I’ve been the pastor of Trinity Fellowship, an Evangelical Free Church in Friendswood, Texas for over twenty years. A group of believers in the Houston area, many of whom I already knew, started this church shortly after I graduated from seminary in 1992.
It’s been a great ministry. We’ve never been a big church, but we have planted a daughter church, and we have sent more than a few fanatics out into the larger work of God’s kingdom.
Some of the things that I enjoy most and that make Trinity distinctive are:
“Preaching the Word and loving the people.” It’s almost a cliché, but this has really been my heartbeat through all the years of ministry. I love digging into God’s word and sharing the age-old truths with our contemporary culture so that people have the opportunity to see change in their lives at the level of heart and action. I also love walking with people through the highs and lows of life; though joy and sorrow, gain and loss, weddings and funerals. We’ve had some deep tragedies at Trinity, and some huge blessings and it has been both wonderful and at times grievous to walk with people as they’ve experienced these things.
One-on-one ministry. I love sitting down with people one-on-one to talk about what Jesus is doing in our lives. I consider this the best way to disciple people, to be accountable myself and to multiply ministry. I’ve met with a few guys on a regular schedule, often weekly, for as much as twenty-five years. I meet with about twelve or so people this way each week, circumstances permitting, and with others on an occasional basis. If you were to sit down with me today I’d love to ask you to tell me the story of your life! It’s my favorite question because we all have a unique story to tell.
Visual preaching. We live in an extremely visual culture. More and more people learn by seeing rather than by hearing or even reading. Every week as I preach I try to communicate on the visual channel by putting a rich sequence of graphics, words and pictures on the screen behind me. You can judge the result for yourself by visiting our Youtube channel. Here’s the link to the recent sermon playlist.
Stories. As you might expect from someone who fancies himself an author, I’ve told many stories as part of ministry. Most of these have been associated with Christmas or Easter. In fact I’ve told a first person eye-witness-to-the-resurrection story every year at our Sunrise service for twenty years. We meet on a lake, and we fancy ourselves a first century church celebrating the resurrection and inviting eye-witnesses, from Barabbas to Peter to Mary Magdalene to tell us their story. (I don’t act the female characters – I make someone else memorize the story.) Here’s a link to the 2013 Sunrise Service.
And finally, Lyric Videos. In keeping with the emphasis on visual communication, one of my best loved hobbies (and ministries) is making lyric videos for worship music that we use in the church. My motto is “It’s not a video unless something moves,” so I take my nice digital camera with me wherever I go in the world and take footage that can be used for simple, pretty, moving backgrounds on which I can emphasize the solid lyrics of most of the music we sing or listen to at Trinity.
We have a Youtube channel that has received well more than a half a million views. Here is a link to our recent lyric video playlist. The most popular video on our channel is this one:
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