not restricted by style. I also enjoy both the didactical or teaching style and the doctrinal systematic theology teaching styles and feel very comfortable with them. I believe each preacher develops his own most perfect style with maturity, experience and influence. And after time I have developed what is my own unique preaching style, personality and technique, as all other preachers are prone to do.
Each Homiletical Preaching Styles has unique strengths: > the expositional, > the topical, > the biographical, > the didactical, > the doctrinal, > the practical, > the message for special occasions, > the evangelistic, and > the missionary styles. These are among the more popular forms of sermon delivery styles.
Hermeneutic Teaching Styles – I believe every sermon should be a declaration of God’s truth! Every sermon and lesson must be based upon the Bible! I must be careful to address the temporal issues of today’s news in the context of God’s inerrant, unchanging authoritative and absolute truth. We must never accommodate God’s Eternal Word with today’s assumptions. The Bible is absolute! These sermons should be developed and shared in meaningful, understandable and age and gender appropriate means. I must employ any one of the several styles and discourse approaches familiar to preachers.
Each Hermeneutic Teaching Styles has unique strengths:> make the theory make sense, > provide typical examples, > chart comparisons, > make contrasts and similarities, > lead discussions, > give explanations, > provide descriptions, > show aspects and perspectives, > correspond propositions logically > furnish causes and effects, > consider time sequences and provide chronologies, > advise of advantages or disadvantages, > weigh “pros & cons”, > on occasions, even state the obvious, > make plain and clear observations, > tell storylines; with meaning, with human interests, with emotions, with anecdotes, with themes and with humor, > be creative and imaginative, > express and communicate practical applications, > articulate realistic assumptions
Preaching and Teaching must be both by Message and By Lifestyle – I try to be exciting in my preaching. However, I believe that my life is preaching a louder message than my sermon, therefore I trust God to make my life a message to His glory. I believe that true preaching is God’s word to man rather than man’s word about God. I believe that through Bible-study and fervent prayer, God’s word will be so indelibly impressed upon my Spirit that I know I am speaking His words and not my own. I believe that the success of preaching is not in my skill, but in the power of God’s Word.
• What are my philosophy, theology and understanding regarding discipleship and Christian Living?

Discipleship – I believe that as Jesus Christ chose twelve disciples and required of them godly discipline, allegiance, loyalty, sacrifice, undivided attention, full obedience and willing service; so too, God requires this of me and of all who would hear the voice and the call of God. This is not to say that discipleship is required only of fulltime, professional ministers, no, it is rather to say the high and holy calling of sanctification, holy Christian living, and consecrated discipleship is God’s voice and call to every heart believer.
I believe that when I am pure through the cleansing of the blood of Christ, when I am indwelt with the presence of Jesus Christ’s Holy Spirit and when I am under the anointing of God’s Holy Spirit, the message that God has to give to my audiences and congregations will enter into their hearts and challenge their commitments, spark their faith, inspire their devotion, warm their love, thrill their hearts, instruct their minds and move them to real action. I believe with Paul that is not with enticing words of men’s wisdom, but in the simple, powerful beauty of the preached word!
• What are my philosophy, theology and understanding regarding the church of Jesus Christ, His Bride?

The Church Is The Body Of Jesus Christ – I believe that the visible church of Christ is the congregation of faithful believers whose lives are pure and holy and following in the footsteps of our Saviour Jesus Christ. I believe that the church is, the body of Christ and all those that hear the Word preached and who preach the Word to the world, both by precept and by example. I believe that the church is the body of Christ that faithfully administers the sacraments to the believers within the body. I believe that the church is the visible body of Christ upon the earth doing now what Christ would do if He were walking our earth again. I believe that the true church is universal in scope and ministry; and that the church reaches across denominations, cultures, generations, boundaries, governments, races, nationalities, to include all who believe in the Gospel as presented within the Holy Scriptures. I believe that within the church there will be the broad spectrum from babes in Christ to children in Christ, to young men in Christ, to mature men in Christ. In the church, each believer has a special part and talent to contribute to serve Christ and the others within the body. I believe that the true church includes all faithful believers, some of whom have gone to be with the Lord and others of whom remain on the earth, having renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil, and are committed unto Him and His church, till He come. I believe that the local church is a body of believers formally organized on Gospel principles meeting together regularly for the purposes of evangelism, worship, “edification, exhortation and comfort”, instruction and service.
Based upon (1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14 NLT) I believe that The Body Of Christ is One Body of many Parts… Though Many Parts, One Body – I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ includes all body parts as members of the body of Christ and all who hold the faith as taught in the Holy Scriptures, and all who subscribe to the tenants of the Biblical tenants of Faith as included it the Ancient Creeds and all who submit to the ecclesiastical authority appointed by God to safeguard the church.
• What Are My Philosophy, Theology And Understanding Regarding The Ministry Of The Holy Spirit As He Relates To The Life Of Holiness, Christian Living And The Spiritual Fruits And Gifts, The Christian Beatitudes And The Christian Virtues?

One of the areas often of concern for failed ministers is in the realm of correct Biblical Christian Theology and so it is needful for me to make this declaration, to avoid cult, cultic practices. The best defense against heresy is God’s Word and His Truth.
The Whole concept about being a Christian, and living the Christian life and not living and being like were all once were is all enveloped within the discussion regarding Jesus’ Holy Spirit. When Jesus Christ was on the Cross, He gave back to the Heavenly Father His own Holy Spirit. When we become a Christian by being Born-again and when we receive His Holy Spirit, we are Spirit Filled with His Holy Spirit and we learn to live a Godly life. This can only happen because His Holy Spirit, that was in Him, that went to the Heavenly Father, now comes into us, by our invitation empowers us to be Christian and He makes the Christian life possible within us and He makes the Christian life make sense.
Holiness – Apart from the Holy Spirit there can be no holiness, in my life. The very Spirit of Jesus that left Him on the Cross and ascended to the Father is the very same Holy Spirit that came in upon the disciples within the upper room at Pentecost. Jesus had told them I am with you but I shall be within you! I believe that the scriptures in John 14:16, 26; John 15:26; John 16:7-15 impart the teaching of Christ Jesus regarding the ministry and the work of His own Holy Spirit in the Christian’s life. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, that left Him while on the Cross and that came upon His new Church and all Christians in the upper room, and upon earth today. This same Holy Spirit leads us in our Christian walks and matures us in holiness. The Holy Spirit dwells within the disciples as Comforter, Counselor, and Advocate. The Holy Spirit teaches us all things. He testifies of Jesus. He recalls to us what Jesus said and did and was. He reproves the world of sin, of the righteousness of Jesus Christ required of all, and of His soon coming judgment. Jesus’ Spirit lives within us to guide us, His disciples into all truth. The Holy Spirit does not speak of Himself, but only what He hears, He exalts Jesus Christ, and He shows all disciples things to come. He glorifies Jesus Christ by showing the things of Jesus to them. I believe that the Deity of the Holy Spirit is taught in Acts 5:3, 4 and elsewhere. He works within my life to perfect holiness, perfectness, maturity, separation from evil, and to make me complete, wholesome, righteous, obedient, submissive and responsive to the living and true God. The Holy Spirit applies the work of Christ to my life.
Sanctification In The Holy Spirit – When I set myself apart for God or when He sets me apart for Him, I become sanctified.
(Like the same piece of wood can be sanctified or set apart for a fine wooden clock or for toothpicks, so I too, can be sanctified.)
The Emblems Of The Holy Spirit – I believe that the Emblems of the Holy Spirit signify the ministry of the Spirit to a Christian to make sanctification complete, to make holiness real and practical in this present life.
The Holy Spirit regenerates my life and indwells my heart. The raging Fire of God’s Holy Spirit purges my life-forests from the debris of my own personal sins, actions, choices, and decisions and of my inherited sin, the disease of Adam, that cancer that kills. He owns me and places His Seal upon me. The Wind in hurricane force of the Holy Spirit demands my attention to His plans, patters and purposes. The Holy Spirit witnesses with my Spirit and that I belong to God. As the Dove alights upon my life, significance is granted and makes His declaration that I am accepted into His family and His ministry. Jesus baptizes me in Water for salvation, quenching my thirsts for the real, the important and the eternal. I pray that His Holy Spirit laden my branches with the luscious, delicious fruit, making the Christian life I live desirable. Jesus Christ baptizes me in His own Holy Spirit for service. The Holy Spirit infills me, and as with anointing Oil, He empowers me, He leads me, He administers the Fruits, the Gifts, the virtues and the beatitudes to my life to bring me into full compliance with the precepts and examples of Jesus Christ. He empowers me to confront the heresies of this world’s world-view and to teach, preach and incorporate Jesus Christ’s world-view as taught in these Beatitudes. I have given The Holy Spirit control of my life and as much of my life that has not yet learned full obedience, submission, understanding and maturity; I pray to be made complete in and through Him.
These Emblems of the Holy Spirit are Fire, Wind, Water, Dove, Oil, Seal, Fruits and Gifts.
These emblems are used to express the Holy Spirit’s works in my life and yours.
Fire speaks of His consuming power, of His purifying power in the heart of a believer, and of His pervasive ravaging power against our inherited and acquired depravity;
Wind speaks of His “breath of life” and of His dynamic power to speak to us and to move us, and of His hidden depth beyond our knowledge, wisdom and understanding, and His power to regenerate and to recreate;
Water speaks of His refreshing and quenching, of His life sustaining power, and of His filling and overflowing of each believer with spiritual life and healthy energetic vitality;
Dove speaks of His gentleness, tenderness, peacefulness (for the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension) and of His compassion;
Oil speaks of His anointing for ministry and service, of His healing, balm and salve for heart and life, and of His presence abiding and comprehensive covering;
Seal speaks of His ownership of us now and of His signature upon us that we belong to Him and of His authority and protection over us;
Fruits speak of His own nature, producing in our lives likenesses and realities of similitude to the nature and image Christ Jesus, sweet, luscious delicious satisfying and nourishing;
Gifts speak of useful tools for service to minister to others in cooperation with Him, of His plans and purposes, and that all be tended.

Fruit of the Holy Spirit – When I was a new Christian, back in 1958, my own pastor gave these beautiful thoughts about the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
I believe that the fruit of the Spirit in my life is love. My life is Spirit controlled, sanctified and holy as I remain dedicated to God and remain totally yielded to Him, as I walk in all known light, obey every known command, cherish and claim every precious promise, perform every required duty, bear every fruit, exercise every gift, preach every truth, minister in every opportunity, love unconditionally, serve sacrificially, teach by precept and example.
This Christian love is Jesus is us.
• Joy is this love’s strength.
• Peace is this love’s security.
• Patience is this love’s endurance.
• Kindness is this love’s conduct.
• Goodness is its character.
• Faithfulness is this love’s confidence.
• Gentleness is its humility.
• Self-control is this love’s victory!

Ephesians 4:11-16 and He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ; till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
(John 13:35 KJV) “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” On this John 13:35: Ryrie Study Bible says that all men will know the Christian Disciples had a mutual love and love would be the strongest possible argument for the Christian faith.
(Gal 5:22-26 NLT) “But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, {23} gentleness, and self-control. Here there is no conflict with the law. {24} Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. {25} If we are living now by the Holy Spirit, let us follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. {26} Let us not become conceited, or irritate one another, or be jealous of one another. “
The Sins Against The Holy Spirit – I believe that the sins against the Holy Spirit hinder, cripple, and destroy any guilty person. What is the sin against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31-32)?
Matthew 12:31-32 says, “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”
The Sins Against The Holy Spirit include these – > The sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is ascribing to the devil what God alone can do or ascribing to God what the devil has done. > Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness. > The sin of resisting the Holy Spirit is committed when He convicts and one refuses to obey. > The sin of grieving the Holy Spirit is committed when a believer does not yield full control of his life to God for the glory of Christ. > The sin of quenching the Holy Spirit is committed when known sin is unconfessed and unforgiven. > The sin of lying to the Holy Spirit is mocking God and is only self-deception. It is born of jealousy, selfishness, and pride.
Pretty much, if you wonder, question for fear…”Have I committed the unpardonable sin? Then you have not!
I believe that the Holy Spirit has sanctified me. He enables me to love God with all my heart, mind, soul, body, strength, and He guides me as I grow in God’s grace. He imparts God’s mercy upon my life, that is, He does not treat me as I deserve as in Hell. He imparts God’s grace upon my life, that is, He does give to me what I do not deserve, as in eternal blessings like heaven and temporal blessings, like food, shelter and clothing. He enables me to love my neighbor as myself. I believe that the work of the Holy Spirit convicts me of my sin, of His righteousness and its application to my life, and of His judgment upon all sin, upon all sins and upon all that reject Him.
I believe that this kind of discipleship will make every believer a full-time disciple in every situation, “24-7”. I believe that discipleship will evidence in one’s life through salvation by doing good at every opportunity to all men, and especially to those of the body of Christ. I believe that a believer who is living a life of discipleship will minister to the spiritual, soulical, and bodily needs by giving food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, visiting those that are sick or in prison, ministering to the widows and the fatherless. I believe that a disciple will by precept and example minister instruction, practice Spirit worship, reprove the facts, and exhort the commands, all in love, and with all diligence, that the Gospel be not blamed. A disciple will run with patience the race that is set before him. A disciple will consider himself a slave willing to obey all of the Master’s commands. A disciple will deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow close to Christ. A disciple will be willing to suffer for the sake of the Gospel of Christ. A disciple will ever keep and respect the Ten Commandments. A disciple will live loving God and loving his fellow man with a whole heart. I believe that a disciple will abstain from all forms of spiritism, witchcraft, astrology, and all forms of the occult. A disciple will abstain from all sins including drug usage, overindulgence, idle curiosity, evil speech, materialism, sensuality, unholy ambition, evil thoughts, worldliness, evil desires and lustful passions. I believe that a true disciple of Christ Jesus will abstain from humanism, cults, heresies, and secret societies. A disciple will respect individual human rights of all persons. A disciple will live, talk, think, and do circumspectly, justly, and righteously in all of his responsibilities and contractual obligations. He will respect all duly constituted authority in the home, church, and the state, except when to do so violates the clear Word of God. A Christian disciple will strive for the advancement of God’s kingdom and for the mutual edification, exhortation, and comfort of fellow believers. A disciple will live in holiness, knowledge, and love. A disciple will walk in Christian fellowship, in carefulness, giving and receiving admonition with meekness and affection. He will pray for others. He will offer his aid to one sick or in distress. A disciple will cultivate Christian sympathy; he will demonstrate purity, charity, faith, hope, courtesy and respect. I believe that a disciple will be careful in his dress, manners, habits, attitudes, motives, purposes, conversation, and stewardship of time, tithe, and talent. I believe that a disciple is a faithful and consistent student of God. A disciple will utilize opportunities to learn, to be a better servant by reading, traveling as opportunity opens, studying under the tutuledge of the able and experienced. I believe that a disciple will preserve the sanctity of the family, the home, and marriage. A disciple respects the Biblical laws and requirements for man-woman, husband-wife marriage as foundational. A disciple trusts God’s design for family as the foundational building block for human society, predating law, culture and society. A disciple cares about child rearing, and cares for the sick, the aged and the young, for the whole family.
• What are my philosophy, theology and understanding regarding the pastoral ministry’s legality and financial obligations to the Federal Government, the Local Church and to the Denominations?

One of the areas often of concern for failed ministers is in the realm of Finances and so it is needful for me to make this declaration. Thus, on the qualifications for ministry by both ministerial education and ordination credential I receive a 1099-Miscellaneous Form, self-employed salary statement annually for the reporting of all ministerial salaries.
1. The Ministerial Education Justification is for the receipt of self-employment ministerial income reported on the 1099-Miscellaneous Form and is for the reporting of all salaries, monies, honorariums and any and all other receipts from all rendered ministerial services.
1. I am a Self-Employed Minister – This statement is only for clarification for IRS purposes.
2. I do not receive a W-2 Form from any church for ministerial services because I have not been an employee of any church, nor do I work for wages or for salary as an employee of any church. I do receive a W-2 Form from all secular employment throughout each year throughout all the years.
3. I do receive a 1099-Miscellaneous Form, as a self-employed minister, to report all pastoral and ministerial salary income received for each church that I have pastored.
4. I have received the 1099-Miscellaneous Form for the last forty years for the reporting of all ministerial and pastoral salary income to the Federal Government through the IRS annually from every church since 1972. Therefore, the IRS 1099-Miscellaneous Form reports the ministerial salary from all ministries and churches for which I have ministered and pastored.
5. I am and have always been a “Credentialed” and “Self-Employed Minister” and I have always filed with a 1099-Miscellaneous Form, as a self-employed minister, pastor and preacher for each ministry that I have had for the last forty years.
2. The Ordination Credential Justification is for the receipt of self-employment ministerial income reported on the 1099-Miscellaneous Form and is for the reporting of all salaries, monies, honorariums and any and all other receipts from all ministerial services.
1. “Local Church Preacher/Ministerial Credential”… I held a “Local Church Preacher/Ministerial Credential” Between the years of July 1964, while I was still a junior in High School and throughout my college career up to college graduation in May 1970 at the completion of my Bachelor of Arts Degree for Pastoral Ministry Preparation. I held this
2. “Local Church Preacher/Ministerial Credential” during my High School career at JCS in North Creek NY, State University of New York at Albany and College Education at both Owosso College at John Wesley University Owosso MI and Marion College at Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion IN. “Licensed Minister Credential” I received the promotion to “Licensed Minister Credential” status, in July 1970 for the required two-year proof of faithful Christian and ministerial service.
3. “Ordained Ministerial Credential”… Upon approval I was granted the final promotion in July 1972 when I received Ordination Credentials, to serve God, the churches and the respective communities. I negotiate an income with each church to remain self-employed, as an independent contractor pastor/ minister/ preacher.
4361 Form File Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service Application for Exemption
From Self-Employment Tax For Use by Ministers, Members of Religious Orders and Christian Science Practitioners
In the year of the completion of my ministerial education and of my original ordination credential 1972, I signed the IRS Form 4361 and retain submission to this privilege, as a self-employed minister of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and as a conscientious objector to the government sponsored and controlled Social Security retirement program, and this form exempts me from paying social security taxes on all my self-employed ministerial income.
Finances— Concerning the responsibilities for Church-Family finances, I need to inform you that I have always delegated to others the expenditure of all Church-Family funds. All expenditures shall be as per budget, devised, presented, known, understood, voted upon, enacted and approved by the Church-Family, and supervised by the responsibles, other than by me. All funds shall be tallied by a designated board of tellers, and deposited by them, excluding the treasurers, is my safeguard recommendation. This is a suggestion from every denomination and ministry organization and before I come on the scene. All funds shall be disbursed by check by the treasurer, as per approved budget. All fiscal responsibilities shall be tended in a timely manner, as per OH laws of accounting, integrity and prudence. I shall desire no access to church monies. Any programs, needs or expenditures newly realized and not yet budgeted shall be proposed, explained, defended and entered as a budget item. Admittedly, emergencies arise, but the prepared budget shall be in effect, with such contingencies. Finances shall be performed with integrity, on business principles and with proper accounting policies and reports.
The tithes of God’s ancient tribes’ family-members paid their priestly brethren, “The Levite Tribe” a tithe or a tenth of their increase. This is God’s pattern and my preferred assumptions in a perfect world and it is the assumption for the New Testament Church. With that, the priests attended to the Temple, the widows, the orphans, the poor, the society, the education, and its extended ministries and themselves and their families and all for ten per cent. Today we all know that Uncle Sam takes a larger bite than ten per cent to care for some of these items through our Federal Governments programs. Israel gave their tenth to support the priests while the priests devoted themselves to the work of the ministry. Some great consideration calculates the just professional pastoral provision for pastoral positions should approximate and an average of the family incomes within the Church-Family.
• What are my philosophy, theology and understanding regarding the necessity, usefulness and need for each one within the Christian Community, and what is our accountability to God, our self, and to each other?

One of the areas often of concern for failed ministers is in the realm of Authority and so it is needful for me to make this declaration. I am Accountable to God – But, first, I am accountable to God, as are each of us. I do not see myself as a maverick, but as a Church-Family member. God gives gifts and roles to each of us and we all share in the corporate ministry together. Each one of us adds a unique part, all included and no one excluded and thereby we all are mutually beneficial to each other. Every family member within the local Church-Family has gifts and roles to share. No one is superior or inferior to any other Church-Family member within the body of Christ, don’t you agree? I do not see the pastoral role as bigger and better that every other gift and role within the Church-Family. I shall however, do my absolute best to make you proud of me, as I also know each of you will do your best for each other and for me… and we shall all be proud of you and grateful to you… As Jesus gave His best for all of us… so we for Him! And we all love Him!
(Eph 4 NLT) {11} He is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. {12} Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ, {13} until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.
I am accountable to God’s Servants—I have long-term accountability partners, to whom I submit; men and women of God, who lovingly advise, genuinely admonish, give unbiased counsel and contribute Godly wisdom. I choose to be accountable to the fellow ministerial brethren. Then as each of us remains accountable to the brethren within the Church-Family of God, so I too in equal measure remain accountable to the brethren within the Church-Family of God. Therefore, in the same sense as for each of us, so I also would be. Neither do I see Church brethren or myself as the boss of the Church. Jesus said, “I will build my Church.” He created each of us for His own purposes, uniquely. He bought and paid for the Church with His own blood. He gave His own Holy Spirit supervision of His Church. Of all that He gave to us, in loving obedience we worship Him. We devote ourselves to him in our time, and in our talents. We give Him our tithes and offerings. With those tithes and offerings, given back to Him in obedience and in love with commitment, we assist in the establishment of this little part of His big Kingdom. We will not be guilty of sinning, by thinking, by speaking or by behaving as though He were on vacation, or absent, or incapable, or disinterested, or not understanding our dilemmas.
Hierarchy – I see myself as no ones boss, while in the pastoral role, nor do I perceive any others to be my bosses, except that Jesus Christ is the boss of all of us. I see my pastoral role as a spiritual gift, based upon Ephesians Four. Often times Christ’s enemy, who is the church’s enemy and Satan is also our individual enemy is constantly endeavoring to defeat us by jumbling our roles and positions within the body of Christ. Jesus
Spiritual Gifting – I believe that “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers” are spiritual Gifts; these are usually the professional clergy. However, they should not be granted leadership roles within the Church-Family apart from God the Holy Spirits gifting. God chooses to give to His Church “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers” as that, “Gifts”. Think of it this way if you will… I will be a present, a gift to you as a pastor-brother within your Church-Family, and you shall know that God has sent me.
Within every alive, active, growing, thriving and healthy Church-Family there are already “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers” gifted and appointed by God. These are not offices to which someone is elected or appointed, but rather by Holy Spirit gifting and designation. There will come up from within, new men and women and young people gifted and appointed for leadership, who will become themselves the righteous and influential fulfilling these roles for this and for future generations as the Lord tarries. I see all other Christians within the Body of Christ as having their own spiritual gifts, roles and talents. These five are from the Biblical list of some twenty-six spiritual gifts to operate within the Body of Christ, in companion, harmony and mutual support.
One of the areas often of concern for failed ministers is in the realm of morals and morality and so it is needful for me to make this declaration.
My wife and I are morally pure from birth to each other and live in a Godly monogamous marriage. This is a Biblical requirement for Ministers of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. That does not make us, in our own minds nor in anyone else’s, any better than any other person. We know that half of the American public is divorced and many remarried. But He established the moral laws that govern His Universe. And He requires of His Ministers certain prerequisites, and this is one of them! We are very sensitive to the wounds, hurts and hearts that have been victimized by the moral breakdown in our world. If we were guilty of moral failure, we could not uphold God’s standard with integrity. We can, however, proclaim God’s loving, forgiving and healing message, and do!
In Conclusion – I conclude with these assumptions. I am not going to fulfill “The Great Commission” by proxy… I will not displace anyone… We shall discover and exercise our unique gifts together… We shall continue as a healthy Church-Family and we shall grow… together before God and in our number. We will live in brotherly love, in harmony with pure hearts and in fervent-servant spirit… We will fulfill “Ten-Commandments” by loving God and each other as Jesus taught.
1. May I have the privilege to interview with your church family?
2. May I have the privilege to visit with you and your Family in your home or mine or in a restaurant?
3. May I have yours and your family e-mail addresses, so that I may send you communications?
4. May I know how I may most perfectly help you, counsel you, and answer your questions?
5. May I have the privilege to pray with you and your Family?
6. May I know your personal prayer requests, needs and concerns? What may I pray for?
7. May I have the privilege to pray for you and your Family, when in my prayer closet?
8. May I have the privilege to study God’s Word with you and your Family?
9. May I have the privilege to Worship God with you and your family at Lighthouse Chapel Ministries Church Services?

En Theos En Agape (In Dynamic Enthusiasm and In Fervent Christian Love)
Pastor L. Duaine Allen

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

My Dear Laura,

I miss you today, and I thought to myself how very pleasant it would be to go out to lunch with you nowadays, maybe at Panera Bread. Laura, I thought how very nice and how very satisfying it always was to share the same office time and sit there together; you working diligently on CMH log books, newsletters and paper work and I was there working on another chapter in one of my books or composing imminent correspondences. I thought about your lovely hugs and your warm “I love you!” comments. I thought about our spirit-prayer times together. Those times always meant a lot. I miss those and you. I miss you so much. I loved those precious times when you united with Pamela and me, Duaine and the girls of CMH, at our meal times and you just came in… gave a delightful greeting… and joined right in with your animated dialogue, exciting conversations and your Christian interaction. You seemed always to have some astute tidbit from the world of Christian news to share with us.

I love you Laura. I miss you today. You are my friend forever. I am writing this letter to extend my apology for our very last telephone conversation. I did not submit to you in your request for my CMH-key. I do not want to defend my inane answers. But I was wrong. I disappointed you. I offended you.
Cornerstone Maternity Home York PA
And Laura Marshall seemed synonymous.

Probably, the biggest pain that I caused you was that on every other request I had submitted instantly, and this failure cannot help but look to you approximating a personal attack. Though it was not, my failure to communicate with you since must hurt your heart and your thoughts. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I have neither excuse nor defense.

Entertain agreement that you and I built a beautiful Christian friendship over a long period of time. I did not want to disappoint you. I did not want to hurt you. But I did not want you to see how horribly messy the CMH house was on all three floors, at that time, because we were moving and sorting and packing. It was utterly disheveled. You know that whenever you were coming in, I had made certain that it was vacuumed, straightened, plugged or unplugged and “etcetera” and that mess would have ached your heart. What I did not know, and then even until now, which would ache your heart worse… not having the key or seeing the mess. But Laura I am truly sorry for this glitch-bump in our otherwise pleasant close understanding supportive friendship and professional working relationship. We left for an intended three-day stay to OH and were instead gone for over one month. We had planned to return and tidy up a lot before you would have returned from your vacation or would have been there again. We were victims of circumstance.

May we forever maintain our wonderful friendship as the “brother and sister” we have been? Laura, I love you truly. Please forgive me. When I write this down, it may seem a bit absurd. If so forgive that too. But I want to cement our love and friendship. En Agape, Duaine

Friday, January 28, 2005
Oh Sweet Daughter, Carol,

We love you. You are our Darling.
One of the most profound satisfactions to our hearts, perpetually emanating from your life is the perfect wife that you are to our Dearest Son, Michael. You attend to him. You team with him. You share with him. You revere with him, the most holy, the most beautiful, the most right and the most eternal.

Another one of the most profound satisfactions overwhelming us mere mortals is the precious family of little ones, mothered by your loving devotion, by your infatigueable industry and by your righteous influence upon them for God and right.

But the most profound satisfactions blessing us in our preponderances and reflections and reminiscences today, even above your wifely roles to Michael, and even above your motherly roles to our wonderful Grandchildren is you as our Daughter. We love you! We love your bright mind. We love your happy playful adventuresome spirit. We cherish your fun amorous ways. We love your ways of coping with life’s realities whether least ideal, or most ideal. We love your pleasant, but sometimes-intense competitive nature, though always is love, fun and jest. We admire your living of your Christian life with Biblical convictions and integrity. We respect your able ministry with your friends, the teens, the children and all family and all the adults. We delight in animated conversations with you, and we are inspired with your enthusiasms, insightfulness and your pervading wisdom. Your manners and routines for a long-soaking hot-tub-bath, or for your total enjoyment for a fine dining out experience, relaxing, thinking, talking, planning, praying where you always radiate a quite settled confidence and a reflective peace with your life as it is. You enrapture with a group on some field trip, or on a picnic or on a camping outing and exude a contagious excitement that blesses the atmosphere and those about.

Carol, you are a truly beautiful person. We love you because you are you. We are proud of you. We consistently and fervently intercede for you daily. We pray today for your 30th B/D and for this new decade opening up before you.

En Theos En Agape, (In Dynamic Enthusiasm and in Fervent Christian Love) Dad & Mom