My name is Mike Peek a member of your congregation. My wife Darlene and I have been attending Sylvania church since April 2012; we became members in July of that same year. Most of you except for maybe Dave Rowlett, know me fairly well, and are aware for the most part of the ministry that I have been involved in. In January 2010 the Lord put an incontrovertible burden within my heart: First to glorify the name of Jesus Christ out of thanksgiving for what he did for me, and secondly out of love and concern for my neighbor, that they might know Him and be saved from the impending wrath of God. By profession I am a cardiovascular intensive care nurse, I have no idea how many men and women I have stood over, pounding their chest in an attempt to resuscitate them as the Lord took them from their body. Death is real for me, I see death so often, and it never gets easy. So when I say the burden that the Lord has given me for the lost is high, it is very high indeed.
I began to pour over scripture and try to figure out how to share my faith in Christ with other people. I first began talking with people, even to telemarketers as they called my home. Then I began passing out gospel tracts, and intentionally heading out the door for several hours at a time to witness to people. I began to write a blog called, “A slave of Jesus Christ”, which I initially started as a witnessing tool, but this has changed with time. One day I typed in a slave of Jesus Christ into Google, to see if my blog would pop up. It didn’t, but another blog did called, “Doulos Christou Iesou”. I clicked on the blog and the first thing there was a YouTube video, in the video there was a man standing on a street corner at an intersection in the evening light with a wooden cross with these words on the cross beam, “ARE YOU READY” and the sound in the video was John MacArthur preaching a sermon that I had previously heard and had named my blog after called, “A slave of Jesus Christ”. I immediately saw this as another tool in the arsenal with regards to the burden God had given me, to glorify the name of Jesus Christ and to reach out to the lost. The man with the cross I would later meet and call both friend and brother, his name is Tony Miano, he lives in California. Tony is like me, a reformational open-air preacher. Shortly after interacting with Tony I would have this overwhelming desire to preach Christ and Him crucified out in public, I had much fear, but would not be settled until I did, and I have been preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ out in the public arena ever since.
At this point I found myself in kind of a spot, I knew of these brothers in California who were out sharing their faith but didn’t know anyone in East Texas who did, and no one from the church I was a part of at the time was interested, so I felt very alone. I prayed to the Lord, asking Him to give me a partner to go out and preach with, He would answer that prayer quickly. Darlene and I had gone to dinner and were eating outside. When we had finished and were through eating Darlene noticed a man handing out gospel tracts, I would then meet Seth Capps of Carthage, TX, who was also a reformational open-air preacher and knew Tony Miano and many other men who were doing this. Seth had been involved with Sports Outreach International, the parachurch ministry that I go to the Super Bowl with each year. Ever since then, myself, Seth Capps (Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Longview), Mike Anderson (Bethel Bible in Tyler), Jason McMurray (First Baptist Lindale) have partnered together to go out and preach the gospel at events around the state and at the abortion mill in Shreveport, LA.
Now that I’ve given you a brief history, allow me to explain the reason that I am writing you. This past Wednesday, October 23, I, and Mike Anderson went out to Tyler Junior College to exalt the name of Christ and preach the gospel. As I said, we are reformational open-air preachers, meaning that we are reformed in our theology; we all believe that salvation comes by the grace of God alone, through faith alone, in Christ Jesus alone, and that faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. So, therefore, as reformational open-air preachers we go out into the public arena, open up the word of God, proclaim the word of God, then expound upon the text focusing a great deal on the gospel. There are people that we know about, but don’t personally know, who go to places like college campuses and call themselves preachers of the gospel. But what these men are is open theist, because of their theology their methodology is a mess. These men will hold up signs that say things like, “TURN OR BURN” and many others. They will purposefully incite anger, calling people names to draw a crowd then somewhat preach but in order to keep the crowd they have to keep calling people names. They will almost never preach the gospel, but just keep telling people to repent of their sins. I had seen on the news that a group of these men had been at Tyler Junior College the week before and had caused much trouble.
My heart was broken by this, so, therefore, I asked Mike Anderson to go with me to Tyler Junior College to exalt the name of Christ and lift Him up; we don’t need things like this, or pragmatism, but all we need to do is exalt Christ and He will draw men to Himself (John 12:32). This past Wednesday I preached Romans 3:9-28, I’ve included a sound cloud link of that message in this letter, so that you, the elders will know what it is that I am preaching, it is a long message, because it was on a large text, but I thought it was needed that day. https://soundcloud.com/mike-peek-1/justification-by-faith
We were well received by both the students, and staff of Tyler Junior College; we had a few students, who just hate the name of Christ, but for the most part we were well received and the preaching caused many gospel conversations.
Since going, my heart has been burdened for that school. What I would like to do, Lord willing is to take some of what we are doing in the church and bring that to this campus. Phillip just recently finished “The Gospel According to John”, and I would like to take that, and bring it to this campus. My plan Lord willing is to go to the campus of Tyler Junior College one day every week, and systematically preach through the gospel of John. I plan Lord willing to begin this week with John 1:1-5. It will take me through the end of the fall semester to get through the 1st chapter of John, and then pick up with chapter 2 the first week of the spring semester. I believe the Lord can use this to draw men to Himself.
Mike Peek a slave of Jesus Christ
Note: Click on the things highlighted to take you to things that I have referenced in this blog.
