The Barnabas Blog

For those who are going to General Conference in Tampa , Florida next week, I am offering to you a very good book to pick up at the Pentecostal Publishing House. Building God’s Wall by Nevin Bass is an excellent book. More importantly it has the capacity to become a mid-week Bible study series or even a Sunday School series. Pastor Bass works through the book of Nehemiah in an expository fashion and draws many insights from Scripture that are very helpful. This book covers many of the facets of the Christian life from prayer, unity, overcoming opposition, preparing for revival, and even extends to giving. In this book, one of the highlights was what Pastor Bass refers to as the ten gates of worship. With each of the ten gates (i.e. Sheep gate, Fish gate), there is a corresponding process (i.e. Sacrifice, Discipleship, etc.) that a pastor or Bible teacher could put down some stakes and camp out on for several weeks. When the process of rebuilding occurs, oppositio...

Thanks to all who have come by and read and commented on Part 1 about riding with the UPCI General Superintendent Kenneth Haney. I trust that I have not added to anything Brother Haney might have said to us to give you an unfair representation of him. Furthermore please understand that what you are reading has to come through the reflections of my own thoughts and any misquotes or misrepresentation is not the fault of Brother Haney. I have two regrets (sort of) with Brother Haney being with us this past weekend. First, I put my mother through untold anxiety and worry by telling her that I was going to bring Brother Haney to her and my dad’s house to eat on Sunday after the service. The reason that I did so was because we have had numerous missionaries to come through our church (my father-in-law has been the district Foreign Missions director for 20+ years) and the large majority of them always say that they get very tired of “eating out” and would like some real home cook...

This past weekend (August 18-19, 2007) the Apostolic Faith UPC celebrated its fortieth anniversary. We had a tremendous time of worship, fellowship, blessing, and many memories came flooding back to us from the past. The high watermark for our church was having the General Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church International to preach on Saturday night and Sunday morning. On Saturday night, Brother Haney preached about “The Heelgrabber.” He started his message about Jacob grabbing the heel of Esau and having the tenacity and vision to get the birthright. He then went on to challenge our church to further pursue our mission of revival, growth, and progress. On Sunday morning, Brother Haney preached on “Spiritual Perception” and how important it was to see things from a spiritual sense and not miss the times that God was speaking directly to our lives through some of the circumstances and trials of life. In addition to Brother Haney preaching, I was able to sp...

Lucas McCoy and Jeff Sully's side of the room (next three pictures): My Side of the Room:

We left Dothan shortly after 7:00 AM on Wednesday morning heading to Charlotte , North Carolina for the North American Youth Congress which is conducted by the General Youth Division of the United Pentecostal Church , International. Our van was fully loaded and our trailer was ¾’s loaded with our luggage. Our first stop was in Phenix City , Alabama around 9:20 AM to gas up the van and then we stopped at McDonald’s (the same one we stopped at on the way to Atlanta for the flight to Romania ). We did not stop again until we reached Spartanburg , South Carolina around 12:30 PM. I realize that some might think that the guys were the ones who were pushing not to stop but we asked the girls on a regular basis if they needed to stop to which they would decline. We made it to Charlotte around 3:30 PM and it did not take long before we decided that history was repeating itself. Just as two years ago, we took a long scenic route around Columbus , Ohio for our NAYC ...

I need to digress somewhat with this post because I have come to understand that many more folks than our local church in Dothan are keeping up with this mission trip. Therefore I will take the next few lines to address an issue that has come up since you have been reading this blog. I would not have you ignorant brethren concerning. . . . . whiskey. You may have noticed in some of the previous posts that I have (jokingly. . . at least I hope that is the way you are taking it) a few references to “whiskey” and the “whiskey wagon.” This attempt at dark humor is something that I picked up from the hospital. Several years ago, I worked with a physician who walked into a procedure one day prior to us beginning and spoke to the patient about getting started with his case very shortly. The patient then asked the doctor what kind of medicine that I was going to use to put him to sleep. The physician replied, “Well, Philip is going to give you a little whiskey in your IV.” ...