It was the summer of 1975. Married less than three years, we had traveled the country, preaching and singing. It was a big deal to be leaving the field and returning to Beaumont. We rented a nice three-bedroom apartment and moved in. I was 23 and had become the Associate Pastor at Victory Temple in Beaumont, a congregation of several hundred people at that time.
Years earlier, while attending Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, I went on a three-day prayer and fasting vigil to seek the will of God for my ministry. I holed up in a large prayer room on the fourth floor of Welch Hall for three days. Except for the hours I had to be in classes, I stayed in prayer and Bible study.
I asked God to show me exactly what He wanted me to do. At the end of the third day, I got my answer while reading in 2 Timothy 4:5, “But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry."
Do The Work Of An Evangelist
That verse had been my foundational stone ever since that day. I believed that God wanted me to be an evangelist. And that is the ministry that I had devoted myself to.
But the DREAM had dramatically changed my course. It was putting me into Pastoral Ministry.
I questioned God about that. “If it is your will for me to go back to Beaumont to be Pastor Clendennen’s associate, then what am I supposed to do with this calling that I have to be an evangelist?”
As I prayed and studied the Word, I found what seemed to be my answer in Titus 1:5, “For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting.”
I also took note of several verses in which Paul spoke of “ministering to the saints,” (Hebrews 6:10; Romans 15:25; I Corinthians 16:15; 2 Corinthians 8:4; 9:2 and others). I concluded that God wanted me to go to Beaumont and “set in order the things that were wanting, and minister to the saints.”
Set In Order The Things That Are Wanting, And Minister To The Saints
With Pastor Clendennen building the television ministry and traveling around the country several days every week, the local church needed a lot of attention. I took that as my project - to focus my attention on the building of the local congregation. That included pulpit ministry in Pastor Clendennen’s absence, a great deal of pastoral calling and visitation, updating membership lists, initiating phone calls and letter writing, hospital visitation, etc.
Dixie and I threw ourselves into that ministry. I ended up taking over the choir again. I either played the piano or led the worship in every service. When the Pastor was out of town, I filled the pulpit. But within a few months, the demands of the rapidly expanding television ministry began to pull me away from the pastoral duties. Instead of ministering directly to the saints, I was spending enormous amounts of time in the office of the television ministry, working on audio and video material for radio and television, editing and remastering sermon tapes for duplication, and drifting further and further from a direct ministry to the people. That was very disillusioning, since before that time, I had been preaching nearly seven nights a week for almost three years.
In addition to those unexpected changes, the financial compensation was considerably less than we had anticipated and needed. We had not discussed the subject of pay before returning home. The Pastor had suggested that pay would be no problem. Whatever we needed would be provided. However, we took a major cut in pay from what we had earned while traveling, and were struggling to make ends meet.
Then, the Pastor’s daughter and son-in-law returned to Beaumont from their evangelistic travels. They had been traveling for several years, but decided to settle down in Beaumont and join the ministerial staff. I could see all my preaching opportunities evaporating, and simply lost my desire to stay there. I had to get back to preaching the Gospel. Someone else could do the editorial and office work that I was spending so much time with.
Again, I went to prayer and fasting, looking for a solution. After about six months, Dixie and I found ourselves looking for other options. I informed the Pastor that we were praying for another open door for ministry, and would be leaving as soon as God showed us what to do. He knew and understood how the circumstances had changed, and understood our desire to move on at that time.
Considering Our First Pastoral Position
During that time, the Pastor of the Church in Groves (my home town) resigned, and the congregation was searching for a new pastor. Attendance had dwindled down, and they were struggling to keep the doors open. Nevertheless, I decided to submit my name for consideration. Dixie and I went to Groves, preached, and sang. In all, eleven candidates submitted their names for a vote. The tiny group voted on all eleven names on one ballot. Not surprisingly, no minister received a majority. They started the process over, but I withdrew my name. That was not our destiny.
Meanwhile, to generate an additional income, I sat down and wrote a script for a series of lessons on “How to Play the Piano by Ear.” Late one night, I went to the church and recorded twelve five-minute lessons on tape. I designed a nice package label for that product, along with a professional-looking newspaper ad, and went to a local advertising agency and had them produce them for me. I bought a five-place cassette duplicator and started making copies. Then I began running ads in newspapers around the area to advertise the product. I sold about 500 copies of that tape before other priorities took me away from the project. Years later, I met people who actually learned how to play the piano from my lessons on that tape.
Then, I learned that another Assembly of God Church in Mid-County had gone out of business. They had an all-brick church building on Highway 365 in Nederland - between Beaumont and Groves. I had preached in that church several years earlier. But it had never had a large enough congregation to support it adequately, so the small congregation voted to close it, and the property was turned over to the South Texas District of the Assemblies of God. Since I had grown up in that area, I knew many, many people there, and felt that I could build a successful Church there where others had failed. So I went to the District office in Houston and talked to the District Superintendent and the District Secretary about the building.
First, I asked them for permission to re-open the church and start a new work in it. They told me that they didn’t want to do that. They had already had a board meeting and had voted to sell the property, and had decided to allocate the income from that property to another project. I then asked them to sell the property to me. They didn’t want to do that either. The South Texas District did not want to revive that work in Nederland.
Putting A "Fleece" Before The Lord
Dixie and I had little to go by, except fervent fasting and prayer, which we committed ourselves to. We asked God to show us what to do. We wondered if we could succeed in starting a new Church from scratch in Mid-County. There was no strong Assembly of God Church anywhere in the Mid-County area at that time, but after appealing to the District concerning the defunct Church, I knew that they did not think a Church could be built in that area. But I did. It was my home.
I still believed that the area had potential, and I believed that we could make a go of it. So we put out a "fleece" and a prayer with certain conditions before God. Like Gideon's fleeces, we proposed that if God gave us certain signs, we would know that we should start a new Church. Well, the signs came to pass, so I went to Pastor Clendennen and told him my plans, and resigned.
If all this seems to be a convoluted way for a man to find the will of God, I will assure you that there are plenty of cases in the Bible when men sought after the will of God with just as much toil and exasperation. In our case, the process led me from being an evangelist, to an Associate Pastor, to Pastoring a Church of my own in little more than six months. While we were traveling, it never entered my mind to go home and start a Church. But that is what happened as we sought desperately to do the will of God.
You will often find that God uses incomprehensible, even troubling processes to move you from one place to another, either physically or spiritually. There is no point in trying to figure out all that God does. You will never understand them on this side of Heaven. That is why He repeatedly tells us to TRUST and HAVE FAITH in Him. The JUST shall live by faith.
So Dixie and I rented a three-bedroom house in Groves, and we immediately moved in. Brian was almost 20 months old.
It was time for me to renew my ministerial credentials with the Assemblies of God, which I had held for eight years. Instead of renewing them, I chose to let them expire. I didn't know if I would regret it later, but at that time, it seemed the right choice. I was only 24 years old and believed that I could accomplish anything.
Gospel Outreach Ministries
I hired an accountant and created a non-profit organization called “Gospel Outreach Ministries.” That enabled me to accept donations that would be tax-deductible.
I called around to find a place to meet. For the first three weeks, we met in a conference room at a local hotel. Then I found a store-front for rent on Lincoln Avenue in the commercial district of Groves. We met in that building for about three months and grew to a congregation of about forty.
The Hour Of Revival Radio Broadcast
I went to the local Christian FM radio station and purchased radio time and began a fifteen-minute program called "The Hour of Revival." It aired twice daily, Monday through Friday during prime “drive time” (7:10 AM and 4:10 PM). KTRM was a powerful Gospel station that dominated the Christian market throughout Jefferson County, and I had a large audience.
I borrowed Jimmy Swaggart’s format; a prerecorded intro and outro, opening with one gospel song, then announcements, and an eight-minute message. I created a professional logo, which was an hour-glass with a fire behind it, representing "The Hour of Revival.” I advertised the radio program in newspaper ads, direct mail flyers and radio spot ads. I built an audio production console at home that had a reel-to-reel recorder, turn-tables, mixers, amps, headphones and microphone, and produced five programs for each week. Each program aired twice daily.
The Gospel Lighthouse
I also created a logo for the church, which we named “The Gospel Lighthouse.” The art featured the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse which Dixie and I loved so much. For several years, I had used an ad agency to produce art, graphics and typesetting. I knew the owner well, so had her create all our artwork and logos. We created an excellent-looking brochure entitled, “Why Go to Church?” with an eight-point lesson from the Bible. We printed them by the thousands and handed them out from door-to-door in Groves, Port Neches and Nederland.
Meanwhile, a local real estate investor purchased the same brick church building I had enquired about earlier. As soon as I learned he had purchased it, I gave him a call and told him I wanted to buy it. We made an appointment, and I bought that property with nothing down, on a contract for deed for $75,000, my signature only. The notes started at $350 month, and went up $100 a month until it leveled off at $750 monthly. The year was 1976, and that was an enormous amount of money. But I believed in walking by faith and trusting God to meet our needs, and this was no time to change strategies. From the first week in the storefront, I told the members that we had a $600 weekly budget. I never failed to get the necessary $600 a week out of that small group of people.
We moved the congregation into that building, and we bought a nice mobile home for a parsonage and set it up behind the church. I had good credit at two local credit unions and used my resources to totally outfit that building. I bought a Hammond Porta-B organ with a portable Leslie, along with a complete sound system with Cerwin-Vega speakers, and I bought a nice riding lawnmower.
Printing and Publishing
A local printer who printed several jobs for me decided to go out of business and offered to sell all his equipment for a good price, so I bought it and moved it into the Church. I had an AB Dick offset press, two letter presses, a metal platemaker, a folding machine, a commercial paper cutter, an Addressograph-Multigraph direct-mail addressing machine, and two photographic-process typesetters, and a large supply of papers and inks.
I had considerable printing and graphic arts experience. In my college days, I had worked for an international company producing their weekly national newsletter on an offset press. Then, for two years at Victory Temple, I had edited and produced a monthly 16-page magazine for Pastor Clendennen, as well as weekly newsletters to thousands, plus numerous other direct-mail pieces. We operated two large offset presses there.
I believed that the future of my ministry required the use of the printed page. Every month, I published a newsletter with a sermon in it, and sent it by bulk-rate mail to 1200+ households, which included the names of people who had responded to the radio programs and who had visited in our services. I also published a monthly Calendar of Events. We kept a very busy schedule.
Occasionally, I submitted my articles to the Port Arthur News for publication. They gladly published them on the Religion page as a guest columnist.
Jimmy Swaggart Crusade
Early on, I received a letter from Jimmy Swaggart. He planned to come to Beaumont for a crusade, and was inviting local pastors to sponsor the event. I signed on immediately. I helped organize Swaggart's crusade, which was to be held at the Beaumont City Auditorium. Of course, he had a ready-made following. The auditorium was packed to the top balcony - about 2500 people. I sat with about a dozen local pastors on stage. At the conclusion of the service, Swaggart gave an altar call and hundreds of seekers responded. He instructed the sponsoring pastors to move to the edge of the stage and pray for as many as we could. In all, it seemed a profitable effort and good to be associated with such a successful crusade. It gave our new Church valuable exposure.
The Gospel Lighthouse averaged about sixty in attendance by the end of the first year, and within two years, the attendance averaged about one hundred. Our ministry there was typical of everything I had learned and believed and preached in my first 25 years of life. My message was relatively old-fashioned, my convictions were old-fashioned, but my methods were progressive and aggressive. I led the worship from the Hammond organ, and Dixie and I sang specials in every service. We used lots of material by Lanny Wolfe, Dottie Rambo and Andre Crouch.
An Old-Fashioned Gospel Ministry
I have always preached heavily and frequently on the subject of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. I received the Holy Ghost at the age of 11, speaking in tongues as the Spirit gave the utterance. I have always believed that everybody ought to have the Holy Ghost. I didn’t know it was such a strong doctrinal case until many years later, but nevertheless, I preached it very fervently.
Our standards of living were conservative. I believed and preached that a woman should have long hair, but in those days I didn’t necessarily think that meant “uncut.” Dixie and I agreed that her hair should be at least shoulder length. Dixie never wore slacks - only dresses, and her make-up and jewelry were very minimal.
Some of the ladies who came to the Gospel Lighthouse criticized Dixie sternly in those days for being in “bondage” to out-dated thinking on her dress-code, but she stood firm. She thought it was wrong for a woman to wear slacks, and I did too. Following the convictions I had learned from my childhood, I continued to preach against going to the movies, going to sporting events, participating in organized sports, smoking, drinking, carousing, etc. - all the old-fashioned themes. In those days, those teachings were NOT considered radical or extreme. Those were not unusual standards for Full-Gospel churches in those days.
But a new wave of thinking was going to rattle my cage before I knew it.
Continue to:
Long Winding Road - Chapter 8
A Major Paradigm Shift
Return to:
Long Winding Road - Chapter 6
A Word From God And A Dream
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Ken Raggio
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