Equipped and Empowered - Tampa Fellowship

Today I’m going to briefly tell you about the new Christian fellowship that some friends and I have started in Tampa, called Equipped and Empowered.  Just to start with the basics, we are meeting once a month on Sunday nights at MorningStar Church, located at 5102 W. Linebaugh Avenue, Tampa, FL 33624.  We meet at 6:30 p.m. and the meetings last about two hours.  Our upcoming dates are August 16, September 13, October 18, November 15, and December 13.  The meetings are open, and we would love to see you there.

While we do meet at MorningStar Church, this fellowship is not officially associated with any church.  At our last meeting, for example, I think we had 25 people, praise God, and we had people from at least four or five different churches.  Our leadership team for these meetings is me, Pastor Stephanie Parker and her husband Scott Parker, Rossaue Hosein, and Mark and Midge Graham.  I will talk about those wonderful people a little bit later in this message.

Here is our mission statement - “To equip the saints, especially with respect to their relationships with the Holy Spirit, their Spiritual Gifts, and the Baptism with the Holy Spirit.”

Our key inspirational verses are Mark 16:15-18, Ephesians 4:11-13, Acts 19:1-6, Acts 1:8 and Luke 24:49. I won’t read them all to you here, but you can certainly look those up.

So that probably gives you an idea of what we are about and what we are doing in these meetings.  All of us, I mean those who facilitate this fellowship, are very focused on the importance of the Holy Spirit and the impact God wants the Holy Spirit to have on our lives.  We are going to talk about the Holy Spirit and the different aspects of His ministry to Christians.  In addition to the teaching, we are also going to have a response time of prayer, altar ministry and spiritual fellowship with each other.  Let me tell you about our first three meetings to give you a better idea.

In our first meeting, Pastor Stephanie Parker spoke about abiding in Jesus and the importance of our relationship with the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is always with us.  The Holy Spirit brings the constant presence and fellowship of God into our lives.  We must focus on this relationship and draw close to God.  Then, in the response time, we all took communion together, where we actually served each other, and then had a time of prayer.

In our second meeting, I spoke about the ministry of the Holy Spirit to help our daily lives, and specifically His ministry as the Comforter.  God wants us to live in faith, hope, comfort, joy and peace, and the Holy Spirit will help us.  As you probably know, another name for the Holy Spirit is the Comforter.  In the original Greek, the word Comforter conveys the idea of “come near.”  It’s like if a child hurts himself and you say come here and you give him a hug and comfort him.  That’s the concept of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter.  He draws us close to God to comfort us, console us, and encourage us.  We then spent time praying about God and His promises, and specifically engaging our hope in God bringing His Word to pass in our lives.

In the July meeting, Pastor Stephanie spoke about the Holy Spirit’s role in helping us understand Jesus.  In a wonderful teaching, she explained how the Holy Spirit takes the veil away so we can see Jesus clearly.  The Holy Spirit helps us to know Jesus and then helps us become like Him.  After her teaching we had a powerful time of prayer.  Several people received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues for the first time.  The others broke into groups and prayed for each other.  They shared what the Holy Spirit has revealed to them about Jesus and what the Holy Spirit is inviting them to move into with their lives.

So you get the idea.  In each of our meetings we are going to teach about the Holy Spirit or some aspect of His ministry in our lives.  Then we are going to have a response time of prayer where we step into this ministry and these spiritual realities, right then and there.  As time goes on, we will get into deeper spiritual subjects like the Spiritual Gifts, prophecy, divine healing and so on.  On August 16, our next meeting, I will be teaching on the basics of spiritual warfare and using our spiritual authority, and then we will have a time of prayer where we step into those activities. 

We also have some brief fellowship time before and after the meetings, and we start with a time of worship.  Being able to use the MorningStar Church facility, where Pastor Stephanie is the associate pastor, is a tremendous blessing because they have a great space, sound system, and all of that.

So I really hope you will pray about joining us.  And if you have never received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit or your prayer language, please at least come for one meeting and receive.  We all believe those blessings are extremely important and we are going to have an invitation to receive them at every meeting.  And feel free to share this message with anyone you know. 

So those are all the details, and you are all invited to come.  Now that we are done with the details and the invitation, if you still want to listen, I’d like to tell you the story of how we got here, at least from my perspective.

When I was a kid my family and I went to various churches, but the one that had the greatest impact on me was Faith Covenant Fellowship.  This was a Spirit-Filled church and, while I was very young, I knew they were open to spiritual things.  One day at children’s church the woman teacher prayed for all the kids to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues.  I received it that day, and, despite a number of wayward years, I’ve never looked back on that experience or denied my prayer language.

My parents divorced, and my mother started attending Riverhills Church of God, where she met my stepfather, Ernie.  That church also embraced the Holy Spirit and the Spiritual Gifts, and you would regularly hear tongues and see other manifestations of the Spirit.  My father went to Countryside Christian Center, and basically it was the same over there.  Then, when I was 17 or 18, my father started attending The River at Tampa Bay Church, pastored by Dr. Rodney Howard-Browne.  Let’s just say that church opened me up to a whole new dimension of spiritual worship and spiritual gifts.

Now don’t get me wrong, I was a very sinful child and young adult, and I wasn’t paying much attention in these church services.  But I always knew that the day would come when I would serve the Lord, and that the full embrace of the Holy Spirit and His Gifts was always in the cards for me.

When my dad took me up to law school orientation in Atlanta, he also took me to visit World Changers Church International, pastored by Dr. Creflo Dollar.  Now I won’t get derailed on this subject, but let’s just say of all the good things my father has done to parent me, that was one of the highlights.  When I got back in the fall to start school I kept going there, and that’s where I turned over my life to God and started really studying God’s Word.  At World Changers, at every service, they would give everyone an opportunity to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and their prayer language.  I loved that.  World Changers doesn’t necessarily embrace Spiritual things like the River does, they run a pretty tight ship there, but there was no question where they stood on the Holy Spirit and the Spiritual Gifts.  Everyone says that Dr. Dollar only speaks about money, but everyone who has sat under his teaching knows that isn’t true.  For example, while I was going there he spent one entire summer, every service, teaching on the Holy Spirit.  My wife was living there while I was back home in Tampa working, and she would mail me the cd’s from every service.

So the Holy Spirit has been extremely important to my personal faith journey, and I’ve always believed in the Spiritual Gifts, speaking in tongues, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and all of that.  But as I have continued to grow as an adult living in Tampa, I’ve come to see more and more the Holy Spirit being excommunicated from the modern American church.  To say this grieves me would be a tremendous understatement.  Where can you go to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit?  What church service will help you speak in tongues or step into your Spiritual Gifts?  If your church believes in them at all, when was the last time they invited you to step into these blessings? 

Maybe your church is on fire with all of this and doing great, and I hope so.  If that’s the case, please tell me.  But that’s simply not the case for most churches these days.  Look, I’m not trying to be negative, I’m beyond all that now.  I’m just stating the truth.  That’s the way it is.  For whatever reason, the churches, by and large, just don’t get into these subjects and the people don’t get the opportunity to receive, at least not at your typical Sunday service.  I hate this problem and I have long wanted to do something about it.  I’ve tried to share on these subjects as I can, but I didn’t have lots of opportunities.

But then God did something awesome.  Back in 2021, God spoke to two mighty men, Pastor Dale Brooks and Pastor Doug Hinders.  Those two, both Pastors at Grace Family Church, with Senior Pastor Craig Altman’s blessing, started a new class at Grace, and they called it Prayer and Healing.  They also called some wonderful, wonderful people to join them, including Pastor Stephanie Parker, Rossau Hosein, Carlos Rivas, Dr. Daniel Nevels, and some others.  I’ll just point out that they didn’t call me.  I didn’t really know them.  But praise God, my mother is friends with Pastor Doug’s wife, Marilyn, and so my mom found out about this and told me.  So I showed up. 

Pastors Dale and Doug began leading a different kind of class, a kind of class I had never seen before.  They would teach and we would pray, and maybe that’s common enough, but there was an honor for the Holy Spirit that I hadn’t seen.  These men, and the leaders with them, were going to submit to the Holy Spirit in their meetings, and that was more important than anything.  Eventually they invited me to teach alongside them, and this time was very important for my personal development, yes in the Scriptures, but also in learning to minister alongside others, and to honor the gifts and ministries that God has given others.

I remember one time Rossaue was teaching.  After the teaching she led us in groups to visualize one of the miracles of Jesus.  I was at a table with 7 or 8 other people.  As we sat there holding hands and praying, the Holy Spirit touched us all deeply.  It was one of the most powerful touches from God’s Spirit I had ever felt.  But it wasn’t weird, we weren’t pushed into it.  I don’t know how to say this exactly.  Rossaue taught us the Word.  She invited us into prayer.  But then the Holy Spirit took over.  Dear God, please let that happen in every one of our meetings.

I remember another time Pastor Stephanie was ministering.  She had been up at the front teaching and leading us in prayer.  The presence of God filled the room and settled on everyone there.  I don’t have another way to describe it.  There were like 25 people there.  For like 15 minutes we all just stood in silence.  It was so powerful!  The Holy Spirit just ministered to each of us.

Give me different.  Give me exciting.  Give me the true manifestation and move of the Spirit.  I want big Holy Ghost.  How can we minister in such a way that God’s Spirit directly touches His people, and His people experience His Spirit’s ministry as He intends.  Brothers and sisters, I don’t have all the answers, but this is what we are going for, and we are pursuing it with Holy Ghost boldness and courage.

So we ministered in that wonderful setting for about two years, meeting most Wednesdays.  Unfortunately, Pastor Dale went home to be with the Lord.  Then Rossaue moved away.  Then Pastor Stephanie and I also moved on from the group at the direction of the Lord.  But Pastor Doug Hinders still does Prayer and Healing, and he has a new group of wonderful people there doing it with him.  They meet on Wednesday nights at the Carrollwood campus of Grace Family Church.  We only meet once a month, at least for now, but they are meeting weekly.  I highly encourage you to go check out that group too. 

So, at least for me, that left me without any real ministry outlet, or any way to pursue these areas of ministry that are so important to me.  I knew that God had wanted me to step away from that particular class, but I longed to keep ministering.  But even more than my desire to minister along these lines, my heartbreak at the excommunication of the Holy Spirit’s Baptism and Gifts continued to grow.  Now, as a side note, I do feel like we are getting a shift back in this direction, and that’s a wonderful thing, but I won’t digress. 

In general, my heart cries out for a ministry where people can receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and their prayer language, where people can receive teachings on the Holy Spirit’s ministry, where people can receive instruction and activation in their Spiritual Gifts, and where people can experience true fellowship with others in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  And not to digress on this either, but when you are really fellowshipping both with the Holy Spirit and other spiritual Christians, God can do amazing things in your meetings.

One day last December I was sitting in my car.  My daughter and her friend were Christmas shopping, and I was praying and reviewing some personal notes in the car.  And it was like God just dropped this on me straight from Heaven.  It’s time.  Start a group.  Do it just like Prayer and Healing.  Call your friends.  You can take turns ministering.  Focus on spiritual things.  It was like just a blast from God, an instantaneous download. 

So I started calling people.  Not everyone I called has joined us, and that’s ok.  Some people are in busy seasons of life.  Some people have other ministry things going on.  There are lots of reasons, and they are all fine.  But I’m super excited about the people who have joined us. 

In my heart I felt that Pastor Stephanie and Rossaue were the most important to the potential success of this ministry.  Pastor Stephanie is the associate pastor at MorningStar church, and she is a wonderful and wise woman of God.  She is also a mental health and counseling professional, and that intelligent care and mentoring always comes through in her interactions with others.  Her husband Scott is also with us, and he always displays the calm wisdom and love of a true Christian elder. 

Rossaue is, to me, the greatest example of spirit and truth worship.  She is so tuned in with God’s Spirit.  She moves in the Spiritual Gifts.  She brings Words of Wisdom and Words of Knowledge to many worship settings.  I love seeing people get touched by God’s Spirit through Rossaue’s ministry.  But she is also a student.  She studies the Word and reads like no one I have ever met.  She has been through countless classes and seminars, and she has an incredible perspective in how the Bible teaches on spiritual matters and the Holy Spirit’s ministry.  I find myself regularly amazed when she starts talking about a Biblical point I’ve never heard before, and she uses this wisdom to help structure and guide our fellowship.

Lastly we have Mark and Midge Graham.  I have served with Mark and Midge on the board of Schools for Haiti for years.  An older couple, their love for God and for others just constantly springs out of them.  They are such kind and caring people, it’s a joy to be around them.  For years Mark and I would talk about the Holy Spirit and how people need more of Him in their lives.  We would long to see more of the Holy Spirit’s manifestation in church services and ministries.  So now we have this ministry together.

We all first started meeting for this ministry back in February.  We had a couple of initial meetings but now we’ve had three official meetings, and this ministry is growing and bearing fruit.  We’ve had more wonderful people start showing up.  People who are young in the faith, and then also people who have ministries of their own.  I simply can’t tell you what a blessing it has been.

Since you’ve come this far with me, let me try to end with a final idea that I hope will always mark the Equipped and Empowered ministry.  That day, when I was sitting in my car and the Lord spoke to me about this fellowship, He didn’t tell me that I need to start gathering people so that I could teach them all I know and start a ministry for me to minister.   On the contrary, I felt the desire to do this so that I personally could keep learning, so that I personally could keep growing, so that I personally could sit under the ministry of others and experience the Holy Spirit’s ministry through their ministry.  I’m not at Equipped and Empowered to platform myself or anyone else.  I am at Equipped and Empowered to learn and grow and to experience God through His Spirit and through others.  I know that’s true for me and our whole leadership team.  And I pray you experience that mutual growth, mutual learning, and spiritual family atmosphere when you join us.

My friends, I need to be in a place where the Holy Spirit is welcomed and honored.  I need to be in a place where the Spiritual Gifts can be in manifestation, and the Holy Spirit can move through people in a loving Christian fellowship.  I need to be in that place.  Frankly, I think we all do.  And the fact that the vast majority of people are not in a place like that is terrible. 

I know that these subjects aren’t easy, and this type of ministry isn’t easy, and whenever you step into these things there can be abuses, and fake manifestations, and weird stuff.  I get all that.  I’ve been seeing that for most of my life.  And I know most churches are scared of that.  But I’m not going to be scared, and I’m going to press in. 

The Bible is crystal clear that God wants His people experiencing the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our fellowships and that God wants His Spiritual Gifts to be in manifestation among us, that these are for our good.  I know that’s God’s will.  I’m not saying I know exactly what to do about it.  But we are doing our best, and the Lord is showing up.

I hope you feel as I do, and I hope you will join us.   Our next meeting is August 16, 6:30 pm, at MorningStar Church in Tampa.

My friends, thank you for listening to this message.  I love you and God bless you.  If this blessed you, or if you can think of anyone that would be blessed by these meetings, please share this message.  Thank you again and we’ll talk again soon.