My name is Jim Fishera, my wife's over here, Maureen, we,
we've been attending here for about 3 months.
We sit in the back. So you probably haven't seen
this much, but pastor had asked me to share a little bit about
the, the Jesus movement back in the early 70s.
And I was fortunate enough to be a part of that and, and then
share my testimony how I became a Christian.
And in the, in the picture here, you see, you see this big tent
and you may have seen it on TV or watching the video.
It's, it's the first, it's the beginning of Calvary Chapel back
in Costa Mesa. And I was lucky enough to go
there very shortly after the tent.
But before I go any further, let me just have a word of prayer.
Father God, thank you so much for opportunities.
Thank you for your word that you've just shared with us today
that we do have a responsibility and that's to use those gifts as
as you've given us bless this time.
Now, Lord, open our hearts, open our ears and we'll give you all
the glory even though they're testimony what I did, but it's
all for you, God, it's all for you and we praise you for that
in Jesus name, Amen. So like I mentioned, my wife and
I started coming here. We we've been married 50 years
this year. We have 3, two children, we have
5 grandchildren. Our children are grown, we have
5 grandchildren and we're going to have a great grandchild in
the spring. So we're we're really excited
about that. And again, before I get into my
kiss and this is not going to be a preaching thing.
I'm not a preacher, I'm not a teacher.
I'm just an ordinary churchgoer that has had a lot of
experiences over the last 50 years.
Then my brother went to church a couple months ago and he said
those priest, he says, I don't know why I'm here.
And the priest said to him, if you don't know why you're here,
you probably shouldn't be here. And it kind of, it kind of was a
strange thought. So when you think about this,
why are you here? Why am I here?
Well, physically I'm here because friends invited us to
come here. And that's how church grows.
You invite people to come. You invite people to, to, to, to
know Christ or to know your church.
And that's what's neat. The Margie and, and Gary Blair
invited us. We've we've known for about 6
years and they just kept inviting us to come to church
with them. And we did a couple months ago.
And that's another whole story about the different churches
that I've gone to. But we are here to learn about
God, the Bible study today, learn about what what we're
supposed to do with the gifts that we have and we're expected
to grow and serve. And if I can just share
something real quick here in Ephesians, Paul says it was
given some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be
evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.
And we know what what they're required to do, but they're
there to prepare God's people for the works of service so that
the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach the unity
and faith in the knowledge of the Son of God and become
mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of
Christ. So Paul's telling us that we got
to keep doing things until we become mature.
How long is that going to take? Well, in God's time, we don't
know because we don't know how long it's going to take.
We can't. Yeah.
The apostles thought they were going to see God soon, but soon
the goddess who knows? So, but we are expected to grow
and serve. My wife and I were high school
sweethearts. We we went to high school
together and when I graduated, I was a year older than her.
So when I graduated, I moved to California.
I went to visit my sister for a while and then and then I
actually moved there. Maureen stayed back to finish
high school and then nursing school.
But when I was out there, I met this guy, his name was George,
and he liked basketball. I like basketball.
He liked, he came from New Jersey, I came from
Pennsylvania. So we kind of hung around.
So we had many questions about different things.
Being Catholic, I had a lot of different questions about that.
And George questioned my Christianity, which was very
strange to me because I've never had anybody do that.
And I said, well, I'm a Catholic, so I'm a Christian.
And he proceeded to tell me the difference between a Catholic
and a Christian. And that was pretty neat because
I always thought if you were, if you believe God, that you were
going to go to heaven. That's it, need to believe God.
But there was much more to it, as I find out later on.
He invited me to a church. Now, this church wasn't a church
like this. It wasn't a building.
It was a park. It's called Church in the Park.
And they had a park in Covina, CA and the trees were all around
and that's where the church was. The people were the church and
they just happened to meet in the park.
They were a bunch of young people, I mean hippies.
We were we were all young high school and college age kids.
And the church was called agape. And you probably know what agape
means. It's God's love.
And how it all started was there was this crazy Gray haired
bearded guy that would preach after a a rocks band called
Agape would play in Hollywood, CA and they were playing before
a group called Love song. I don't know if you've ever
heard of love song but pretty popular group from Calvary
Chapel. And Agape was a iron rock.
I can't remember the Hard Rock band.
It was very it was very loud. The following where they, they
were hippie guys, hippie girls and, and Rahm would give a
message after that. And sooner or later they all
ended up at Calvary at Agape Church in California, in, in
Covina, CA at this park. And we're talking 200 and 5300
young kids at this park. And our pews weren't like
chairs. We brought sand chairs.
You remember the old sand chairs.
They would sit real close to the ground and everybody had their
little chalice and we broke bread and drank grape juice for
a communion. And it was just different than
anything else. But I wasn't a Christian.
I didn't. I just remember I just had met
this guy George, and he took me there and I was amazed.
And he said, hey, Jim, let's go down to this Christian band.
So we drove down to Costa Mesa and shortly after the tent, they
had the brand new building built and believe it or not, they were
already outgrown that building. The Jesus movement in Southern
California around that time was growing so fast I couldn't keep
up with it. And it was exciting.
It was, it was big. It was more than more than you
can imagine. It was is Martin and I went to a
we went to a a church just this past Christmas and our
sister-in-law said, you want to go to church?
We said sure. And so we go to church with them
and they were having 13 services for Christmas.
Sounds like a lot, right? The better part is the church
held 2000 people. So is there still a Christmas?
Is there still a movement going on?
Yeah, it's going on throughout the whole United States.
The Jesus movement is alive and well.
Now some of these churches are different.
We walked in there and I said to Maureen, I says, something's
wrong. I don't see anybody carrying the
Bible. So again, you have to discern
what's going on. I'm getting off track here.
Do it. I'm sorry about that.
But so anyway, we go into church in a park and Georgia invites me
to this Calvary Chapel, and I'm listening to this music and it's
wonderful. It's just a neat country
Christian music. And there's this guy after the
music's on. Chuck Smith was the pastor of
Calvary Chapel and he had this way of talking.
His, his voice was so calm and so nice and he had this smile on
his face. And after the music was on,
he'd, he'd do a little message and then he'd do an altar call
and, and I could just, I can hear his words now, you know,
all right, if you believe and you know, you want Jesus to be
in your heart and go on and on. And he said, just slip up your
hand. And then he'd say I see you,
then I see you and I see you and I see you.
And at the end of this day, I, I at the end of the service, a guy
would look at me and all these people would look at me like,
did he make a decision? Did he make a decision?
Then? No, I didn't I, I said the band
was good, the drummer was awesome.
But that's, that's, that was as far as it went.
So we went there quite a few times, probably 6 or 7 different
times and it was always the same.
I enjoyed music, it was fun. I got to see an afterglow.
They had a afterglow meeting after one of the services
checked it an agree and it was too much.
But while this all happened, I was working in a Body Shop and I
hurt my back and my boss said to me can you ride this late?
Can you ride this lady home? I said sure and I'm crawling out
from this car and I'm really in pain.
And she looked at me and she says can I pray for you?
Now that was really strange coming from a Catholic bracron.
No one ever prayed for you. She put her hands on me and she
prayed for me and I felt really strange.
I mean, just it was just it felt funny to me again, I haven't
accepted Christ yet. And so I drove her home and in
turn, she had this really nice car and she said I'll never
drive it over 25 mile an hour. And I thought, no, I'm going to
it was a 390 Ford Galaxy 504 speed and going on the going on
the freeway. I went through the gears.
I got on the Turnpike or on the freeway and suddenly blew the
motor up. So you learn, you learn lessons
when you're a kid. So after all this, you know, I
got to, I got to see some really neat songs.
If you, if you know any of the Marinatha groups back, back in
Calvary Chapel, love song was very popular and the other one
was called the way and they'd have one song.
And if you ever get a chance, look up the song called Can it
be? By the way, a friend of ours
from Agape actually wrote that song and his his group had
disbanded. But it's a really, really neat
song and it gives you an idea of the music back then.
So now we get into the good part here where where the Bible study
one day and I have a Bible, but I I read it, but I don't
understand a word. I have absolutely no idea what
it says. And we're Bible study one night
and Ron Turner at Agape and Ron Turner's doing a message on the
gospel of Mark. And when he gets to the asking
the apostles to come and follow him and he talked to Andrew and
he talks to James and John Simon and he says come, follow me.
And it was interesting to me that they would just stop what
they were doing, pick up and follow him.
And I guess God was working on me at that point.
When Ron did his altar call, his was a little different than
Chuck Smith. He, he made you stand up, not
just raise your hand, you know, he says, if you make this
decision and during his prayer, my words were ahead of his
words. That's the only way I can
explain it. And, and then he said, if you
made the decision to follow Jesus, I'd like you to stand up
and, and show the rest of the church and, and, you know,
confessed in front of everybody. And I couldn't stop myself from
standing. And that was a, that was a
neatest thing. And it, it changed my life
forever. And that was 1974.
So it's been quite a few years since then.
And then the fun starts. What are you going to do with
what God has given you to do? We all have gifts.
Unfortunately, you know, I haven't used all mine because
it's full potential. I know that.
And I, I, I, I asked for getting this a lot, but I've had some
great times different churches. We didn't we finally left agape.
Maureen and I actually got married in a in a small church
in California. Our parents, neither one of our
parents have ever seen a wedding outside of a Catholic Church.
And we decided we're going to give it all.
We're going to share our testimony going going church.
Well, one of us did, Maureen, I was a blubbering idiot.
I'm a very emotional person and I, I really couldn't say a whole
lot other than and, but it was, it was important to us to share
with them what it was to be a Christian and not just going to
a Catholic Church because that's what you always did on Sunday.
So we got married there. I got to get into the, a little
bit about the, the, the progression after accepting
Christ They had with in agape, they had what they call a new
Christian Bible study. And it was the, the book of
first John and it was taught by different groups.
Now there was again, I don't know, maybe 5 or 6 different
groups of five or six different people all going at the same
time, because that's how many people are coming to Christ
constantly and, and during this movement.
And so the FMS were doing this and the FMS were the future
ministers. And I think of that when I, when
I see some of these folks here that are really into moving on.
Now, the future ministers were part of the of the church that
they were either felt called to be a missionary or a minister or
a teacher or a leader. And funny, there was 12 of them.
And I guess Ron had figured it out that way.
But I got a call from Ron after doing my Bible study, after my
first John Bible study, I got a call from Ron to say, hey,
there's this guy that likes cars and he's kind of a loner.
His name's Tom Lockwood. You, you think you could, you
know, just talk to him and see what he's doing?
I thought, yeah, I could do that.
So talk to Tom. And we paint very good friends.
He was in our wedding along with George.
And George had taught me that you need to have a paw and a
Timothy in your life. You have to have someone you can
look up to and and talk to. That would be George for me was
my Paul and then I was going to be Paul, not knowing it, but I
was going to be the Paul at the pawn.
And and I think that's important where you have somebody that you
can turn to to ask questions to and then someone else can come
and ask questions to you. And that's how we grow.
The next important thing was the evangelism after after you did
the, the, the lessons in first John, we had evangelism cast
glasses. And the reason I am so excited
about that is smiling about that is I actually got to talk to a
girl that never knew who Jesus was.
Didn't you know? You think about that with the
way things are now, everybody has had to heard about Jesus.
Well, this girl knew that there was a Christmas, but they had no
idea what it was about. And I got to share with her and
I invited her to church. I never saw her again, but we
would go to different parks. We would play ping pong at
different places. I'm going to get a hold of head
of myself here. And then there was this one girl
at church that asked for prayer for her husband.
She had just had twins and her husband wasn't a Christian and
his name was Doug. I prayed every day and every day
and every day and every day until Doug had made a decision.
And Doug and I and Tom became very, very good friends.
We became ping pong friends. Like I said, we would go to
different community centers and play ping pong with different
kids and share. And it worked out pretty good
that way. And Doug was, was a great kid.
Again, we're talking and I'm having this flashback now.
Doug, you can picture the Beach Boy, long blonde hair, good
looking guy, built perfect. You know, it was, it was pretty
cool. Now I'm praying before I read my
Bible and things are coming very clear to me and I'm able to
understand it and I give glory to God for that because I don't
read much. This is this is about the only
thing I ever read is, is my Bible and I don't read it
enough. And I know that and I, you know,
I, I fully understand that. The next thing is you heard a
verification Bible study it for your kids or vacation Bible
school. We had what they called ACR.
It was all church retreat. Everybody from the whole church
went to A to a retreat and was our, our Covina church, this the
Salt Lake City church. And then there was another one
in Saugus, CA And we would all get together.
And I think we have a picture of that of the of the the might
have been the bottom one. I'm sorry, but it's a you get a
good kick out of the the good looking guys there and good
looking guys and girls there. But we would go to this place
called Forrest Home Christian Conference Center.
And I'm trying to be quick here, but Forrest home Christian
concert Center was was made by lady, her name was Henrietta
Mears. She was from amazingly Hollywood
Presbyterian Church, Ohio. No.
And she started this place. People like Billy Graham went
there. Bill Bright, if you, if, if you
I'm no, I'm dropping names, but you might not know who they are.
But Billy Graham, he kind of reached out to church people and
spread the word. Bill Brights reached out to
college people and like this guy that had just done this now.
And Bill Bright also wrote the four spiritual laws and he,
these were tracks that we used to pass out the people back in
the day. He also started the thing called
Athletes for action. Now, another quick story is in
our, in our church at Agape, we would also have an athletes in
action, but we went to prison and because we were all sports
guys, we decided we're going to play basketball with them and
that would go good. And we talked to him afterwards
about Christ. And then we play softball with
them. And we talked to him after about
Christ and. And then one day we decided
we're going to play football with them.
And that happened one time. We won and we weren't going to
play ever again. But it was it was an exciting
time to share with people that really.
And this was a what I want to try to say this, the prison was
top notch. Pardon me.
Yeah. Maximum, maximum security
prison. So we had to, you know, take
everything off. And it was quite exciting.
I got baptized at Forrest Home and I also learned to sing a
song called How Great Thou Art. They had a they had a room there
that every time you entered the room, you had to sing How Great
Thou Art. So obviously that's my favorite
song. But this is on the left is Ron
Turner. On the right is another one of
the pastors we had Ernie. And and that was me when I had
to hear a long, long time ago. The next thing that it was
important was we went to Bill Bright's retreat center.
And there after learning a little bit about the word and
the different things that Christians could do, I decided,
I'm going to pray and pray and pray and I'm going to move the
mountain. I thought, you know, that's what
you're supposed to be able to do.
You have to have enough faith to move the mountain.
And they also wanted to speak in tongues because that's what they
did at Calvary and neither happened.
I, I prayed a lot. I spent a long time there
reading. And a couple a couple months
ago, they were doing a thing here about the James where he
talked about and if the Lord wills you will do this and that.
I was studying that chapter. And that's when I decided that
Maureen was the girl I wanted to marry.
And it was very important time for me.
And I remember it vividly on that sitting on that grass on
that mountain. Well, time wise, how we done.
I'll keep going just for a quick couple things about our our
children. We, we moved back from
California to Pennsylvania here and we had to find a new church
and we ended up at a Calvary Baptist Church and it was a very
good time. A lot of good things happened
there. Our children were we, they were
born while we were there and grew up there, took them on
mission trips. Neat things happened there until
neat things didn't happen there. I had AI was a Deacon at that
time and we just started a, a boys brigade and we got a new
leader for the education committee.
And this lady decided that we weren't going to have any boys
brigade anymore because they didn't have anything for the
girls. So she quit the boys brigade.
And my infinite wisdom, I said, OK, well, if you're going to do
that, I'm just leaving. So we left that church for very
poor reasons. We went to another church that
our girls were going to at this time and in Mckeesport and it
was a good church. Nice church is good preaching.
We got to meet some good people there and comes Easter time
who's sitting in front of us, but the lady that quit the boys
brigade from the old church. And I was very upset.
And then before I said something I shouldn't, I said we're just
not going to go there anymore. Then the girls start playing
basketball and softball and baseball on Wednesday nights and
Sundays afternoons and we kind of didn't go anywhere for a
while. My buddy said, well, you going
to meet this guy? He's really good.
He's at a Methodist Church and I said a Methodist Church.
He says, yeah, you got to meet him.
So we met him. We ended up staying there for a
long time and got, got involved there.
I was singing in the band and in the praise group and leading
prayer and just having a good time and praying for the pastor
daily. And and then they moved them
just, you know, just the way things happen with the Methodist
Church. So we went with them.
And then the, the, the stuff happened with the Methodist
Church. Then he decided he needed to
leave there and we decided we need to leave there.
And now we have no church again. And it was.
So the reasons we left were my own reasons.
And I, and I apologize and I, I pray to God for forgiveness,
that too many times we just walk away from God.
But the neat thing is he never walks away from us.
He always says it's OK, just do what?
Just do what I ask you to do. And the only way we can do what
he asks us to do is to know what he wants us to do and then
follow through with what he wants us to do.
But more importantly, just give him the glory for everything we
do Do. So with that, I'm going to stop
and thank you for this opportunity.
Hopefully we'll be here for a long time.
We love this church. The I have two two things to say
real quick about church, please. We walked in and I said, how
does a church this size support 2 pastors?
And again I'm thinking, OK, there I am.
I'm finding excuses again. But when I saw somebody come up
and ask for prayer and, and pastor say, OK, I need to call
the deacons up to pray for them, that was it.
That's church, that's church. You don't have a guy that's
leading you. I mean, you have a guy that's
leading you, but you don't have a guy that's taking control of
the whole situation. And that's a neat to see.
That's really neat to see. So continue doing good and I
thank you for your time.