Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in
Phoenix, Arizona with part six of my life story. In the last video,
I talked about how I had found and started going to Regency Baptist Church.
Well, just to give you an idea of the size of the church,
there were about 150 people at Regency.
So by way of comparison is about half the size of Faithful Word.
My family and I started going there and we just absolutely loved it,
but we actually still continued to go to our liberal church at the same time.
So the watered down NIV Baptist church we'd been going to
had an early service because in those days,
the more liberal churches would always have two services.
They'd have like an early service with traditional music and a later service
with contemporary music. So because we had friends there and stuff,
we would go to the early service at our old church.
Then we would drive over to Regency and go to the 11 a.m.
morning service at Regency.
And I just remember how the sermon at the liberal church was 20 minutes long,
but it felt like an hour.
And then Pastor Nichols sermon at Regency was over an hour, felt like 20 minutes.
I just remember sitting and listening to Pastor Nichols preach.
And when it was over here, it's like, what, it's already over?
Because it was just so good.
We were so starved for good preaching.
It was dynamic. We were learning stuff.
He's turning all over the Bible.
And so we just absolutely loved it.
But not only was Pastor Nichols a great preacher,
one of the things that stood out to my parents right away at the church was
just that the other men of the church were on board with
Pastor Nichols program, preaching doctrine, et cetera.
Because we'd had experiences in the past where the pastor would be cool,
but then there'd be like deacons and trustees and just like
other elements in the church that were kind of holding him back.
They were more liberal or just compromised or complacent or whatever.
It was like the pastor was cool, but then, you know,
these other guys were sketch and holding him back.
Whereas what we noticed at Regency was just how the church was in one accord.
And this was really on full display because Pastor Nichols,
the whole time that I went there, his health was in horrible condition.
So he was constantly unable to preach.
I mean, probably over the course of the time I went there,
it might not even be an exaggeration to say that he probably preached about half
the time because he'd go weeks or months without being able to preach or he,
he missed services just due to poor health. You know,
he just was dealing with severe health problems.
And so we got to hear a lot of guest preachers in those early days. Oh,
not guest preachers, but you know,
other laymen in the church filling the pulpit and they were all awesome too.
And so we were just like, wow, this church is great. Everybody's on the program.
And I remember in particular one particular service, it was very early on,
and this guy, brother Chuck was preaching on a Sunday night.
This is probably like my second, third, fourth Sunday or something.
And this guy, brother Chuck is preaching on Sunday night.
And I can just vividly remember the image of just, we're in this auditorium,
auditoriums packed.
It was super hot because Sacramento gets really hot in the summer.
And so Sunday evening service at 6 PM, it's still really hot.
There was no air conditioning in the building.
They had like fans set up or something. And so we're sitting in this building.
We're on metal folding chairs in the church building.
All of the metal folding chairs had stenciled on the back,
the words Nuestra Casa because they'd gotten them from some Mexican restaurant
or something. So I mean, we're just, we're jammed into this small building,
you know, a hundred and some people on a Sunday night, super hot outside,
super hot inside fans going and this guy,
brother Chuck is just up just ripping face,
just preaching hard about soul winning. And I remember just sitting there and just
thinking like, this is so awesome. Like this is the best church ever.
Like where has this church been all my life? And so, you know,
we loved it right away. And so when it came to Sunday school, because the,
you know, the first month or so, like I said, we went to both,
but after going to both for like a month, we're like,
why are we even wasting any time at this liberal church?
We need to just get all in at Regency. And so then, you know,
we started going to Sunday school and then the morning service and then evening
services and everything else. And we got totally plugged in.
Well, the Sunday school class for me was the teenage Sunday school class,
and it actually met in a broken down bus.
So the church building was there and then they had a big property and they had a
bunch of buses and several of the buses they used to go pick up kids and take
them to like a junior church ministry. But then they also just had, you know,
other buses that just didn't work.
And so those buses that were just broken down actually were used as Sunday
school classes. So every Sunday morning, you know,
I'd go onto this broken down bus and the youth leader,
Pastor Meredith Sears would be up at the front teaching the class.
And so we had that class every Sunday morning and there was going to be a youth
service right at like right after I joined the church,
there was going to be a youth service. Well, the thing is in the youth service,
it's something that they did every three months and the whole service was run by
teens. So they'd have teenagers, you know, leading the singing,
playing the piano, taking the offering and even doing the preaching.
So he asked, Hey, does anybody want to preach?
And I guess this was something that he always asked and nobody typically
volunteered ever.
And then, so then he would just pick three people and just say, you guys are going to preach and kind of make them do it.
But I actually volunteered. I was like, yeah, I'll do it.
I thought it was great, but he said, well, it's, it's your first youth service.
And so, you know, you're too new to the church.
So I don't want to just put you behind the pulpit because you just got here.
So he said, you know, you can preach at the next one, but at this one, you know, do something else.
So I ended up playing the piano at the first youth service.
But here's a funny thing that happened at the first youth service.
And it was kind of a mix, you know, you're you're putting three random teenagers behind the pulpit.
Some of them are a little better at speaking and did a pretty good job preaching.
And then others were pretty timid and struggling up there.
So the very first youth service that I went to, this one kid in particular was was pretty shy and struggling.
But Pastor Sears gets up before the youth service preaching begins and he says, hey, listen, guys, you know,
I really want you to encourage these preachers, these these teenagers.
It's hard for them to get up here and preach.
So I really want you to encourage them and, you know, shout amen and really like give them some energy from the crowd.
And so I just remember this kid gets up and preached like a really mellow sermon,
but the crowd's just kind of going crazy because they were giving this instruction.
And I just remember this one particular moment. This kid's just like, sin is wrong.
And it's just like, amen.
Just kind of cracked me up like getting excited about that.
So anyway, we had a good time at that second youth service came along
and I actually got to preach my first sermon ever this evening for the Steve Anderson.
Steve and his family have started coming just fairly, fairly recently. Um, several months now,
but Steve has been a blessing. I tell you what, I've appreciated him playing the piano this evening.
I know, of course, I know Tracy and Regina appreciated that too. They got a little bit of
break here. They wanted a break. They said, can we get someone else teach someone else to play? I
guess Steve's going to preach tonight. I'm looking forward to this. I really am. Steve's got a lot
of wisdom. He's got a lot of knowledge about some things that a young man more than likely
normally doesn't have. I know he knows a lot of pastors talk with him at quite length about the
King James Bible and Steve knows, knows quite a bit about the King James issue and what it
means to stand strong on the King James. I appreciate that. I appreciate Steve very much.
He's been a, he's been just a good team to have in the youth group. Someone who's always,
you can talk to and he's honest about his, about how he feels about the Lord. I appreciate that.
Steve, you've come at this time. Give Steve a hand if you want to stand with him.
It's actually on YouTube. It's actually something that you can watch, which is kind of crazy
because I preached hundreds and hundreds of times before I started Faith Forward Baptist Church. I
calculated one time it was a little over 500 sermons total and that was in various, you know,
nursing home ministries, Sunday school classes, junior church, etc. And obviously virtually none
of it's recorded. I mean, even my first couple months of preaching at Faith Forward Baptist
Church, I didn't even record. So it's kind of cool that my first sermon of all time was actually
recorded amen that's all that is that is wonderful that is great and the authority of god's word
oh man i like that for this team thank you man that's good wasn't that good
that great oh man from teenagers i tell you about the wisdom that god can give a teenager
wisdom the god hey the wisdom the god can give anyone if they'll just say that's my authority
that's it that's it that's my authority you know when i was a little boy i had authority when i got
older where is my authority man brother steve showed us right there that's it boy that's good
hey man you wanna preach again right now i like i really love being in that youth group i started
going to regency when i was 17 years old i just turned 17 so i was involved in the youth group
and you know my friend group was basically the teenagers in that youth group at the church so
there was one uh particular activity that i remember this snow trip that we went on
so we all went on this really fun overnight snow trip with the teenagers and i just remember uh
the youth leader pastor sears telling us that he just loved our youth group so much and he said
this is the youth group i've always dreamed of having you know like he said i've been a youth
pastor for a long time and you know i enjoy obviously doing it for all the teenagers that
i've ministered to but he said like this particular group right here right now this is the the youth
group that i've always dreamed of having so it's kind of cool that he said that and so we had a
good time on that trip well then i graduated from high school though and i ended up graduating early
so i graduated in january instead of may so i was only 17 and a half when i graduated now technically
at the church the rule was that when you're graduated from high school you're no longer
in the youth group so i just didn't tell them that i graduated because i really wanted to stay in
that youth group because i was under 18 and there was kind of a missing demographic at this church
okay because pretty much when the kids would turn 18 19 years old when they graduated from high school
they're pretty much going to do one of two things they're either gonna a go off to bible college
because that was strongly encouraged or b they just kind of you know get away from the lord and
just get backslidden and just quit the church or whatever because now they're adults they're
doing what they want and so you'd see both you know you'd see young people come out of the youth
group and go off to bible college you'd see young people go off to the world and and you know get
involved in sin but as far as just being at the church there just weren't young people at this
church there were a bunch of teenagers but then it was like the next person up for me to fellowship
with is like a 30 year old man with two kids or something so you know i wanted to have friends at
church i wanted to be involved and so i didn't tell them that i graduated from high school
and i just was able to just stay in the youth group at least until i turned 18 so during this time
also i thought that my friends from my old liberal church and my friends from public school that were
christians i thought that they would feel the same way about regency that i did because i'm just super
excited like where has this church been all my life i was excited about door to door soul winning
i was excited about the king james and you know i'm sharing these things with my friends at school
i'm sharing these things with my friends from my liberal church and just none of them were excited
about it or saw it that way because i thought wow people just haven't heard this if they would hear
it then they would they would all be king james everybody would be into soul winning if they would
just hear about it but that's not the way it works apparently and so trying to get these people in
liberal churches to understand these things was just really difficult to impossible and so i
ended up just kind of just losing a lot of friends because they they weren't interested in following
me down that road of being a fundamentalist and soul winning and and all that so you know my friend
group shrank down to just the friend group at regency mainly and so uh you know i really wanted
to be in that youth group and hang around with people my age teenagers so speaking of soul
winning as i'm at regency i'm starting to go soul winning right away from day one there was a
saturday morning soul winning time that i would go to and then i would also go to teenage soul
winning on wednesday evenings before the evening service where we would go out soul winning as
teenagers and then we'd go to mcdonald's and then we'd have the evening service so i started going
soul winning like twice a week the first time i ever went soul winning was on a saturday morning
and i was paired up with a guy named dan dion and he took me out soul winning showed me the ropes i
was his silent partner we went out for i don't know two two and a half hours or something like
that and i got to see him present the gospel over and over again and he actually successfully won
some people to christ so my first time going out soul winner got to see some people getting saved
so that was really cool so after a couple of hours with him i said hey let me get the next door
and he didn't realize that i'd never been out before that it was my very first time so he's
like sure but i didn't really know how to present the gospel necessarily i was just going to at
least try to like start the conversation or just do what i could and so i knocked on the door
and i ended up inviting this little girl to church and giving her the invite and whatever
didn't get a chance to present the gospel but that was a step for me to just at least
knock a door and start the conversation and and do that and then the cool thing was that that girl
ended up actually coming to church the next day uh i think it was on the bus or what have you
and then she ended up getting saved at church like someone else at church won her to the lord
so that really encouraged me like wow you know god used me in this situation to get this girl
to come to church and get saved so the second time i went soul winning was with pastor nichols
himself i was actually paired up with the man himself that was pretty cool and i was just
totally a silent partner that time i just watched him work and then you know third fourth time i
started actually doing the talking start presenting the gospel you know just just basically just doing
it in the beginning exactly the way they were doing it because i was just learning from them
and just learning the ropes from them i you know i tweaked the presentation a little bit later on
to put a stronger emphasis on internal security and things like that but yeah that's how i learned
how to go soul winning at this time you know like i said i graduated when i was 17 and a half and i
started going to community college right away wanted to get a head start on that and i was
pretty much just taking classes that that were personally interesting to me because you know i
was a kid and so i wasn't really like doing the smart thing which would have been like you know
get all your general studies out of the way or whatever it was more like i'm just signing up for
you know get all the pe out of the way right away so i signed up for a couple pe classes
i signed up for spanish german and i did get in like a serious math class
but right away you know i i got into foreign languages and this is something that i had not
really delved into a whole lot before this but you know it was something that my entire life
had fascinated me and i'd always kind of dreamed of wanting to learn a foreign language someday
so you know when i started going to community college i got excited about being able to take
a german class and and to continue in spanish which i had done a bit of in high school and so
i i just jumped into german one and spanish one spanish one was kind of way too easy for me
but german one was was great because i was pretty new to learning german so i learned a ton in that
class so i did a whole semester of community college made some new friends there and you know
tried to win him to christ and stuff like that but when i turned 18 i really wanted to travel
somewhere and you know see the world and and you know learn foreign language and stuff like that
so remember i'd mentioned that the church was really pushing us toward bible college but i
i had no desire to go to bible college i didn't really like the idea of bible college the bible
college in particular they were pushing was a golden state baptist college with pastor treiber
who i did not particularly care for and so i i really had no interest in that so i went to pastor
nichols right around the time that i was you know getting close to turning 18 and i told pastor
nichols i said hey you know i really want to be a missionary and when i turn 18 i don't really want
to go straight to bible college or anything i want to go to the mission field and just kind of get
some experience on the mission field so i said maybe if there's a pastor that would be willing
to just you know take me in and i'll just work for him for free i'll just be his slave and in
return i'll just get you know a place to stay and get training in the ministry and you know learn
the ropes like an apprenticeship just for three months because i could travel to another country
for three months on a tourist visa and so i just wanted to travel somewhere for three months and
just work like a slave and just learn the language and just get the experience of being in another
country and i said you know i'd like to go somewhere in latin america like south america
or central america or something or because i was learning spanish or you know somewhere germans
being like germany austria switzerland something like that so pastor nichols said okay you know
let me let me talk to some people let me let me contact some missionaries and see if anybody
wants to take you in like that so he you know he contacted a few different people and and a few
different people said no but then he finally found one pastor in germany named bill richards who
said yeah sure you know we'll take this kid in and and show him the ropes so you know i ended
up getting in touch with that guy i ended up buying a flight to germany i remember cost eleven hundred
dollars which back then was a lot of money i sold my synthesizer you know i saved up some money
at my job at round table pizza and i paid 1100 bucks to fly to germany for three months and while
i was there i worked with pastor bill richards who's a great guy great church you know really
enjoyed spending time with him but then he also set it up to where i could actually spend like a
week at this guy a week at this guy so he had me kind of going all over germany and i spent a few
weeks with him week over here week over here week over here and you know just whoever was willing
to take me in first it was only a couple of people that were willing to take me in but then
the word kind of got around that that i was actually going to work and i was willing to work
hard and help them out so then i could use a free worker so they had me doing all kinds of stuff
like construction projects or even just cleaning and yard work or just just whatever i just i
didn't care i was just really happy to be over there and to be learning so i'd already taken
german one at community college but you know when i went to germany so i wasn't very good in german
i was just learning but what i did was i brought my college textbook that took you all the way
through german four i brought that textbook with me and every night i would just study it for hours
and then in the daytime i would try to put in practice what i was learning so it was pretty
good somewhat immersive experience obviously i was speaking english with the missionaries and their
families and stuff but at least throughout the day there was a lot of immersion studying the book
at night using it by day just putting a lot of just social situations with groups of teenagers
where it was like sink or swim because they didn't speak a word of english i i went to a
week of public school in germany and just experienced that and and it was obviously
totally immersed in german nowadays a lot of young people speak english in germany but back then
it was pretty much german there was very little english being spoken by the teens
so i did that i stayed in a bunch of places and got a lot of experience and it was kind of a mixed
bag of some pastors that were good pastors that i stayed with and some pastors that were not good
pastors before i get to that i want to just tell something funny uh pastor bill richards who was
my main kind of host or sponsor while i was over there he thought it'd be funny to kind of mess
with me and and basically tell me false things about german to try to get me to like embarrass
myself in german and so like some of it i didn't fall for because i already knew enough german to
know like no this isn't right like for example he tried to tell me oh if you want to know which
which bathroom is the right bathroom he said you know the men's room is the one that says da men
and it's easy to remember because it says da men see the word men and then the one that says herren
he said that's the lady's room and it's easy to remember because it says her at the beginning
h-e-r her and of course i knew enough german to know that it's the opposite he was basically
trying to trick me apparently he had successfully tricked people in the past and had a good laugh
about that but even though i didn't fall for a lot of the stuff he was telling me uh i did fall for
some of it like for example he told me oh if you want to say something's cool in german you just
say it's schwul okay and and and schwul actually means that somebody's like a faggot it's a it's
like a derogatory way of saying that they're a homo and so you know he he said if you want to
say that somebody's cool you say that they're schwul and i believed him and so i ended up i'm
in some situation and i said oh that guy's cool you know oh he's schwul and everybody's like what
the heck on what are you talking about and then another thing that he tricked me on was the word
for delicious in german is lecker and there's another word lecherlich which means ridiculous
okay and he told me he said well you know yeah lecker means delicious but he said you know if
you want to take it up and i just say that you really like the food you say it's lecherlich
which literally means like laughable or ridiculous or you know absurd or whatever so i ended up going
over to this family's house for a sunday lunch and they feed me this this big lunch and we all
eat together and i say you know hey thank you you know the food was ridiculous and they're looking
at me like what in the world so he did he did get me a couple times some of it i didn't fall for
like he tried to tell me that oh this is a really polite word for ma'am and it was actually like
the word for a filthy pig or something so this guy definitely had a sense of humor but i had a great
time with him you know i i'm not trying to make him sound malicious or anything he was a really
nice guy super cool super helpful i had a great time with him he was just you know playing games
with me a little bit so he was on the good column of pastors there were a few pastors that i really
liked then there were some other experiences that i had that were kind of bad experiences there was
this one pastor that i stayed with and he ended up being a calvinist and having some other wrong
doctrines and i remember this one conversation i had with him in particular we're driving down
the road and he's telling me that jesus came from the tribe of juda and the tribe of levi and how
there's like two genealogies for jesus one that shows he's of levi the priestly side and one that
shows he's from juda i'm like whoa hold up so then i i i very like kindly and and meekly corrected
him and said like well you know actually you know in hebrews it says that it's evident that our lord
sprang out of juda of which tribe moses spake nothing concerning priesthood i said the book
of hebrews makes a big deal about jesus like not being from the tribe of levi that he's from the
tribe of juda and then i like opened my bible to the genealogy i'm like you know this this levi in
the genealogy is a different levi like he's actually the son of david on both sides because
you know marys the uh you know a descendant of david and then joseph who's obviously not his
physical father but his stepfather uh because jesus is born of a virgin i said you know joseph
is also a son of david so it's juda on both sides so the guy listens to me for like you know five
minutes quote the scripture explain it to him and he's just silently just listening to me and as
soon as i get done explaining this to him he just says to me well it's like i said you know there's
two genealogies one showing that he's from the tribe of levi and one showing that he's from the
tribe of juda and i was just thinking like wow like my mind was just kind of blown how this guy
could just ignore scripture ignore everything i said and just not care and just have this weird
dumb belief and of course the guy wasn't doing any soul winning it was just tracts and it was just
kind of a joke so i had some experiences like that with just kind of bozo pastors with with
dumb beliefs and just you know not doing anything just lazy not working and then you know another
bad experience was one of the pastors was just a total rukmanite like he believed in different
salvation in different dispensations and that during the tribulation people would be saved by
works and all this horrible damnable heresy but but like i said i had a lot of good experiences
too and the best experience i had was with a pastor named pastor thomas hastings so i ended
up spending one week with pastor hastings and this guy man he worked me to the bone like this guy he
had a big building project going on and i mean in germany things are built out of stone and so it
was like hard labor i'm like swinging a sledgehammer and operating a jackhammer and just working super
hard like six days a week of just really hard labor but i ended up loving it and his wife was
an amazing cook you know he was a hard worker he was doing soul winning his church was thriving
and so you know when i went back to germany the second time i actually i just went straight to
brother hastings and just work with him because i felt like well this guy needs me the most because
he's he can use the hard labor so the second time i went to germany i just stayed with him alone
for three and a half weeks but anyway let me not get ahead of myself so on this first trip to
germany one of the places that i go is munich and this was the total ruckmanite weird pastor
church is tiny like some some services like no one showed up and it was just him and his wife his
wife would just get up and like walk out of the service and just not even be in the service half
the time she was obnoxious i had just a horrible experience there but i'm really glad that i went
there because that is where i met my wife in munich so he had me out handing out tracts in the
what's called the fußgängerzone or the pedestrian zone of munich germany and i was
in particular in a place called marienplatz and so i'm out there handing out tracts but you know
even though i was there to just hand out tracts because that's what the guy had commissioned me
to do what i really wanted to do was soul winning you know what i really wanted to do was actually
present the gospel get people saved and so i did you know i would try to talk to people as much
as i could while i was out there handing out tracts on a daily basis but he had in particular
ordered like 10 000 tracts because he knew i was coming and he just wanted me out there just just
handing these things out and they were chick tracts those little comic book tracts and the
one in particular that i was handing out was called der opstalbar and it had on the front
a picture of a guy playing soccer so i'm standing out there and it was like a five-day week that i
was going to be doing this monday through friday so i'm out there on monday and i'm handing this out
and my future wife walks up and you know i hand her the tract she takes it she walks maybe
20 some feet away and then turns around and comes back and hands it back to me and said oh no thank
you i'm not interested in soccer because she thought it was a pamphlet about soccer like
apparently she hated soccer and so she she felt bad about throwing it on the ground she didn't
want to litter so she brought it back to me and said oh i'm not interested in soccer and i said
well it's not about soccer it's about the gospel and she said gospel she's like oh okay well she
said can you sing some of it for me i was like what in the world so this was like a language
barrier thing because you know the word gospel to her she'd only heard the word gospel in the
sense of gospel music just as a genre of music gospel so she thought that it was about gospel
music and she's like oh you know sing me some of the gospel music i'm like no no the gospel like
how to be saved you know so then i i start talking to her about salvation and i end up going through
the plan of salvation with her roman's road i you know spent maybe a little less than 10 minutes
going through the basic plan and then she says at the end she says well hey you know this is great
but it's not going to do me any good if i'm late for work and so i said okay well you know why
don't you give me your email address and then you know maybe we can be in touch and and maybe we can
talk more about this or you know and so she starts writing it down for me say put your phone number
down while you're at it you know do a little follow-up and so i got her phone number i got
her email address the whole encounter lasted you know somewhere around 10 minutes or something
maybe 15 minutes or something max so you know she ended up leaving but i had her phone number and
her email so on tuesday i'm out there at the same place same time doing the same thing she's also
on her way to work at the same time so we ended up chatting for 10-15 minutes again this time it was
just about unrelated things nothing to do with the gospel we're just kind of talking and just
chatting and hanging out so then on wednesday i did not see her so i ended up calling her on the phone
and saying hey we have a church service tonight why don't you come down it's a seven o'clock
this and that so she said that she was going to come to church so i was really excited like oh man
you know she's going to come to church that's really cool obviously i thought she was beautiful
i liked her on that level and i'm just excited to have a visitor so she ended up being a no-show
to church obviously anybody who's been at this thing for a while knows that people tell you all
the time that they're going to come and then they don't end up coming so then thursday i saw her
you know on her way to work again and chatted with her and she was apologetic about oh i couldn't
make it a friend had a crisis at the last minute i had to drive over and console my friend and
blah blah blah so we chatted for 10 minutes again and then on friday i knew that i was about to
leave this is my last chance to talk to her so i was looking for watching for her and you know
just our paths just didn't cross this is a very crowded area with a lot of people and so i was
really disappointed that i didn't get to say bye to her and then i moved on to the next town on
my trip and you know didn't talk to her again at all the whole time i was in germany after that
because i was just in another city doing other things but i had her email address so in the
next video i'll tell the story about us dating and getting married god bless have a great day