Pastor Blue
Good Morning,
I was thinking about my pastor and the influence he had on so many people. I decided to take a moment today to challenge you to “believe God.” Pastor Blue was definitely a man who believed that God would do great things for those who sought after Him.
It was at Pastor Blue’s church where I was challenged to memorize Scripture. We started out memorizing one verse a day, and then, after a few weeks, two verses a day, then three, then four, then five, and then up to six a day! We worked at memorizing, and it was not an easy task that simply happened. When we all did it together, it was an enjoyable challenge for high school and college students.
At Pastor Blue’s church one of the assistant pastors took me soul winning. At Pastor Blue’s Bible Institute, I learned solid Bible doctrine, and we memorized much Scripture to back up every doctrine we learned and believed.
Pastor Blue was a farm boy from Nebraska and a World War II veteran in the Navy. After graduating from college in 1951 he started working with a church in the Pasadena area. He held Bible clubs in the local high schools and colleges. He had a youth group of 900 teens by the time he left to start North Valley Baptist Church in Redding, California.
Pastor Blue said he believed there were two great sins that every preacher needed to vigilantly guard himself from, a passive indifference to what God is saying or doing and a love for money.
While he was at North Valley Baptist Church, seventeen churches were started and fifteen churches were rebirthed. Pastor Blue baptized twenty-nine people in the first month of his church.
Pastor Blue said the greatest lesson to to learn is “Giving.”
He told me he never had a savings account. He said the things he did, he did by faith. He believed Ephesians 3:20 and that God was able to do “…exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think…”
I did not write it down, but if I remember right, he told me that in the first eleven years of his church, he had nine separate building programs. On top of that, he never went to the bank to borrow money.
At one point, as the ministry grew exponentially, he was asked to take over a larger church with great buildings and economic ease. They told him money would be no problem. His response was, “If money is no problem, then faith is no factor.” He was not interested in that kind of a ministry.
In memory of my Pastor, I would like to challenge you to find some verses on answered prayer and claim them before God. There are so many verses that promise the ear of God and the merciful attention of our Heavenly Father. Not so you can be rich or proud that you are better than others, but so God can do great things to bring glory to Himself and to draw you to love Him more.
During the time I was close to Pastor Blue, he had a rescue mission, a full-employment rehabilitation program, a radio station, a beautiful camp facility with two lakes, a Bible college, a garage for his buses, a lighted baseball diamond, a three-story educational building, a giant two-story youth facility, a gymnasium, and several different auditoriums – and again, it was all built by faith, he never went to the bank for any help.
In the foyer of his church, you could see the pictures of many men who were put into the ministry from North Valley. I was one of those pictured, and I am very thankful and honored that I was allowed to be a part of the ministry of Pastor Royal Blue.
Pastor