Jim Martin may be stripped of Church of God credentials for refusing to bring a Baptist church into his denomination
A Church of God (COG) pastor who agreed to shepherd a Southern Baptist church could lose his credentials for refusing to align his new congregation with the Cleveland, Tenn.-based Pentecostal denomination.
Not long after a story appeared in Charisma last February about Jim Martin taking the Baptist pulpit at Harvest Church in Beavercreek, Ohio, the COG’s state overseer, Tim Hill, summoned him for a meeting. Although the session was cordial, Martin said, he expects the revocation to occur soon.
“I was aware of the policy but was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” Martin said. “God sent me [to Harvest] to teach what they were hungry for. God did not send me there to pull the church into the Church of God.”
Nor does the church want to go. When the pastor explained the situation to members in late April, they unanimously rejected the idea of changing denominations.
In a written statement to Charisma, Hill said Martin had been given one year to pursue the opportunity at Harvest, and a six-month extension was granted in February. At times, permission is granted for COG pastors to lead non-COG congregations, especially those interested in uniting with the denomination. However, such arrangements can’t continue indefinitely, Hill said.
Although the COG’s next general assembly is in late July, Martin said it is too late for a change to be considered before 2002. He would prefer to see enforcement suspended and the denomination relax the restriction.
According to Martin, the policy tells Baptists, Methodists and others who may be hungry for teaching on the Pentecostal experience that the COG won’t meet their needs unless they leave their denominational heritage behind. “There are members who don’t want to do that because they want to reach other Southern Baptists and tell them you can be filled with the Holy Spirit and still be Baptist. The policy tells them no.”
There won’t be a mass exodus of pastors over the issue, Martin said. However, he knows many credentialed Baptist pastors who struggle to find COG pulpits.
Changing the policy would allow such persons to fulfill their ministry and expand the denomination’s influence, he said. “I would think the Church of God would consider it a feather in their cap to have a church of another denomination ask one of theirs to come in.”
I’m just now reading this, and I used to be a member of the Southern Baptist “Harvest” church in Beavercreek, but I left there a few years before Jim Martin took over. I was previously Word of Faith, at Christ Life Sanctuary, where Jim was the Accountant. I’m shocked at what I read. That the COG won’t meet their (Baptist’s) needs unless they leave their denominational heritage behind. When did the Body of Christ become only COG?? Which of the apostles would have agreed with your self-serving policy? Do you actually believe that Baptists don’t have the Spirit of God, from the very God who saved them? I’ve been “charismatic” since the Lord saved me in 1977 through Pat Robertson’s 700Club, and He delivered me from drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, but not at a COG church, but at a Baptist church in Moraine City (my first church). I’m not a novice to God’s power, healing, and deliverance. I witnessed many “slayings” in the spirit, holy laughter, etc., at Christ Life (now called LifePointe) by the late Jim Spillman, and many other special speakers, as well as by our pastors and other members, including myself (both slain in the spirit, and one was slain in the spirit by me under our Campmeeting tent), and I caught several adults who were slain by four young kids that night after Spillman was through ministering (they took upon themselves after the service, while everyone was chatting to each other, to lay hands on people). Your policy (if it is still enforced) of demanding a congregation leave their denomination behind, or you will refuse to help them, is a heinous schism in the Body. That is not the work of the Spirit of God at all, but the work of Satan. Who was the group (denomination) that Jesus said would travel far across land and sea to make one proselyte, and when they have found him, they would make him a two-fold more child of hell than themselves? The COG has become a fruit fallen from the same corrupt tree. Boanerges forbad one who casted out demons in Jesus’ name, because he wasn’t part of their own group (denomination). What was Jesus’ response? “FORBID HIM NOT: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in My name, that can lightly speak evil OF ME.”
How many of your Baptist brethren are speaking evil of JESUS? Who are you to forbid them your brotherly help and fellowship? Such is SIN. Our warfare in the spirit is that of the entire Body. It is not owned by only “Spirit-filled” denominations. It is owned by the BODY OF CHRIST (not merely the body of COG). When we labor to erect our impenetrable walls of schism against our brethren, whether Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, etc., we are not showing that we are filled with the Spirit of God, for He is in them also, or they wouldn’t be saved. If you don’t think they’re saved because they don’t speak in tongues, you’ve got a long way to go to be “perfect (mature) as your Father in the heavens is perfect.” Pastors were given for the maturing of the Body of Christ, not to cut off portions of it that we don’t like because they’re not like perfect us. No, ecumenism and syncretism is not what I mean. Such as the RCC, Mormons, Adventists, etc., should not be part of our fellowship. For they preach another gospel, another Jesus, and have another spirit. Here we are at the precipice of the end, and we are as immature in our love for one another as the church has ever been. If JESUS be not LORD of both us and our denomination, then WE ARE. Our RIGHTEOUS KING will not allow us to usurp His throne without consequences (such as those He warned five of the churches of Asia with). This is why denominations keep dividing and falling for the woke. They are given over by Christ to Satan for their blasphemy. What do you think the raw evangelist/prophet John Baptist, whose soul burned with the fire of the word of God, would be preaching to us today?