In the Southern Baptist tradition I was baptized at the age of 11  When I reached the ripe old age of 18, I was licensed to preach in the Southern Baptist church and began my ministry there. I attended college at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette. I was also employed as a police officer at that time and completed police academy in 1987. I graduated from college in May of 1990 with a Bachelors degree in Liberal Arts (General Studies). After graduation I moved to Mountain Home Arkansas and went to work with the MH Police department where I am employed still today.

I felt a growing desire to fulfill a vacuum in my spiritual life. A vacuum that I was not able to fill as a Baptist. In 1997 I truly found the Lord after  discovering the beautiful structure of the catholic liturgy. I found true Christian Charity, Sympathy, Compassion, Reverence and  Humility. The void in my spiritual life was filled.

After study of classical Anglicanism (Cranmer, Hooker, Bishop Howe, and so on) I fell in love with the Anglican Church. At the age of 30 I became an Episcopalian, albeit a traditional one.  I entered the deacon formation school here in Arkansas and was ordained in November of 2001.

Though I was aware of "liberal thought" in ECUSA,  I thought I was joining the Anglican Church that I had studied, but much to my dismay I found that the doctrines and disciplines no longer reflected traditional Christian beliefs. The Church was being led away from Holy Scripture by liberal revisionism. I was awakened to the realities of what was going on after convention of 2003 in ECUSA where church practice and belief was "officially changed and endorsed". I gave myself a year to decide what to do. In that time I found the UECNA and God slowly began to draw me to this body. On Tuesday, June 22, (on the Feast of St. Iraneus no less - we still fight Gnosticism today) I resigned from my assignment at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church and was notified by The Most Reverend Stephen C. Reber, Presiding Bishop of the United Episcopal Church that my orders had been received by him and that I am now a clergyman in good standing in the UECNA.

 

I am presently a transitional deacon and I'm preparing myself for the priesthood. Bishop Reber has accepted my canonicals and my Master of Ministry Degree (which I finished in February with Trinity Theological Seminary, Indiana) as sufficient for my ordination to the priesthood and a date in March has been discussed but is still tentative. In the mean time I am immersing myself in study of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and its liturgy. I will also be working closely with The Very Reverend Glenn Hartley; Dean of the Ozarks and Fr. Leo, a priest from St. Gabriel's parish in Springdale, AR.

 

My future ministry in Mountain Home is in God's hands and I am presently exploring the possibility of planting a church here with God's direction. Please pray for me!

 

Pax,     Deacon Sam+