| Hello, let me introduce myself. My
name is Dave Chambers and the reason I have sent you this is to ask
you to consider if I can be of any service to you and your church.
You see, I am an evangelist, but not your typical evangelist. I am
an evangelist seeking to do more than preach a few nights in your
church before moving on to the next church. I am seeking to come alongside
your ministry and serve in whatever area you need. Let me tell you
a little about myself and how I came to be in this ministry. I grew
up in a Christian home, attending Bible Baptist Church of Matthews,
NC faithfully each week. I attended Bible Baptist Christian School
until my graduation from high school. When I was five I made a profession
of faith, but as so often happens, I do not remember anything about
that profession. This produced a great doubt in my heart, that I finally
resolved when I was 12. I look back at that point as my conversion,
fully knowing that I cried out to Christ for salvation on that day.
Later in that same year God burdened my heart with the ministry of
evangelism. Since that time I have pursued full time Christian work
with the intention of becoming an evangelist, beginning to preach
when I was 16 and taking every opportunity from that point to preach,
teach and minister. After high school I attended Northland Baptist
Bible College and graduated with a Bachelors degree in Evangelism.
While at Northland I met my wife,
Ruth, who is from Greenville, South Carolina. Ruth also was privileged
to grow up in a Christian home. At the age of four, she asked Christ
to be her Savior and has since sought to grow to be more like Him.
After graduating from Bob Jones Academy in 1995, Ruth also attended
Northland Baptist Bible College where she graduated in 1999 with
a Bachelors in Biblical Counseling.
After our graduation Ruth and I were
married, and I stepped directly into the pastorate. In the summer
of 1999 I became the pastor of Bethesda Baptist Church in Marquette,
MI. I served that congregation until the fall of 2000. Shortly after
I left that church I found out about a church just getting started
in Manistique, MI, and the Lord worked in our lives to bring us
to Manistique to help the church get established. I served that
church from the Fall of 2000 until September of 2006. During those
years as pastor of Manistique Bible Church, I had the privilege
of seeing God put together a fledgling church, seeing the church
grow, programs established, souls saved, the first building built
and finally the calling of the next pastor. Throughout this time
my heart was still yearning for evangelism, but it began to be tempered
with the work of the pastorate. God used this time to change my
perspective of the evangelist from that of the traditional perspective
to look for greater opportunities to be a blessing to an individual
church. I realized that most lasting ministry takes place over time,
not in sudden, dramatic moments. I also realized that a person or
congregation is much more open to the Word when they know and trust
the one presenting the Word. This led me to begin to examine Scriptures
to see if I was looking at the wrong ministry or at the wrong approach
to ministry. As I studied Scriptures I came to the conclusion that
the evangelist is not just a man who spends a few days in one church
preaching evening meetings, but is a man who goes into a church
to do a set task and stays as long as needed to finish that task.
The man I look to as the great example of this is Titus. Titus was
very clearly not a pastor, but he was sent into churches to do the
work of the ministry. Titus 1:3 gives to me my goal for ministry:
“set in order those things which are wanting.” My desire is to come
into your church for a few days, a few weeks, maybe a few months
and work alongside of you to help fill whatever gap needs to be
filled.
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