I miss my old Pentecostal Holiness pastor...
1. Very disciplined guy - Up at 6AM every morning
2. Rejoiced in what he called being a Pentecostal Holiness country preacher
3. Revivals - At least one every two months - All with unique and good evangelists
4. Would let the Holy Spirit have his way in service
5. Take time to pray for the sick at church and in the hospitals. Carried a bottle of anointing oil with him
6. Was a friendly guy and would come visit you
7. Loved God and very Christlike.
8. A great, loving, and supportive family man as well
Our new pastor has been there a little over a year. He thinks he has arrived with his Masters degree at Liberty University. We have very few communion services and no revivals. The church attendance is way down and they struggle to find people to play the piano. Just last week he was preaching on the following topic...
And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son. -
2 Kings 6:28-29
And as he preaching on this, talking about how planes have crashed in the mountains where "who to eat" was the option for survival. And how you would never know that we may have that option as well. I thought to myself while he was preaching how long I would hang around with that group before I would run for my life! It was all I could do to tuck my bible under my arm and leave that place in great haste.
My dad is elderly and I like to take him to church dinners that some have for the public. I find so many churches these days merging. The old faithful WW2 generation preacher retired after many years and the new guy just doesn't have it. So the solution is to close the church and merge with another.
In so many camp meetings I used to go to they used to have ministers who would reach out and touch the hearts of the congregation. Most of them were in a life deep in sin and came out of it similarly as the Apostle Paul. The fact that they were uneducated and up there preaching eloquently was a miracle in itself. It was fun going to church as you would not know what the next service was going to be like.
Now we have preachers trying to conduct camp meeting with Doctorate Degrees. The deliveries are dry and if anyone goes to the altar after the message he is most of the times there by himself.