Hey everyone this is Pastor Bruce Mejia here from First Works Baptist Church in
Imani, California. I want to make a quick video giving my thoughts on Pastor
Anderson's leadership. Now within recent days there's been controversy
surrounding the King James Conference at Revival Baptist Church and with that you
know Pastor Anderson preached a sermon entitled Ruckmanism in Light of the
Bible where he refutes a lot of the claims that were made at that conference
and refuted a lot of the allegations that were made against him. Now anytime
something like this happens where there's controversy and there's people
that disagree with other people often you all you will have a group of people
that will make the claim that well Pastor Anderson is just trying to
control the people in the churches and he's just a dictator and you know he's
just trying to influence people in other churches he's trying to control what the
pastor's preached from behind the pulpit etc. But quite frankly nothing could be
further from the truth and I want to give my thoughts on that. In 2017 Pastor
Anderson started a church out here in Los Angeles and at that time it was
called Faith Award Baptist Church of course now it's First Works Baptist
Church and we are an independent fundamental Baptist Church separated
from Faith Award but in 2017 he started the church here he ordained me as the
evangelist and ultimately he hired me to be on staff so I was on the payroll of
Faith Award Baptist Church he was my boss and I was his employee. Now with
that being said because he was the boss he really had every right to run the
church in Los Angeles the way he wanted it to be run you know he had the right
to tell me what to preach you know how to run the church how to administrate it
just do it the way he wants it done but he never did that. So the entire time
that we had the church and we were Faith Award Baptist Church of Los Angeles there
was never a time where Pastor Anderson where I received a call from him or had
a meeting with him where he specifically said hey you know you can't preach that
while you're under Faith Award Baptist Church this is what you need to preach
or this is how you need to leave the church and you can't do this you can't
do that. He was never a micromanager that's what I'm saying and in fact you
know there would be times when he would come preach for us once a month or once
every couple of months and keep in mind this is his church or it was his church
at that time it was his church and you know these are the people in his church
these are his church members and never once did he ever go behind the pulpit
and say this is my church I'm your pastor you listen to me you know pastor
I mean he is just the evangelist and you know just kind of being a dictator as
people like to say there's never a time that he did that and in fact I will I
would go as far as to say that there was times when he would come and he would
almost treat our church in Los Angeles as though it was already independent and
what I mean by that is that he showed me the utmost respect not just in person
but just before the people he would treat me as though I was the pastor of
the church even though we weren't independent as of yet and he would often
endear the hearts of the people in the congregation to me he didn't have to do
that you know he was the pastor of the church and it was under his name still
and you know it still had the name faithful about the church but you know
that wasn't really important to him and in fact you know pastor Anderson and I
am obviously we're good friends he's a he's a great friend of mine I consider
him to be a close friend a mentor and a great influencer in my life but you know
you know we obviously agree on a lot of things but there's areas that we don't
disagree that we don't agree on you know there's different interpretations that I
have of certain scriptures in the Bible and he doesn't really care about those
things in fact I remember one time when we were on a missions trip to Mexico
we were faithful Baptist Church still at that time and I brought to his
attention a specific scripture that I had a different interpretation of that
he had preached from nothing major just a minute issue and I asked him I said
hey you know you preach this regarding this scripture this is my interpretation
of it what do you think about that the reason I was asking him is because I
wanted to preach on that subject but I didn't want to do that you know if he
felt like you know that's not what I agree with this is our church still you
do that when you're the pastor but you're under faithful word you preach
how I want you to preach and I asked him about that he said why I don't agree
with that but he said preach it I don't care he literally told me Bruce I I don't
know I don't disagree with what you preach and we're talking about secondary
issues you know obviously we're not talking about primary doctrines but
there's times when I had a different interpretation than he did and even when
I was his employee and he was my boss never once did he say you can have an
indifferent interpretation you just can't preach a different interpretation
in fact he gave me a lot of liberty as the evangelists there to preach those
doctrines and I would often even check in with him I would say hey this is what
I believe about this and he would say I don't have a problem with you preaching
that you know but never once did he ever call me to try to correct me on things
and in fact there's times that I had to call him and kind of drag it out of him
you know because I wanted his insight on something what I'm saying is that you
know pastor Anderson actually gave me a lot of liberty as as an evangelist
soon-to-be pastor in the church even when it came to administration and
church discipline you know there there would be times when I would I would want
to get his insight on a specific issue and he would say you know what I'll
leave that in your hands you know you judge that I trust your judgment you
know you deal with it as you see fit and I learned a lot from that type of
leadership you know one thing I learned is that that he was very secure in his
leadership you know he wasn't afraid that I was gonna become better than him
or that I was gonna win the people's hearts or that I was gonna do my own
thing and he wasn't afraid of me succeeding as an evangelist or as a
pastor and in fact I think that's what he wanted you know he not only he taught
me that um to be secure in my leadership but he also taught me that you know we
should desire for others to succeed and in spite of whether we get credit or not
you know so one thing I learned from him is the fact that he just wants the job
done and he wants others to succeed he wants churches to succeed he wants
pastors to succeed he wants us to win people to Christ and whether he gets the
credit or not he doesn't really care and he was like that the entire time that I
worked for him he never became a dictator he never came to preach for our
church and just kind of slammed his fist on the pulpit and said I'm the leader
here you listen to me and you know pastor me here brother me he is not the
pastor yet you know no in fact he he would often treat us almost like an
independent church and so you know these claims that people make and these
accusations that oh he's just trying to be a dictator if he wasn't like that
with his own employee you know someone who's on his payroll if he was willing
to give him someone like me the liberty to lead and to preach as the Lord led me
you know how much more someone who he doesn't have any ties to like to another
independent church and so you know don't listen to people like that when they
make those claims they don't know what they're talking about and to pastors out
there I would say hey you know don't be afraid of having pastor Anderson
influence the people in your church you know when I think about that what to God
that my church members would listen to all my friends because they would only
benefit from that and in fact it would benefit me for them to listen to my
friends because if they're listening to my friends it's only gonna make them a
better Christian which in turn will make them better church members if my friends
can lead my church members in the way of righteousness make them better soul
winners better Christians better fathers better mothers you know better employees
obviously our church is gonna benefit from that so insecure leaders don't want
people that people to do that you know insecure leaders they want to be the
only ones to influence their church members they don't want them to listen
to anybody else a secure leader seeks to push their church members to be under
listen to other people so they can grow and in fact I took that to heart and in
our church we have a system of leaders about six or seven leaders that are
designated a group of people from our church you know that they are to
disciple and lead and train how to soul win and I'll be honest with you there's
people within those groups that are a lot closer to their team leader than
they are to me and you know what that doesn't bother me at all because at the
end of the day it's gonna make them better soul winners it's gonna make them
better Christians and as we grow as a church at least I know they're in good
hands so you know the insecure leader wants all the attention to themselves
wants loyalty only only to themselves a secure leader just wants the job to get
done you know regardless of who gets the credit you know secure leader wants
everyone to succeed and their success is not based upon putting others down in
order to elevate oneself up so I just want to make that video because I know
there's a lot of people out there that will make those claims and I know
pastor Anderson's not gonna make a video defending himself in this area so I will
you know I work for him I know him as a boss and I'm sure his current employees
could validate that as well you know he's a secure leader he wants others to
succeed and he's not a micromanager he's not a dictator you know so stop
making those claims that's pretty much it god bless