Storms!: Sound Doctrine in An Age of Lying Tongues and Itching Ears

By Reverend Anthony Kelley

This book is designed to inspire, encourage, and remind its readers, Christian workers, laypersons, missionaries, evangelists, and pastors and teachers, that it is within this time of challenges, conspiracies, contradictions, and controversies that requires the preaching enterprise to be forthright, provocative, and prophetic as it presents the gospel message of Jesus the Christ with all urgency, clarity, and correctness. Well-prepared sermon manuscripts presented in the book are biblically sound, homiletically structured, and theologically correct and provide an excellent resource for busy pastors who sometimes must preach through “storms” within their churches faced with the stress and strain of their multi-faceted ministry in the church and leadership in the community. This approach to that prophetic word which meets people where they are is understood to be and manifested in three (3) distinct but interconnected and interrelated stages of prophetic and priestly preaching—that is, preaching while heading “to a storm,” preaching while “in a storm,” and preaching coming “out of a storm” with celebration on the shore of deliverance by a God “who is there, and he is not silent”. Each sermon unapologetically leads the reader intentionally to the Friday Cross of Suffering where Jesus died for the redemption of humankind but especially to the Sunday Resurrection of Power when victorious living was made possible for those who believe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798385023578

Reverend Anthony Kelley

Reverend Anthony Kelley, B.A., M.Div., is a native of Chicago, Illinois, and the visionary organizer, retired senior pastor and teacher of the Greater First Church Baptist in Baker, Louisiana. He is also the founder, chairman, and CEO of the Reclamation and Restoration Ministries Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity, which was organized in 1996 in Gary, Indiana. As the founder of the Prison Ministry and Criminal Justice Commission of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., Kelley served as its executive secretary for seventeen years (1994–2011) in four (4) presidential administrations. He currently is the grants administrator for the RRM Inc.’s Ready4Life Community Violence Intervention and Prevention Project in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Ready4Life Project is supported by a $1.5 million dollar grant award no. 15PBJA22GG04754 by the US Department of Justice (CVIPI) Violence Reduction, Community Trust, and Public Safety Initiative. Kelley received his bachelor of arts degree from Trinity College, Deerfield, Illinois (1977), and the master of divinity degree from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary/Northwestern University Campus, Evanston, Illinois (1980). Kelley has studied business administration at the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, African American literature at the Graduate School of Northwestern University, sociology at Roosevelt University and Loyola University of Chicago, social ethics at Chicago Theological Seminary, and exegesis of Greek New Testament studies at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. He was licensed to preach in 1971 by the Centennial Missionary Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side and ordained in 1978 by the First Baptist Church on Chicago’s West Side. He is the former senior pastor of the Mt. Zion First Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, succeeding Dr. T. J. Jemison, former president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. Kelley faithfully served other churches to include Van Buren Missionary Baptist Church, Gary, Indiana; Union Missionary Baptist Church, Danville, Illinois; and the King of All Nations Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois.

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Copyright © 2024 Reverend Anthony Kelley.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

All scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 979-8-3850-2355-4 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-2356-1 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-2357-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024907682

WestBow Press rev. date:  04/17/2024

In memory of

Deacon Willie Kuykendall

Chairman, Board of Deacons

Van Buren Missionary Baptist Church, Gary, Indiana

A Genuine Servant Extraordinaire in God’s Church and for

Talks I Never Had with My Father

Deacon Richard R. Craven

Chairperson, Deacons’ Ministry

Greater First Church-Baptist, Baker (East Baton Rouge Parish), Louisiana

A Genuine Servant Extraordinaire in God’s Church and for

Talks I Never Had with My Brother

Dr. Emmett W. Bashful

Dr. Huel D. Perkins

Fernando Fred Williams

(The Three Wise Men)

God showed his grace by giving to me what I really did not deserve; and

showed me his mercy by withholding from me what I really did deserve.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Part 1   Heading to a Storm

Sermon 1     Just Think of His Goodness to You!

Sermon 2     Slipping into Darkness

Sermon 3     How Long Has This Been Going On?

Sermon 4     A Prayer for the Church

Sermon 5     Standing Firm in the Faith

Part 2   In a Storm

Sermon 6     When the Church is at Her Best

Sermon 7     Churches that Make God Sick

Sermon 8     Spiritual Healing

Sermon 9     Conquering All Doubts

Sermon 10   The Right Time to Do the Right Thing

Part 3   Coming Out of a Storm

Sermon 11   Marching Orders! Too Long at This Mountain

Sermon 12   A Journey Well Worth Taking

Sermon 13   Stepping Out in Deep Waters

Sermon 14   Try a Little Tenderness

Sermon 15   Somebody Ought to Say Something

Part 4   Celebration on the Shore of Deliverance

Sermon 16   Spiritual Warriors Empowered by God

Sermon 17   You Are Our Hope

Sermon 18   He Would Not Come Down

Sermon 19   Three Vehicles for Authentic Celebration!

Sermon 20   A Report that Defies All Conspiracy Theories

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my mentors and caring, competent, and committed church officers and education and community/business leaders such as the late Emmett W. Bashful, Huel D. Perkins, and Fernando Fred Williams for their guidance, support, and wisdom that were shared with me during our regular breakfast (Frank’s), lunch (Sonny’s), and dinner (Mansur’s) fellowship meals as their pastor and teacher of the Mount Zion First Baptist Church and the Greater First Church-Baptist.

And thanks very much to God for his grace and mercy to extend his call, care, and deliverance in allowing me to preach, serve, and lead unimpeded for fifty years despite the challenging and stormy conditions of pernicious anemia, atrial fibrillation, cancer, Crohn’s disease, and sarcoidosis.

King of All Nations Baptist Church

I am forever grateful to the King of All Nations Missionary Baptist Church congregation on Chicago’s West Side, located at 3855 West Harrison Street, for entrusting their life treasures and ministry to a young preacher in my very first pastorate while still a seminary student.

Union Missionary Baptist Church

I reflectively thank God and the extraordinary cultural and social community-conscience people of the Union Missionary Baptist Church in the small Midwestern city of Danville, Illinois, which taught me to respect the unique but treasured traditions of a small-town community where servant-leadership of the whole community was my joy. My experience there prepared me for even greater challenges and learnings of ministry as a pastor and teacher of the Van Buren Missionary Baptist Church in the industrialized city of Gary, Indiana.

Van Buren Missionary Baptist Church

My spiritual growth and maturity as a servant-leader on a local and national scale and improved understanding of pastoral authority flourished in the context of a diverse and gifted community in the steel city of Gary, Indiana. I am grateful to the deacons and trustees who came to Danville to recruit me. Our holistic ministry engaged the total community in Lake County, Indiana, and beyond and was celebrated by many locally, statewide, and nationally. The hundreds of children, youths, and young adults of Van Buren Missionary Baptist Church and Northwest Indiana were the jewels of my soul and motivation to engage in our unique ministries.

Mount Zion First Baptist Church

My call in November 2004 to serve as the senior pastor and teacher of the historic Mount Zion First Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was a paradoxical blessing in disguise. I am eternally grateful to the congregation for such an honor to be elected and to fill the pastoral vacancy left by the Rev. T. J. Jemison, former president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, and to serve in the shadows of the late Rev. Gardner C. Taylor, who served as the pastor to this historic church, and others. Though my expectations exceeded the spiritual, missional, ministry, and organizational realities and limitations that I inherited, this leading silk stocking downtown congregation taught me how to truly put my trust in God and to continue to allow character, competence, transparency, responsibility, and accountability to be the standard bearers of and for a fruitful and life-changing ministry.

Greater First Church-Baptist

I continue to thank God each day for all the members of the Greater First Church-Baptist in Baker, Louisiana, who embraced my servant-leadership and were long-time members of the Mount Zion First Baptist Church of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. These gifted and visionary people boldly joined me in building upon a legacy and raising a standard for a more hospitable and inclusive ministry by organizing and sustaining our exceptional miracle church. I am eternally and equally grateful for all the extraordinary and gifted members who joined our congregation since our organization in 2006 and who continue to serve with distinction. These uniquely committed members keep our church family Heading in a New Direction in Christian Ministry. But I thank Greater First for showing me that true care and meaningful hospitality can be realized in the body of Christ. I have finally learned how to absolutely love and care for God’s people beyond my obligation to duty, which Jesus characterized as evidence of authentic Christian character, and the moral responsibility of a shepherd in the care of his sheep.

Preface

This book is designed to inspire, encourage, and remind its readers, Christian workers, laypersons, missionaries, evangelists, pastors, and teachers who are within this time of challenges, conspiracies, contradictions, and controversies that requires the preaching enterprise to be forthright, provocative, and prophetic as it presents the Gospel message of Jesus Christ with all urgency, clarity, and correctness without compromise. The apostle Paul in his second Epistle written to Timothy exhorts the young preacher to embrace the urgency of preaching sound doctrine in a time when false prophets and teachers were departing from the organized church, deceiving members of God’s church and denying the very godhood of Jesus Christ. This was a recurring exhortation given by other apostles, such as James and John, in their letters combating the demonic forces of error, falsehood, and deceit, which was the characteristic of the first century, and was a threat to the growth and development of the church founded by Jesus Christ.

The church in the twenty-first century is also being challenged today to be a headlight for truth and justice that creates precedents and not to be a taillight that follows what many want it to be—the new normal, which is moral stagnation that reeked of falsehood, chaos, and disillusionment. The apostle Paul charged and urged his preacher in his time then, and his inspired words speak relevantly to us now. Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths (2 Timothy 4:1–4). This urgency and charge are presented through twenty manuscripts of evidence-based sermons prepared with excellent hermeneutic and homiletic precision and preached by the author throughout his fifty-year ministry and forty years as a pastor addressing real-time challenges, conflicts, contradictions, controversies, and celebrations of victory in the congregations he served.

The well-prepared manuscripts of his sermons presented in the book are biblically sound, homiletically structured, and theologically correct and provide an excellent resource for busy pastors who sometimes must preach through the storms within their churches and face the stress of their multifaceted church ministry and the leaders in the community. This approach to that prophetic word, which meets people where they are, is understood to be and manifested in three (3) distinct but interconnected and interrelated stages of prophetic and priestly preaching—that is preaching while heading to a storm, preaching while in a storm, and preaching coming out of a storm¹—coupled with a celebration on the shore of deliverance by a God who is there and he is not silent.² Each sermon unapologetically leads the reader intentionally to the Friday Cross of Suffering where Jesus died for the redemption of humankind and especially to the Sunday Resurrection of Power when victorious living was made possible for those who believe.

The motivation and inspiration for this book are derived from the reflections of the author’s fifty-year journey as a preacher and his forty-year pastoral ministry in five diverse congregations and communities. The learnings of boyhood on Berkeley Avenue in Chicago; the preparation for ministry; and the challenges, contradictions, controversies, and celebrations of life that are uniquely characteristic of the preaching enterprise are vividly seen through the evidenced-based sermons in this work. There are more pastors and teachers who can tell the unique story of their preaching enterprise and endeavor as they faithfully serve. Oftentimes, they do so with great sacrifice, sincerity, and selflessness as they carry the formidable but gloriously blessed and anointed mantle of servant-leadership. They faithfully serve when the road gets rough, the burdens get heavy, and the hills are hard to climb both for the preachers, as well as for the people they love and care for, even when the recipients of that compassion may care less. Yet the preacher is called to preach in season and out of season. That is the prophetic role the pastor and teacher demands that the word from God to the people on behalf of God must always be presented with urgency when people want to hear it and when they may not. For how can they hear without a preacher, and how can he/she preach unless one is sent (cf. Romans 10:13–15)?

The burden and even foolishness of preaching turns into living joy when that word from God is received; and a new life of hope and faith, meaning and purpose, and guidance and direction emerges in a new creation because of the reception of that word from God. Those who do receive that word from God through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ will discover that where there was brokenness, there is now wholeness; where there was disunity, there is now a common bond; and where there was despair, there is now peace. Light has overcome darkness, and a glorious journey of faith and power takes place in the believer’s life. That is why we preach in season and out of season. When the Gospel is faithfully preached, God promises that the evidence of its fruitfulness will be demonstrated when the blind see; the people with physical limitations and lame walk; the people with leprosy are cleansed; the deaf hear; the dead are raised; and the Gospel is preached to the poor, disappointed, disinherited, disconnected, and disenfranchised people in our communities (Luke 7:18–23). Otherwise, the beat goes on!

Introduction

On the Nature and Character of a Storm

Some went down to the sea in ships,

Doing business on the mighty waters.

They saw the deeds of the LORD,

His wondrous works in the deep.

For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,

Which lifted the waves of the sea.

They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths.

Their courage melted away in their calamity.

They reeled and staggered like drunkards,

And were at their wit’s end.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,

And he brought them out of their distress.

He made the storm be still,

And the waves of the sea were hushed.

Then they were glad because they had quiet,

And he brought them to their desired haven.

—Psalm 107:23–30

A Perfect Place

Most members of the body of Christ would agree that biblically, soteriological-ly, and theologically, the church of God by its very nature is a perfect place, but existentially, it is full of imperfect people. The Old Testament prophet Isaiah compares the people of God (Israel) to a vineyard, which was situated in a perfect place, had a particular purpose, and God’s divine protection, provisions, and promises, cf. Isaiah 5:1–2, Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: my beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it, cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.

The reference in Isaiah to a fertile hill where God plants his choice vines implies that God has strategically put believers in a place as choice or special vines. This is to ensure that they can receive the special attention, nourishment, and care needed to undoubtedly produce fruit. Christians live defeated and unproductive spiritual lives because they fail to avail themselves to the nurturing, equipping, and sustaining apparatus within the church of Jesus Christ. There have been occasions that pastors report, as shepherds of God’s people, that they labor in the vineyard with anguish when they see members of the congregation with enormous potential to be extraordinary servant-leaders who do not see the value nor engage in growth opportunities. Such growth comes only through participation in the inward spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation, and study and the outward corporate disciplines of celebration and service. Pastors are immensely grieved to the point of frustration to have to beg God’s people to come to Sunday church school, midweek prayer service, Bible study fellowship, and Sunday morning worship on a regular and consistent basis. Yet these committed servant-leaders faithfully prepare and set the table to partake of God’s word for those faithful few who make their way through the hurry, crowds, and noise of daily living to the growth opportunities at their church. What churches end up with in this situation due to the lack of participation in spiritual development opportunities is a top-heavy, unskilled, and undisciplined leadership with limited knowledge and no sense of spiritual direction and leading. Oftentimes and tragically, they may become barriers to the spiritual growth of God’s church. These persons may have seats of authority as it relates to the temporal affairs of the Church but do not fully understand the biblical principle that a carnal or worldly mind does not understand the spiritual things of God.

For example, the apostle Paul eloquently states in 1 Corinthians 2:12, Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God. He goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 2:14, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Thus, there is always this tension between fiscal accountability, responsibility, and stewardship (e.g., stewards or trustee ministry), and life-changing ministries as planks in the church’s mission for fruitful and effective kingdom building (e.g., deacon ministry). The two, however, must become one in terms of vision and purpose. The finances of the church and fiscal priorities must be structured and designed to help conduct the mission and ministry of the church to seek and to save that which is lost. This can be accomplished by people who understand and have personally embraced that mission’s mandate. Such a goal is difficult to attain if servant-leaders as expected of all members of God’s church, do not engage in the congregation’s spiritual life, and be subsequently disciplined by and through the study of God’s word and anointing of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, servant ministries, such as deacon ministries must understand the limits and boundaries of their work based on fiscal realities and limitations that should not overburden individual members. Resolute members are already carrying the burdens of others who are not consistent with their support of the church through the giving of tithes and offerings. The church, as God’s vineyard, is a perfect place that provides the structures, framework, fellowship, and substance for believers to be faithful and prosperous.