Who Has Influenced Your Ministry?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--who-has-influenced-your-ministry
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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certainly there have been key people that shaped my life and I would have to say first and foremost my father and mother they were highly influential my wife when I was eight years old our family went as the Pioneer United Pentecostal missionaries the country of Korea at that time Korea was a very poor country most people lived in abject poverty um I was very thankful to be an American citizen with all the benefits and to have a middle class life even in a poor country but more than that spiritually my parents were Apostolic Pentecostal they loved God they were committed to God they loved people both my father and mother were credentialed United Pentecostal ministers for over 50 years and it's interesting my father's style of ministry was more pastoral and organizational so he was the leader of the organization he was highly organized and he liked to talk about church growth Church government and he taught in the Bible College he was the president of the Bible College he'd like to teach on the Pastoral Epistles the general Epistles kind of practical Christian Living and practical Ministry so as I became a teenager he would love to engage me in those kind of discussions of how do we grow a church what's our strategy for planting more churches in Korea what's our strategy for training ministers he didn't really talk a lot about Doctrine because his attitude was I know what I believe so why I keep endlessly discussing it let's let's go to other things my mother on the other hand was uh interesting combination she was a very Evangelistic and she was also a teacher so my dad could preach a pastoral message on Sunday morning that would establish the church my mom could teach an Evangelistic message to have people in the altar consecrating repenting crying out to God she can move an audience in a way that was greater than than anybody else that I encountered but then she was also a Bible College teacher and she loved to teach Doctrine so as I became a teenager she was constantly asking me questions about Doctrine and challenging me based on really based on her I develop if you take my study Bible from that time the back of it is just filled with pages of questions and notes on the Oneness of God the new birth Holiness other key doctrines and actually much later I took that as the basis for a little booklet called Handbook of basic doctrines which consists of scripture references under each major Doctrine and it's often used as a reference for people you can stick it in your coat pocket of your first or something but really the Genesis of that came it was my mother's questions and challenges and asking me to dig into scripture so they molded my character they were very hard workers they were very sacrificial they were they they had a faith-filled Ministry I saw many Miracle signs and wonders so my commitment to Doctrine and my belief in Revival growth missions Miracles all that comes primarily from my parents Ministry obviously they were influenced as well but I would have to say my father and my mother by far the most important two influences in my whole life not only giving me a stable home a Christian upbringing but their Ministry in in the word and in the spirit uh

yes in fact the very first book I wrote is in search of Holiness at that time this was 1980 when we had this discussion I was in law school I was 23 years old I wasn't planning to be a preacher didn't feel a call to preach although I was very involved in the church including some speaking and teaching but uh there was no book on Oneness on Holiness in the entire Apostolic movement and and so there's a great Gap and especially as the charismatic movement was Rising as cultures becoming a secular our basic teachings of Holiness were coming under attack increasingly and we had no resource so my mother taught on Holiness in the Bible College in Korea so she's had a set of notes but they were they were not in a a narrative form at all so my dad asked if I would take her notes and write a book so that's what I did and there were some gaps so I inserted a lot of material and then I took them at yours there and turned it from just an outline into full text and so that was in search of Holiness

not really not as a Ministry now I'd written some I'd I'd taken literature courses in high school and college which forced me to write so I did have skills and and I would have to give credit to key teachers who helped me develop critical thinking writing speaking all that I was greatly benefited in my high school so far so far in school and in in my college Rice University and then later University of Texas law school I did get a lot of skills from that study and those professors but I never really thought about theological writing until my dad asked me to do this and we actually submitted the book to the Pentecostal Publishing House at that time and they turned it down because they thought we didn't have anything on the Holiness but they thought it might be too controversial because people had different beliefs so we self-published it and my parents came back on furlough they were traveling across the U.S and Canada and so they took boxes of books wherever they went they sold them and I made contacts with Bible colleges bookstores so we ended up selling I think the true printings out in a few months so by the third printing the Publishing House said okay we'll take it and so that was my first book and so yes it was my dad and my mom my dad made the direct request I think he realized I had the ability to write and it was my mom's study materials so from that that really I began to realize the need for written material in lots of areas and and so I began to write to fill that need

well at least 30 not counting the booklets uh so 30 books and in almost every case I'm trying to fill in gaps of our theology where we had either very little or nothing written on these subjects so I wanted an Apostolic perspective on the on these topics so when I came back uh when age 17 I graduated from high school I moved from Korea back to the United States to go to college in Houston Texas my pastor was clds and he was a self-taught man but highly um intelligent and articulate he's one of the best preachers in Pentecost had a large church at that time about 1100 people uh so I learned much about pastoral Ministry and preaching from sitting under clds and then in law school I went to a small Church B.E Moore he gave me opportunities for Ministry of various kinds of ministry um and then that's eventually where I felt the call to preach my first full-time Ministry was teaching at Jackson College of Ministries under the president Thomas craft and the vice president Alan oggs so again I learned much brother Kraft maybe gave me the opportunity I learned much in pastoral Ministry from observing him sitting under him and then Alan oggs you know I became his assistant every way administratively so I learned things by experience by doing things you know when you learn by doing you learn some of the things you learn what you don't you won't do and some things are what you do but you have to appreciate the fact that people give you the opportunity to actually do because that's how you learn

right right uh and then when I came to St Louis after that I came to St Louis to become the associate editor for the upci the editor-in-chief was J.L Hall and so uh aside from my parents I would probably say he's the third most significant Mentor in my life because I learned much about writing editing theology Ministry uh you know a national International perspective things I'm doing now you know I many things or things we discussed as how things should be how things were how things could be what was right what was wrong so J.L Hall was an extremely influential Mentor in my life then from there of course I served under district superintendent in Texas El Holly under district superintendent James Kilgore in starting urson graduate school the chairman of the board was Jesse Williams assistant general superintendent so those men although my Ministry was now mature you might say still they were very respected leaders in my life that I interacted with on a regular basis and so I learned much from them now there are other key leaders that I knew but I wasn't interacting with them on a regular basis so I've just mentioned those that um that I felt had a significant influence on my life and then I I would be remiss if I didn't say of course my wife we grew up in Ministry together you might say and so her personality and her way of doing things over the years she's become a little more like me I've become a little more like her so I'm much better at being more sensitive to people uh because of her and um and then my mother-in-law also has been a great influence of prayer and encouragement even before I dated my wife even before she even liked me my mother-in-law was in the church as a leader and she and I had a good working relationship and so I'd have to say my family and now my kids are all grown and they're all in Ministry and so I learned a lot from them so I talked to them about what's going on currently how how do young people and young adults and young ministers perceive things and what's at The Cutting Edge of technology or culture and so I have to stay in touch with them to give me perspective as well so it's not just uh you you get to the top so to speak and you've arrived and you Coast but life is a continual learning process but in the formative years I would say my father Elton Bernard my mother Loretta Bernard and and my boss uh JL Hall were the most influential ministerial um figures in my life