(Many photos included are by Frank Martin of Grace Church)
A Moore County crowd
of 475 attended a March 3, 2013, “Celebration of Unity” service, which was endorsed
by 16 “participating churches” and held at Grace Church in Southern Pines.
The event, organized
by David Pratt, life-development pastor at Grace Church, and Pastor Ken Owen of John 8:31 Ministries, featured preaching,
prayer and praise-music.
Pastor David PrattKicking off the service, Randy Thornton, senior pastor at Grace Church, said, “Those churches that have been praying together have grown exponentially.”
Thornton and pastors from many of the 16 churches have met together on Tuesdays to pray during the last 15 years, he said.
“There are
87,000 people in Moore County,” Thornton noted. “If you put everyone in a
church, the churches couldn’t handle it. Fifteen to 20 percent [of Moore County
residents], max, attend church on Sunday morning.”
He urged pastors
who agree on “essential major doctrines” to “put down differences” and pray
together.
Some choir
members from Pleasant Hill Baptist and Aberdeen First Baptist took the stage
and sang “Victory in Jesus,” a song containing these words: “O victory in Jesus
/ My Savior forever / He sought me and he bought me / With his redeeming blood
/ He loved me ere I knew him / And all my love is due him / He plunged me to
victory / Beneath the cleansing flood.”
That gospel
seemed to touch hearts as the choir laced into its lyrics.
Pastor Mike
Branscome of Aberdeen First Baptist said, “Eight or nine years ago, I found the
prayer group [of pastors], and it helped me grow in my Christian life.” Turning
and looking toward some pastors representing the 16 participating churches, he
said, “I love you guys.”
Branscome asked
audience members to pray for their churches, their pastors and their church
staffs. He paused for attendees to offer silent prayers and then asked for each
person to pray for “another church in this community” and its pastor and staff.
He also solicited prayers for “people lost and un-churched in this county.”
Sal DiBianca
Sal DiBianca,
director of Sandhills Teen Challenge (STC), a men’s drug and alcohol
rehabilitation center located in Carthage, led his 26-member choir, made up of
men in the STC program, in singing “I’m Alive.” Sal’s wife, Debby, sang with
the group.
Melanson holds certificate (center) as ministers gather to pray.
DiBianca introduced William “Billy” Melanson, “a former cocaine addict” who completed the Teen Challenge program and has been “credentialed with the Assemblies of God and called to missions.”
“I should be
dead,” Billy said. “That’s four years ago.”
Billy, now a
“minister,” said he wants to become a nurse go to Africa to “reach Muslims.”
He stepped back
into his place in the choir, which then sang “Mighty to Save.”
Pastor Lee McKinney (center) raises his hand in worship.
Pastor Lee McKinney of New Covenant Fellowship read from Nehemiah, chapter 12, including verse 43 (KJV): “Also that day [a day celebrating the dedication of the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem] they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced: for God had made them rejoice with great joy: the wives also and the children rejoiced: so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off.”
“Their joy was heard from afar,”
McKinney said. “That’s what they need to hear in this county ... Take up the banner of Jesus Christ.”
Youth Pastor
B.J. McCloud of Aberdeen First Baptist took the stage and said, “I am a blessed
man.”
He read James
1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure
and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and
to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
“I speak Robbin-eese because I’m from Robbins,” he quipped. “It’s a
language in itself.”
Audience laughter.
“There are people among us … single-parent homes,” McCloud said. There
are a bunch of people around us who are hurting … You’re an orphan if you don’t
know who your father is. A pure religion takes care of widows and orphans.”
He said he’d been a youth pastor since 2001 and prior to 2010 thought
“there had to be more” to his job.
He said Coach Chris Metzger prayed for a chaplain for his Pinecrest
High School football team. Metzger told McCloud that McCloud kept coming to his
mind.
McCloud said he thought, “God, who am I that you would use me?”
He said he liked basketball but didn’t know a thing about football. He
accepted the assignment as chaplain for Metzgar’s football team of about 60
players.
“God said he wanted me to learn about orphans and families without
Jesus,” said McCloud, who later took on and additional role of serving as
chaplain for a girls’ basketball team.
McCloud said that one of the biggest divisions among churches is “youth
groups – competing youth groups.”
“How can you steal ‘church’ from ‘church’?” he asked. “The job is too
big for one group, but the job is not too big for Christ. It’s time for us to
stand together. United, we stand; divided, we fail. God has called us to stand
together. God has called us to take care of the orphans and widows.”
McCloud asked people to respond to his challenge by standing. He said, “I
do not want you to stand, unless you accept the challenge to go out and
minister to the orphans and the widows.”
Most folk in the congregation stood to their feet for prayer.
A Turning Point Praise Team
A praise-team from Turning Point Worship Center of Aberdeen filed onto the Grace Church stage and sang “I Will Bless the Lord, Oh My Soul.” One song the team intoned contained these words: “Take me to that secret place, Lord / To that secret place / Where I can be with you / You can make me like you.”
Pastor Stoney Locklear
Stoney Locklear, senior pastor of Turning Point, addressed the audience.
He read
Psalm 133:1-3 (KJV):
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to
dwell together in unity!
“It is like the precious ointment
[oil] upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that
went down to the skirts of his garments;
“As the dew of Hermon, and as the
dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life
for evermore.”
“Good and pleasant,” Locklear said. “How many of us want
good things in our lives? In the times we live in, a lot of people could use
some goodness.”
He said he had a sister who “could fight” him, but when
someone outside their family picked on a family member, the family stuck
together.
“Because we were family, we had to set our differences aside
and work with each other,” Locklear said. “We [in the Church] don’t know how to
work together with family … But
God says we are of one family in
God.”
He noted that the word “unity” appears only three times in
the Bible [in the King James version]: two times in Psalms and once in
Ephesians.
“We describe ‘unity’ as ‘conformity’ – and we call that
‘unity,’” he said, questioning that concept. He suggested that “unity” is
better pictured as a box of crayons. “All together, we can paint a masterpiece!
We’re all together, packaged in this same box, and that package is the Kingdom
of God!”
Locklear said that believers in the Early Church were of one
heart and mind.
“So, why do we have such a hard time getting together?” he
asked. “We don’t really understand God’s concept of ‘unity.’ The Early Church
showed us the paradigm of living supernaturally.”
Locklear said that Jesus is “perfect theology,” indicating
that we should observe how Jesus believed and acted in his earthly ministry.
“Women’s ministry? How did Jesus handle it?” he asked.
“Children’s ministry? ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’”
No one can stop you, but you can stop yourself by not
knowing who you are in Christ, Locklear said.
He noted that “oil” [anointing oil] was used to bring “it”
[whatever or whoever was being dedicated] to a “holy place.”
“What does the oil do?” he asked. “It blends things …
affects everything it touches … affects every area of your life … it’s a
representation of the Spirit of God.”
When you meet God, he’ll never leave you the way he found
you, Locklear said.
“The Holy Spirit wants to work, but he has to have an object
or a person to put his anointing on to bring forth his glory,” he said. “You
have been called to be kings and priests unto God.”
Locklear said that if churches are to become unified, the
movement toward unity must begin among pastors.
“You say you [pastors] don’t want anyone to steal your
sheep?” he asked. “You ain’t got no sheep! There’re God’s sheep!”’
Mature believers have a mindset of restoration, he said.
“The Spirit of the Lord is the only one who causes us to
walk in unity,” he said. We cannot do it by programs … We can change our world
by the Spirit of God who lives in our lives.”
He said conditions had to be perfect on Mount Hermon in
order for dew to appear.
“When a church walks in tranquility and peace, you won’t be
able to contain it in four walls,” he said. “You can’t have resistance and have
dew … . When we can say I need fresh oil poured over my life … [Say] ‘Holy
Spirit, let it flow all over my life.’”
We cannot have programs that will cause unity to come, he
noted.
“It [unity] comes through the Holy Spirit,” Locklear said. “God
says to us here, tonight, if we want to change the world, we must unite in the
Holy Spirit … I’m a spirit, and the Holy Spirit lives in me. If there is
unforgiveness in your life, you can reconcile, put it under the blood … This
altar is open here, tonight!”
Locklear ended his sermon, and Ken Owen, pastor of “John 8:31 Ministries” walked to the pulpit.
Pastor Ken Owen (with microphone) leads in prayer as ministers gather at the end of the service.
“God commands his blessing on our unity,” Owen said. “Every time God blessed something, it grew. God did not create churches – he created ‘The Church.’ He created one Church, and we’re here to celebrate that church, tonight!”
Owen prayed, saying, “Father, we come, against that spirit
of disunity … Father, bring your church together, as only you can.”
Pastor David Pratt closed the meeting with a final prayer.
Churches listed as “participating churches” for the
“Celebration of Unity” included the following: Aberdeen First Baptist
(Aberdeen); Christ Community Church (Pinehurst); Emmanuel Baptist (Carthage);
First Baptist (Pinehurst); First Missionary Baptist (Southern Pines); Grace
Church (Southern Pines); John 8:31 Ministries (Pinehurst); New Covenant
Fellowship (Carthage); Pleasant Hill Baptist (Southern Pines); Sandhills
Alliance (Pinehurst); Sandhills Assembly (Southern Pines); Sandhills Teen
Challenge (Carthage); Seven Lakes Baptist (Seven Lakes); Turning Point Worship
Center (Aberdeen); The Village Chapel (Pinehurst); and Young Life (Moore
County).
More photographs:
