Thanks to my dad who was a pastor for over 50 years and a spiritual example in my life. Being a preacher’s son, I have been in church all my life. In my quest for truth, I was involved with several denominations. After a season of much prayer, Holy Spirit spoke to me to start a nondenominational church. My wife, Phyllis, and I yielded to God’s will. To fully walk in truth one must follow the pattern of Jesus, the Truth. He said He did only what He saw His Father do and spoke only what He heard His Father say. This is a pattern we must follow because what He speaks and does is the seed containing the life and ability of God. We received that seed from God to start Spirit & Truth Worship Center. God also gave the name Spirit & Truth Worship Center to Phyllis based on the scripture, John 4:23. Our foundation, our vision, our purpose, and our goal were birthed from the seed of God.
We started with meetings in our home in August 1987 with 14 people. By Oct we had more than fifty people in our living room. We moved to a storefront building and God continued to bless us and soon we started planning for a new building.
My brother-in-law, Prophet Rick Fultz who help us start the church gave us a prophetic word about the 26 acres of property God had chosen for us. We inquired about the land it was already sold to a medical clinic. Shortly thereafter they dropped the option to purchase the land and the owner contacted us. We were negotiating the price and continuing to pray and believe God for the land.
On Saturday morning we were at the storefront building cleaning and praying when the Holy Spirit spoke to me to call the landowner, He was outside mowing and later called me and said he would be there in five minutes. When he entered our church building, he was crying and said we could have the land at the price we had offered. While mowing he had looked up toward the land and had a vision of a church on it. This was the ability of God working for us from our receiving God’s seed to start the church.
We didn’t qualify for a loan at that time because we were a new group, so the owner financed the note himself. The land was high peak with only room for a jeep trail across the top. Prophet Rick worked for a strip mining company and they provided all the heavy equipment we needed to level the land. We removed 30 ft. of soil on six acres for our new church building and filled in a valley with the soil. A member of our church, Rick Babcock had a tractor and trailer and brought the equipment to us on Friday evening and we used around the clock until Sunday. This was all free except for some fuel which we purchased at cost.
We estimated over one million dollars worth of work was done for free. Praise the Lord! Again the ability of God from receiving the seed! Our friends, Ron and Elsie Fleenor had just moved to Ohio. We kept their son, Mark for two years. They met a retired school teacher in Ohio and was a caretaker to her.
Later, Ron brought her to our storefront church and God spoke to her heart to give us a good amount of money toward the purchase of the land and then she put our new church building under roof and in less than five years, she paid the remainder we owed on the church in full.
Praise God for His ability from receiving the seed!. Our church was birthed from a miracle and we continue to see them today! He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all we can ask or think according to his power (ability from His seed) in us.
We now have a beautiful facility and have developed the land which is being used by different churches and community groups for various projects.
