(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

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