Rashanda Jenkins: I m Rashanda Jenkins and I ll be interviewing Reverend Don

Transcription

1 Interviewee: Don Bradford Interviewer: Rashanda Jenkins Session I Transcriber: Gena Olson July 1, 1997 Auditor: Elizabeth Lemoine Editor: Trevis Thompson [Begin Tape 1265, Side A. Begin Session I.] Rashanda I m Rashanda Jenkins and I ll be interviewing Reverend Don Bradford from Charity Christian Center Outreach and, today s date is July first, 1997, and the time is 1055 [Pause in tape]. Hi Mr. Bradford, first I d like some biographical information. Your name. Don Okay, my name is Pastor Don Bradford. When and where were you born? I was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1948, September 18. [006] Your occupation? I m a pastor... a pastor of Charity Christian Center Church at six five zero West McKinley Street, Baton Rouge, [Louisiana]. Could you give me your parents names and their occupations? outlined in Title 17 of the United States Code, apply. Patrons may obtain duplicates of the tapes by contacting the LSU Libraries Special Collections, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA Patrons desiring to publish portions of the interviews must secure permission to publish from the LSU Libraries as well.

2 2 Okay, my father s name is James Jefferson. My mother s name is Beatrice Flournoy. My father is a carpenter. My mom is a house-maker. Could you describe the role religion has played throughout your life? [010] Well, I came [phone rings] to know Jesus as my personal savior at twelve years old. I recommitted my life to him at twenty-one. And it has played a vital role both in the ministry and also in my personal life. From the standpoint that through the teaching of the Bible, the word of God; the spirit of God has allowed me to live a life that I believe is pleasing to the Father. Not to say that I know everything or I do everything just right, but from the standpoint that... the Bible says, If a man is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away and behold all things that have become new. That means that I m no longer... as the term sinner was used... I m no longer a sinner, but my life is in Christ now. So it has played a vital role in my life. What do you mean by recommitting yourself to God? Okay, at age seventeen... The term backsliding is often used. I backslid. I came up in a setting where religion was a part of my family. Serving the Lord was a part of my family. From the age twelve to seventeen, I was committed to a local church. At age seventeen I decided that I kind of wanted to do my own thing, and I kind of got away from the things of God. I joined the United States Navy, and for several years I stopped going to church... stopped doing the things that I knew was right according to the Bible

3 3 and the way that I was brought up as far as knowing right from wrong. I stopped doing those things. But at age twenty-one, through the prompting of the spirit of God, and through the teaching from the pulpit of a minister that I d come to know as a pastor, and then ultimately my father-in law, helped me to get my bearings back straight. And that s what I mean by recommitting my life to the Lord. I... One Sunday morning I decided that what I [phone rings] had been living was not right for what I had been taught and what I had seen in the word of God. [phone rings] And I said, Jesus, would you forgive me of my sins? I want to come back to you and I want to live life as a Christian and I want the spirit of the Lord to lead me and to guide me. So that s what I mean about recommitting my life to Him. When was the church founded? [031] The church was founded in By whom was it founded? Well, under the prompting of the spirit of God. I pastored another Church called Jerusalem Baptist Church for about a year and a half. And that was from 1984 to the latter part of And at such time, I felt the prompting to start this ministry in And it was founded by myself as the founder pastor, and I ve been the pastor ever since.

4 4 Where is the church located? [038] Where is it now located? Originally, we started out on Perkins Road as a facility. Really, we started holding services in my bedroom of my home [laughs]. That s not the common place to have church, but again, I felt led by the spirit of the Lord. When we first started having Bible study, my wife and I had just recently built a new bedroom... moved into the bedroom. And on the inside of me, I felt the spirit of the Lord prompting me to start [phone rings] having Bible studies in my bedroom. And so we did. Consequently, within a few months, we could get to almost up to sixty people in our bedroom and it just grew. And of course, we couldn t stay in our home. And we started looking for a building. The first building that we had owned was located on Perkins Road next to the Kentucky Fried Chicken near College Drive. In 1989, we started looking at this property here that we re on at six five zero West McKinley Street. This was formerly known... and I m not so sure that you will remember, but I know you will... as Blundon Home. This facility here was known as Blundon Home and it had been shut down for about five years when we started looking at it five... five and a half years. Most of our outreach work... We call ourselves Charity Christian Center Church and Youth Outreach Center, which means that we have a heart reaching out to the young people such as yourself. The Lord started directing our heart to come into the south Baton Rouge area from Perkins Road and do some outreach ministry. We leased a building over on Thomas Delpit. I think there is Serenity 67 [Community Center] is there now, but there used to be a Chicken Shack right there on Terrance and Thomas Delpit. We rented

5 5 the building where Serenity 97 [Serenity 67 Community Center] is now. We started some outreach programs there. We had some food and some clothing in there where people would just come and we could help them there as a means of just reaching out to the community. [59] From there we also started having some meetings right there on the corner... [phone rings] also in the chicken shack parking lot. Then we started having some tent meetings, but we felt that God was leading. All of work was coming over here, and so I didn t know that this property was available. I just happened to pass here one day. I saw a big sign out there for Century 21 that said, For Sale, and I just drove on the property. And as soon as I drove on the property... A lot of ways that you know the Lord is leading you, is something happens on the inside. You just have something on the inside that you know... not so much from your head but from your spirit. And I just knew, in my spirit, that God wanted us to be here. At the time that we were first looking at this property, when we first started looking at it, the asking price was $650 thousand. And we didn t have $650 thousand, but in a meeting that I had with my board, we prayed about it. I brought them over and we looked at it. And we felt that, Yes, this place could be viable again to the community in reaching out to the people of the South Baton Rouge area. And God gave us the figure $200 thousand. And so we offered to Blundon Board, which was called the Blundon Foundation, $200 thousand, and of course that s not what they wanted. They wanted $650 thousand. So it took a year and three months of negotiations. But eventually, because God told us..

6 6. God actually put it in my spirit that he wanted us to offer them $200 thousand, and this is where he wanted us at. We never moved off of that. We always stayed right there. And finally after a year and three months, they called us and asked us if we still wanted it... if we wanted it for $200 thousand, and I said, Yes. We signed a purchase agreement for $200 thousand. $150 thousand, we would pay them in cash. Fifty thousand dollars, we would pay them after we sold the building on Perkins Road. There was only one catch to that... we didn t have $200 thousand. We didn t have $150 thousand. We didn t have $100 thousand. But that s what God told me to offer them. [80] And the way that it transpired, we did have some money that we had saved, approximately fifty-three thousand dollars at that time, which we did not want to use to purchase the property because there was a lot of work to be done here. It had been setting up for over five years. Someone had come in and stole nine air conditioning units, stole all of the electrical wiring just to sell for the copper, stole all of the plumbing just for the copper. Most of the windows were knocked out. There are a lot of trees around here. Limbs had fallen. The fence was down. There was no security lighting whatsoever. So we knew we had our work cut out and we didn t want to just want to spend all of our money on acquiring it. We wanted some money in reserve to start bringing it back up, building by building. It didn t work out that way. We took a package to the bank to borrow some money, which they turned down our original package, but ultimately they loaned us $100 thousand. And with that $100 thousand, with the fifty thousand dollars that we had... We actually had fifty-three thousand dollars in savings. We went ahead and took fifty

7 7 thousand dollars of that, put it together to give the Blundon people because they gave us thirty days to come up with the money after we said yes to the purchase agreement. And as a church, we had three thousand dollars left. This was in We had three thousand dollars left to our name. To leave from Perkins Road to come over here... the overhead over here... when I say overhead... to run this property is about five times greater than what we had experienced at the other building because the other building does not match one building here. One building here is larger than that building we had on Perkins and we had four here. We only had three thousand dollars. But to this point, God has paid off everything. We again have a substantial savings account, Glory to God [laughs], and have never missed a beat. The ministry has grown tremendously since then. [102] When you were at the Serenity 67, how large was your congregation and now how large is it? Okay, Serenity 67 was not a setting that we used as a church building. We just used it as an outreach center. Outreach in the sense that we had food and clothing and did some outside street ministry, where we would just set some chairs in the parking lot right there beside the chicken place. And then, we had people on the corners just sharing and handing out tracts and things like that. I had a congregation of about two hundred people on Perkins Road. So to move from Perkins Road to over here, we ve grown to approximately four hundred people now.

8 8 How did your church get its name? When we were praying about the ministry itself... starting a church so to speak... in our prayer time... in the people that God had given me as a nucleus to start the ministry with... in our prayer time we just felt that because of the comradery that we had, the togetherness that we had... The word charity also means love. It s really another word in the Greek for love. The word charity just kept coming up. The Bible says, Charity bears up under everything. It believes the best of its brother. It never fades. It says, Now abide in faith, hope, and charity in 1 Corinthians 13. But it says, The greatest of these is charity, or love. So the word charity just came through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the comradery that the people that God had given us at that time had for one another. [119] What are some of your church traditions? Well, from the very beginning, the Lord gave us a sort of a vision. And when I say vision, I m saying these are the things that we stand for and try to implement. Number one: to be a family church, a church that believes in the unity of the family. And a lot of my teaching is geared toward husbands and wives responsibilities to each other, how to train our children in the way that they should go and so forth, and also how to live a godly, overcoming single life if a person is single here. Number two: A ministry of excellence. Excellence meaning that we don t just do anything any kind of way [phone rings]. We believe in starting on time. At nine o clock

9 9 on Sunday mornings is our regular service time and also Wednesdays at seven o clock. You won t come in here at five minutes after nine and nothing is going on, you won t come in here at five minutes after seven on Wednesday. We ve already started. So I believe in doing things properly. Excellence again from the standpoint of... a lot of people have had the conception that black people in general, and black quote black churches... I use that term hesitantly because the Bible says, In the Lord there is not Greek or Jew, bond or free. We are all one in Him. So I don t think the Lord would consider a Black church, a White church, a Jewish church, a Methodist church, a Catholic church. But if we re in Him, we are one. But in the sense of what other people perceive us as, is not caring about anything... not really keeping what we have up to date or even going further with it. If someone gave you a home, not only keeping that home up, but also... or if you bought property... but also bringing it to a point where it would be more valuable than when you bought it. And because we ve allowed, to some degree, a lot of our neighborhoods to deteriorate, liquor stores to come into our communities, drugs to be sold on corners. You don t find that everywhere. [146] Now, we know that drugs are prevalent everywhere. We know that you could buy liquor and booze at the Circle Ks and so forth. But in the terms of being right there in the neighborhood... right next... where you find a liquor store almost in proximity to a school. I know that not too far from here I think on Polk Street where Polk Street Elementary is right across the street you can go over there and buy beer. And that should not be the case. You will not find that in every community in Baton Rouge and

10 10 every other major city in America. You will not find that. But we ve allowed that to happen in our black neighborhoods and so forth. [152] So we believe that in teaching excellence that God s people should show a demeanor and an attitude where we re going to be above the normal. We re going to be above the standard. We re going to be above average. So when you come on this property, you re not going to see grass grown up. You re not going to see paper all over the place. And we have a summer camp going right now, where we have about a hundred and seventy-five kids on the property. So, you know, the kids are out there playing. And they re eat candy and drinking soda. During the day, you might see somebody drop some paper or a can, but as an overall setting you re not going to see this property overrun or dilapidated. We spent probably $250 thousand to $300 thousand just in refurbishing this [phone rings]. So I believe that no matter where you start at, you should [phone rings] always be elevating, always going high, always going higher. And I don t know if you guys live in this community. You being a resident here, I m sure you remember this property when Blundon left and it was no longer Blundon. And the time that is set up, from the time that maybe we have gotten here up until this point. It has always been progress, progress, progress. Because I believe, that any time a church is in a community, the church should be making a difference in the community. Not only in the lives of the people, but in the progress that the overall setting is making. Where we don t just get a building, everything is the same, and nobody progresses. So that s number two. And another part of our tradition, or the vision that we believe in, is in the renewing of the mind. The renewing of the mind says that when you become a Christian

11 11 or when you become born again, it doesn t stop there. That s the beginning. It s just like a mother having a baby. When you come into the kingdom of God, it s new. It s something that you You ve never been a Christian before. Okay, so now, how do I grow and how do I develop as a Christian? And it s not talking about your natural age. How do I find out how I m supposed to live? What does the Lord expect of me? How can I live a life that is pleasing to Lord? That comes through the renewing of the mind. When a mother brings forth a baby and the mother doesn t say, Well, I carried this baby for nine months. Now, I delivered it. And now, I m just going to leave it at the hospital and let it raise itself. No, that baby has to be nurtured, and has to be fed, and has to be changed; so it grows. [178] The renewing of the mind, and what we are big on teaching is, Let s open up our Bibles. Let s find out what the Bible says about what I m supposed to do now. How I m supposed to be as a Christian. And we grow. That s the renewing of the mind. That s growing. So we re big on those aspects and that s part of our tradition and what we teach. What makes your church unique? The people. I think people make any church unique. Everybody does not have the same vision. Some churches have a vision for outreach, some doesn t. Outreach in the sense that we re going to minister to the needs of the community, whether it is through educational programs such as tutorship. Through devising means that we can reach out young people, that they have alternatives other than what the world would offer

12 12 in terms of the night clubs, in terms of the peer pressure that all teens deal with. Something that the church can have. Something constructive that the young people can come to and enjoy, and not feel that, Well if I m a Christian everything is just dull. I believe that our church is unique. And I m using your term unique, not so much better than, or not so much thinking ourselves above anyone else. But unique in the sense that God has given us a specific vision. That we re going to reach out to the young people. That we re going to reach out to the South Baton Rouge community that he s placed us in. And that we re going to renew people s minds. [phone rings] That it doesn t matter how you come in here, what kind of shape you come in, you re going to leave better. So that s the uniqueness that this ministry has. [196] What role does religion have in this church? I use the word religion very sparingly [laughs]. And I have my own reasons for that. But in the sense of teaching from a Bible standpoint, and what the Bible says that we should be and how we are to live. It plays a very, very important role. Because, in order to grow, you have to find out from the biblical perspective what the Word expects of you. So from that standpoint, from using the Bible as our guidelines and as our basis for everything that we do, it is paramount. Could you tell us about the history of your church?

13 13 Okay. Again, the history of our church is that we started the ministry in 1985 in my bedroom. Three months later, we bought a building on Perkins Road and stayed there until Acquired this property, really, was in 1991 that we moved everything over here and started what we call a youth outreach center. Started a summer camp program that led to a daycare we now have. And the other ministries that we have which would include a men s fellowship, a women s fellowship, single s ministry, and again the daycare and early learning center. This year we will be going to the fifth grade within the academy we have here. You can bring a child here as early as six weeks old. And that child can stay here until it gets to the fifth grade. And by that time, if it started this year, we would probably have a college by then, by the time it got to the fifth grade. How do you support your church? [219] Well, as the pastor, I am an under shepherd to Jesus. Under shepherd being, the Bible teaches that Jesus is the chief shepherd. So my support to this ministry is, number one, to be as much as the leader and the under shepherd to Jesus as he would allow me to be... Living a life that should be an example before my people... Leading by example and not just by precept of word. I am one that I won t just tell you what to do. I ll show you how to do it. I ll be the example that I can be in getting the job done. Again, that s where teaching comes in at. And here, I would classify myself more as a teacher than a preacher. I believe that preaching proclaims. Teaching explains. So when

14 14 you open the Bible here, I m basically going to explain something to you as the spirit of the Lord has directed me. Tell me how your church has changed. Well over the course of years... this year, we were twelve years old. In October of this year, we will be twelve years old. And of course, as a ministry grows... As a church ministry grows, there s always a need for change. As you begin to try to accommodate the people that are coming, you re trying to devise means where everything is better than it was before. I think we ve changed. And that we ve allowed the spirit of the Lord to show us areas where we could do better in, whether it s in ministering to our children and young people. [242] Before you mentioned uniqueness. One of the things we didn t originally start out with, but that we have now... When I pastured New Jerusalem Baptist Church on Thomas Delpit, we did not have what we call a children s church. In other words, we didn t have a place where we took the young kids out where we could minister to them on their own level. And of course, in Sunday School, you have that setting. You have your intermediates. You have your juniors. You have your adults. But in church, we do in our church ministry, what some would do in the Sunday school setting. Everybody eleven and under, we take them out, all the way to the nursery age children. We have a nursery, up to four years old, where kids go to. Then, we have five to eleven. They re in a different setting, and then they re broken down about every two to three years in age groups. They are put in another setting.

15 15 So, while everybody twelve and above is in the church sanctuary setting. Because at twelve, of course you can open your Bibles and read along with me as I read. And you can pretty much understand what I m saying when I m teaching from the pulpit and so forth. So we kind of deal with the kids on their own level in a different setting, so that s a little bit unique and that s one of our means of reaching out also. [257] Describe a typical Sunday. A typical Sunday here, I don t know if typical, in the sense that, we don t have a program. Now when I say that we don t have a program, when you walk in, if you came as a visitor, we won t hand you a program that will say Opening Scripture, Devotion.... in the sense of opening scripture, prayer by, then an A and B selection. We won t hand you a program that says that. We have what we call praise and worship. That will last about twenty five minutes or so. Then during the praise and worship, sometimes pandemonium breaks out. Pandemonium in the sense that, it might go on longer than twenty or thirty minutes. It just depends on... the spirit of the Lord might move upon somebody. Somebody might bring forth the word and prophecy to encourage somebody else. We will have our singers sing maybe two songs, sometimes three. And then I will come forth and I will bring the teaching that the Lord has given me for that particular Sunday. [276] I teach in series where I might start on a series such as God s prosperity for you. God wants you to prosper. And I might teach that series on a given Sunday for four or five weeks and bring fort scriptures from the Bible that apply to God s prosperity in

16 16 your life. So you might not hear a different topic every Sunday that you come here. You might hear a series of teachings on one topic and so forth. So a typical Sunday, you re going to get some we re going to mostly open up with praise and worship. And you re going to get the word of God. Ninety-eight percent of the time, because there are times when the spirit of the Lord is so prevalent, people might just get to dancing and jumping and shouting. And I might not get to preach because I might be in that group too that s jumping and dancing and shouting. I might not get to it. So that s kind of a typical Sunday. [288] What do you mean by the Lord coming over someone and shouting? Well, the spirit of the Lord can come up on a person in such a way that, they just get to running. And it might be through a word that somebody spoke, or God really just said something. You ve been dealing with something all week. And all of a sudden, God just said something that confirmed that in your spirit in that sermon. And man, you just can't contain yourself. And you break out and get to jumping and running and saying, Oh, man that was just for me. Praise God, hallelujah. So that s what I mean by the spirit of the Lord coming up on someone. Is your church affiliated with any state or national group? We are what is considered... people ask us if we are Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, or whatever. We re an Interdenominational Church in the sense that I am

17 17 personally affiliated, from an accountability standpoint, with several different organizations, ministerial organizations. But the church is not under a denominational heading. [302] What kind of community outreach services does your church provide? One of the things that we do going on right now is... We describe it as a summer camp for our young people ages three years old to fifteen years old. Where, we bring them on the property every summer. And of course there s a fee for bringing the kids on the property because we have a lot of overhead. It takes a lot of money to run a camp where you One year we had over two hundred children. This year we had around a hundred seventy-five [children] [phone rings]. It takes a lot of money to do that. We have to hire teachers. There are peer counselors. There are two or three secretaries to deal with whatever comes up. We have music teachers. We have a swimming instructor up there, and so forth. So we have to charge a fee for bringing the kids in here. They re learning Hooked on Math, Hooked on Phonics, Where There s a Will There s an A. In the mornings, we re dealing with the educational components. In the afternoons, they go on field trips such as the Aquarium of Americas down in the New Orleans. They go bowling once a week. They go swimming once a week. They go skating once a week. There are basketball tournaments. I think they re getting ready for one today. So, the recreational components are in the afternoon, as well as the arts and

18 18 crafts. And they have sign language and dancing and music and all of that they deal in the morning. That s one of our outreaches. Another outreach is that we have a food program. That, once a month, we will actually go out and give out bread in the community as a means of letting people know that, We are here and if there s anything we can help you with, we want to do so. If a person is in need of food, we have numbers available that they can call. We have a prayer line that if somebody needs prayer, there s somebody there to pray with you. Our youth outreach center consists of a ministry to our young people where they re meeting at certain times of the month and we re just kind of dealing with them on their own level... as well as a nursery, and a daycare center, and an academy. Could you tell me about baptism in your church? [334] First of all, baptism comes after a person is born again or becomes a Christian. We baptize as often as we see the need arise. That means that [phone rings] if somebody becomes a Christian this Sunday or through the week or whatever, we take their name and number. And probably within the next couple weeks, we will baptize them in water as Jesus commanded to do so. Do you do, In the father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost? Yes I do, and, In the name of Jesus.

19 19 Tell me about a wedding in your church. [343] Weddings are scheduled. We have twice a year when we will do an in-depth teaching on foundational marriage. Foundational marriage being, for you to be married at this church, if you re a member of this church, you must go through our foundational marital classes. They consist of, number one, marriage ordained in the word of God. We go to the word of God and find out what God said about marriage. Number two, what s a husband s responsibility. What s a wife s responsibility. What about children in the marriage. How to rear children properly. Money. We deal with sex. We deal with budgeting, running a household. All of that is included in the Foundation class, that lasts anywhere from six to eight weeks. After that is completed, [knock] then the couple can then become... put it on the calendar so they can be married. And so, we do that twice a year. We tell everybody. Let s say from December... if you know you re going to be married between December and March or April, you need to get in on these classes starting this time. If you know you re going to be married between May and December, you need to get in on the classes from this time. That way it helps us out. In the sense that this couple is not coming this month. This couple is not coming that month because we re doing the same teaching over and over. We just try to line everybody up that know at least three or four months in advance that they re going to be married. We can get everybody in one group, at one time, for six months that they ve scheduled it within the six months, get them taken care of. Then get another group that want to be married six

20 20 months later, or somewhere within that six month s time, and get them in on the same teaching. Tell me about funerals at your church. [371] We handle funerals in the sense that, if it s a person that knew God and was a born-again believer, we have a great time. In the sense that... I don t look at it as a sad occasion. We don t minimize the hurt or the grief that the loved ones might feel. But at the same time, the Bible says that, To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So if the person is a Christian, they are not sad if they are in the presence of the Lord. They are rejoicing. So we rejoice, in a sense, with them even though we might be hurting because of the loss of that person. I don t have sad funerals. I don t even allow sad songs that bring people down and everybody starts boohooing. Because it doesn t take much. Because of the way you feel anyway. So we try to keep it on a level that people can kind of rejoice knowing that that person is with the Lord. [387] Tell me about church when you were little. I grew up in north Louisiana in a town called Belcher about twenty miles north of Shreveport. And the community that I grew up in was very close knit. People looked out for one another. Adults helped raise everybody else s children. You didn t

21 21 have to be somebody s son or daughter for them to chasten you. Whatever the adult said, that was the way it was. I started attending church at a very early age. But it was at the age of twelve that I said, I want to make a commitment to the Lord, asked Jesus to come into my heart. And I always looked at church as a very vital part of my upbringing. And I always enjoyed going to Church. What role do women play in your church? [401] Women play as important a role as the Bible allows them to play. I am one that believes that whatever God has called a person to do, then that is what they should function in. We all have gifts and callings. And no one that is born again, or that is a Christian, should be lacking in anything as far as doing something in the church. So, I don t put a damper on the women in our church, as far as doing things. In the home, there is proper order. In the church, there is proper order. In the home, where there s a husband and wife relationship, the Bible says the husband is the head. The word head doesn t mean that he Lords over her, or says that I m the man around here. It really means that he is the enabler. He is the one that should be taking care of that home, making sure that things are in order in that home. So when it comes to the church setting, I don t believe that the Bible teaches that we put a lid on the women, but they have liberties to function as the spirit of God directs them also. Do you have a choir?

22 22 We do have a choir. We have, actually, three choirs. We have one choir that consists of our pre-teens from ages four years old up until eleven years old. There s a probably about thirty kids to thirty-five kids in that particular group. We have another youth choir that will range from twelve to approximately twenty or twenty-one years old and there s about twenty in that group. We have another choir that we would call the senior choir that would range anywhere from twenty on up that consists of about fifteen. Tell me about the ushers in your choir. In the church? Yes, I m sorry. [434] We have what we call both ushers and greeters. We might be just a little bit different than some churches in that we call all of our females that would be ushers, we call them greeters. They act as hostess and greet people when they come, and function probably the same as some other churches; but we just call them greeters. We call all of the men that would be ushers... that s what we call ushers. So we have both greeters and ushers somewhat functioning in the same way. And of course, they do what would be traditional things such as seating people, showing them where to sit, assisting in the offering in terms of bringing the baskets forth and different things as that.

23 23 Could you tell me about the offering in your church? We receive what is called tithes and offerings. There s a certain point in the service... I believe in what the Bible says, Bring all the tithes into the storehouse and offerings into the store house and offerings that there might be meet. That s not just Old Testament teaching. That s also New Testament teaching. The difference between [phone rings] tithe is the Bible says that, A tenth belongs to the Lord. When you hear the word tithe, it also means tenth of our income. Offering, according to the New Testament, is as the Lord has blessed us, whatever purpose in man s heart. So the distinction is that we receive both. The tithe here at this church generally goes to the general expenses of running the ministry. Offering, we might use for various purposes such as outreach, for buying equipment, and different things, and meeting people s needs. What is your church s relationship with other churches? [467] As much as possible we try to be in a good relationship with other churches, especially in this community and what we re doing. Different events that we have, we will send notices out to different churches and let them know we re doing that. If they are doing something we also receive their notices. And try to be involved in terms of just helping each other. What do you want your church s legacy will be?

24 24 I would like for our church legacy to be known as a church that had a heart for reaching out to the people of the community, and for excellence. What community do you consider your church a part of? South Baton Rouge. Do you consider your church a Full Gospel Church? From the term Full Gospel, I would say that we would fall under that heading, full gospel or charismatic. But on a more personal level, I m not sure from what I see in the Bible if anybody could call themselves a hundred percent Full Gospel [laughs] from what I see in the Bible. But that doesn t mean that we re not striving to be that. And that should be with all Christians. So I use the term a little bit loosely. But if you looked in the phone book and they have what is called Full Gospel Churches, we would probably fall in that group, although we all have a long way to go. [490] What makes Full Gospel different from Baptist or Catholic? Sometimes just in the form of worship. Form of worship being that this church might do it a little bit different than this church or that church. Certainly not in the point of being better than or having more going for it or whatever, because the Bible says

25 25 we re all one in him. So basically just in the form of worship and how we might do things. [502] [loud bang] Do you have something we should know that I didn t ask you? I think your questions were very exhaustive [laughs], and I personally don t have anything that I might share that you might not have asked already. Thank you for the interview. Thank you for coming. [End Tape 1265, Side A. End Session I.]