Dark was the color of my eyes that echoed the darkness in my soul. I was eleven years old and yet I had already smoked, drank, used drugs and messed around with boys. I would sneak into clubs late at night with my older sister under her boyfriends jacket. Out till 2am doing everything a young girl should not do, my single mother remained uninterested. No rules, no boundaries. I was out of control and rebellion ruled my heart. Then something unusual happened. My older sister who was a punk rock goth, became a Christian. First her hair color changed from purple to her natural brown. Then the continence on her face went from suicidal to pure joy with a sparkle in her eye. I knew I had to find out what had changed her so drastically. That week she took me to a youth group of one hundred teenagers at a charismatic church. I had never seen people worship like that; people my age and older having fun learning about the bible. At thirteen I was so ignorant about Christianity. I knew there was a cross because I would wear them upside down as earrings. I also knew there was a man named Jesus who died a long time ago because I would go to church on Easter with my mom. I just had no idea what the cross and Jesus had to do with each other. The fact that Jesus died on the cross for my sins was something I had never known. That week I was led to the Lord sitting on my big sisters water bed with rainbow sheets after reading a cartoon track called "The Light." My heart was washed pure like the paper you now hold in your hand. Deliverance was immediate for me. I lost all desire to smoke, drink and use drugs. Later that week I was Baptized in the Holy Spirit with the result of speaking in tongues. The following week I read the New Testament straight through. I ate it like a person who had been starving for years, because I had.
Funny how things happen, on one of my first visits to that youth group there was a fight I did not know about. The eight thousand member church pastor's son told another boy that he was going to ask me out on a date. The young man said, "no you don't, I was going to ask her out." As they argued over who would ask me out first, my now husband over hearing both of his friends battling it out, slipped over towards me and asked me out. For our first date he wanted to take me to the churches early morning prayer meeting as a revival was going on there and they had around three hundred people showing up at 5am each day. I was barely a Christian and did not know what he was talking about but I said okay. Sure enough at 4:30am our doorbell rang and there was a boy standing there in front of my mom telling her I was to go with him and pray. She not being very concerned about anything I did just said "whatever" and woke me up. Since we were late for prayer we went to Dennys diner and actually fell asleep in the car before going in. So, we slept together on our first date...the kind with snoring. The rest is history, we have been together ever since.
My ministry experience started young. The year after I was saved I went to Mexico on a missions trip where I was bit by the missionary bug. I loved it. Upon returning I shocked the school with the changes I had made from rocker drug addict chick to an on fire for God loving Christian sweetheart. Starting a bible study in my Arts Magnet high school with thirty students was a great way to bring the light to a very dark artistic crowd. At that time I tested God and let the Lord lead me where ever He wanted me to go as an experiment. At each intersection of the city I had Him lead me right, or left or straight. I was led to the bad side of town to a parking lot with a beat up car where an African American man sat with his head slumped down. I knocked on his window. After praying with him to receive Christ he was so overjoyed he took me into the warehouse next to which he was parked an introduced me to his fellow boxers and coach where I prayed with them as well. As a result of this encounter I became the chaplain for the Dallas Golden Glove Boxing League. I started praying for people at bus stops after school regularly and leading people to the Lord left and right and then getting their information to refer then to a church in their area. I traveled as an evangelist around Texas and spoke at churches with one of my friends from church. When we prayed for people at alter calls many times they would receive healing. My now husband had one of the first Christian punk rock bands in 1988 where they would play in clubs and bars. While there we would witness to the crowd with testimonies and over time develop relationships with skin heads and runaways. We started a bible study right by the bars in a big old house that grew so quickly it was really a kind of church for the club scene filled with new Christians. It was a season of miracles.
After this time, I turned fourteen years old and was accepted at Christ for the Nations Bible Institute as the youngest student in the history of the school the Dean of Women informed me that summer semester. Living on campus for my fifteenth birthday, I dove deep into my biblical studies. Joining the Gay and Prostitute Evangelism team, I went to crack houses and gay bars on Friday nights after eleven with my evangelism class to show them the love of Jesus. By this time I was a youth leader in my large mega church youth group and was asked to help organize and direct their summer camp with hundreds of students. My summer job was working for the 700 Club as a prayer phone counselor and then soon after doing the same kind of work for a Christian television show that my church hosted. There I took calls coming in worldwide for prayer and healing. At seventeen I graduated from High School and the only thing I wanted to do was to go to bible college. Even though I led my mom to the Lord at this point, she would not allow me to go to a spirit filled college so I instead majored in Theology with a minor in Counseling at West Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida. I was hired by the Dean of Woman to be the only freshman resident assistant personally in charge of approximately sixty female students. While studying at this Baptist University, I became a youth pastor for Palm Beach Faith Church, attended a church for the homeless mid-week and volunteered at a foster home for children born addicted to crack and cocaine. By the end of the year I was sure the Lord had me to rejoin my high school sweetheart, get married and enter into full-time ministry.
( Paradise Palm Beach Atlantic University to the Ghetto in New York City to help the Homeless)
Moving up to New York City I was overjoyed to get married, work with my in-law's ministry to the homeless called New York City Relief, as well as help the New York Bible Society and Christian Urban Partnership with large scale outreach follow-up. We co-youth pastored at a Reformed church in Bayside, Queens, Long Island before deciding to move to Los Angeles where I started the application process to attend Life Bible College in 1993. My husbands grandparents had both attended Life Bible College in the 1930's and our great grand parents served under sister Aimee Simple McPherson so it was a natural place for me to apply. The Lord had other plans though and we took a youth pastorate at an Assemblies of God Church in a suburb of San Francisco before my application process was complete. We worked in Northern California for four years directing summer and winter camps, missions trips, preaching for three services a week, holding district wide events, leading outreaches by training teens and adults in music and theater evangelism.
While doing this at age twenty, I took a job as the Director of Development at a Crisis Pregnancy Center where I trained hundreds of volunteers, created a church liaison program involving over thirty churches and planned walk-a-thons, banquets and other fundraising events. I also worked part time for computer companies in thier marketing departments like Oracle and Sega Genesis video game company to help with our income. Partnering with many organizations like Youth With A Mission, San Francisco Rescue Mission, Teen Reach, Teen Mania/Acquire the Fire, Bread of Life and holding a pro-skater skateboard festival taught us to work with many different types of ministries. After our time in the bay area we moved on to Sacramento, California where we attended the fastest growing church nationwide in the Asseblies of God denomination called Harvest Church. There we started our own 509c3 non-profit organization called Creative Action Ministries. We were youth evangelists who would train teams in ministry arts, non-offensive street ministry techniques and then take them out to do the great commission locally. We took a Christan band and theater group all around the United Kingdom and Ireland for 2 months doing outreach, ministering in churches, music festivals, pubs, on the streets and in bible colleges. By this time at age twenty-four with two sweet baby girls and a house payment we found ourselves in need of regular income so back to church ministry we returned.
We we offered a job as youth pastors in the hills of New Jersey at a large Foursquare Church. My husband's grandmother was so proud as she and her parents served at Angelus Temple and have much family history in the Foursquare movement. At The Gathering Place we started the first U-turn teen club on the East coast. We hosted youth pastors nationwide who would come and study how we did youth group to implement it in their own churches. The largest service we ever had was three hundred teens after the tragic Columbine shootings. We did many more camps, retreats, missions and creative, wild services with a live DJ, power point (before anyone knew what power point was), movie clips, dance team, acting team, junk percussion, cafe, game room, skate park, and outdoor concert venue in our grassy hill amphitheater. We created a handbook on youth ministry leadership for our parent volunteers and leaders. We also led our church into working with many programs like Angel Tree, Focus on the Family 30 Hour Famine, New York City Relief as well as partnering with churches of many denominations. After being there one year, the Foursquare Eastern District Youth Director moved on and was not officially replaced. We stepped in the gap for the next three years and united the foursquare youth groups in NY, NJ, PA, CT, and MD by planning and leading district wide summer and winter camps as well as mentoring youth pastors. I was also honored to be the key note speaker for the Foursquare Eastern District Woman's Conference. By this time I had led missions in Dallas, San Francisco, West Palm Beach, New York City, Antigua, West Indies, England, Wales, Ireland, Uganda Africa (with Foursquare missionary Rev. Greg Fisher) and trained teams in mime, Spanish testimonials, cultural sensitivity, leadership, servant hood, team work and reentry going in and out of Mexico and Colombia, South America.
Then 9/11 happened and everything changed. We were encouraged to come back to New York City Relief and start East Coast School of Urban Ministry to respond to the great need that was unfolding before us. We left our home in the country with acres of land and a view of the mountains for a row house in the ghetto just outside of New York City with our two girls and now two boys in tow. There we not only started East Coast School of Urban Ministry but planted four unique Foursquare churches in three years and raised up leaders to take over each one. City Tribe Church, a second City Tribe Church, Front Lines Church, and The Street Hip Hop Church. There was a short documentary about us that was shown to ministry students at Life Pacific while we were in the midst of this divine experiment. "Gods Beggars, My Adventures Discovering God in the Inner City" was a book I helped edit and write with my husband that describes our urban ministry experiences and conveys God's heart for the poor.
In Charisma Magazine's twenty year anniversary edition we were listed as two of the top leaders in America under the age of forty changing the church of the future. We felt very humbled to be included with big names like Matthew Barnett and Cameron Strang editor of Relevant magazine. This article was excellent in representing what still burns in my soul today. Charisma Magazine wrote: "They represent a new breed. Burned out on denominationalism, they avoid labels and aren't comfortable with old church models. Turned off by religious hype, they crave authenticity. Products of the digital age, they are more media-savvy than their elders-and they intend to use 21st century technology to reach people who have been turned off by toxic religion. Today's emerging leaders aren't afraid to push new buttons, sail into uncharted waters or blur the line between secular and sacred. Their faith has been shaped not only by the culture wars of the 1990s but also by reality TV, iPods and instant messaging. They are the first generation to use blogging as an evangelism tool in cyberspace. Today's emerging leaders fully intend to reinvent church, even if it means changing the music, tampering with ineffective church programs and barbecuing our sacred cows. They are passionate about worship, yet today's leaders also have known pain. Their generation has experienced more than their fair share of divorce and family dysfunction. For that reason they are poised to offer more effective ministry to those who have been overlooked by churches in the past: singles, abused women, sex addicts, homosexuals and the emotionally broken. They are also the first generation of Americans to move fully beyond institutionalized racism-and they are intentional about making tomorrow's church a place of ethnic diversity."
Our School of Ministry and churches were all going strong and then something devastating happened. I became ill. Extremely ill. In reflection I think we were hitting the devil right where it hurt and he was lashing back. Also, I had worn myself out with mothering my four children, homeschooling, co-directing and working as a professor at East Coast School of Urban Ministry, as well as co-pastoring and preaching every other week at the first City Tribe church we planted. Traumatized by five break-ins to our home and multiple dangerous experiences brought me to a state of exhaustion. At this point we were forced to make drastic changes in our lifestyle. If we were to make it long term as urban missionaries, we would need to put our family and rest on the top of our priority list. We moved our family of six to a safe, tree filled neighborhood just fifteen minutes away from the ghetto but a world apart. I was in and out of hospitals for five years suffering from every ailment under the sun it seemed but settling in on chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyagia. I could barely get out of bed. I walked with a cane. I was thirty-three and I felt like I was forty-eight or maybe even eighty-eight. I dropped out of ministry as God refocused my energy towards restoring my health, ministering to my four elementary aged children and supporting my husband as he moved into the position of Executive Director for New York City Relief. My husband had to learn to minister and lead without me for the first time.
Almost three years ago we started attending Liquid Church in New Brunswick, NJ who has a heart to dig fresh water wells in Africa and around the world. They are a multi-campus church who are growing like a grass fire in the hills of Pasadena. There we have been marriage mentors as our marriage is now stronger than ever and I also have worked as a life group coach. I am closely observing how Liquid Church runs a multi-campus internet church and do innovative outreaches I have never seen before. That way, when we pastor again one day, I will have more skills and expereiences to emplament into that church body. Now I am involved with New York City Relief in mentoring our fifteen staff members and families that are busy hosting teams from around the country who are serving the poor and helping the homeless with up to 10 outreaches a week.
(Family photo from 2008 but it is my favorite)
I am applying to Life Pacific College because when I was fourteen at Christ for the Nations the Dean of Women made an impression on me. "I would one day like to be the Dean of Women at a Christian College" I thought as she encouraged me that summer. I feel like the Lord has told me this is the time to start finishing my degree with your distance learning program so that by the time my children are grown, I will have my Bachelors in Theology/Bible and my Masters in Education. I only plan to take one or two classes at a time for now as my first commitment for this season of my life is to my husband and family. But, by the time I am forty-six I will have no children at home and be ready to possibly return to full-time ministry, hopefully in the aforementioned profession or in missions. I am requesting that some of my ministry experience could account for some of the classes offered at Life Pacific, and in that way expedite my process somewhat. I also would hope that as we are urban missionaries who raise our own support while we are raising our large family, I would be able to receive some financial aide along with the regular discount you give to ordained Foursquare ministers. Thank you for your consideration to your long distance learning program. I look forward on embarking on this next wonderful adventure together.
Rev. Tracy Lucia Galloway
908-272-5689
hellotheretracy@gmail.com
nycr.org
facebook.com/tracygalloway
youtube.com/tracytalks2u
youtube.com/tracytravels
hellotheretracy.blogspot.com
myspace.com/tracygalloway
scribed.com/juangalloway
liquidchurch.com
youtube.com/watch?v=kvtUIDRhtDw
youtube.com/watch?v=h39t9u5cv_I
No comments:
Post a Comment