Summer Campmeeting a Challenge to Change
By John Earp
Wednesday through Friday of this week, members and ministers of the Church of God in the New Mexico region attended their summer campmeeting in Roswell. John and Jaime Earp, who pastor the Church of God in Jal, attended with their daughter, Chloe. Their other four children were busy with other commitments such as cheer camp and football practice, work and with the U.S. Navy, and unfortunately were unable to attend. Annual assemblies of the Church of God use the “campmeeting” nomenclature, which hearkens back to the late 1800s when the Church of God was founded, during which time people would actually camp out after traveling long distances by horse or wagon.
This year’s New Mexico Summer Campmeeting was noted as having a record attendance for the church group, with just under 170 attendees from across the region. Pastors and their families, as well as laity from dozens of churches in New Mexico, El Paso, Texas, as well as from the Navajo Nation, received spiritual uplift and blessing in the services, which included instruction in leadership principles in the morning sessions and revivalistic preaching in the evening sessions. A notable theme of the teaching sessions especially was the fact that growth is impossible without change, and change is impossible without challenge, but God is working to bring out the best in His children.
The Church of God, with its headquarters in Cleveland, Tennessee, began in the Appalachian Mountains in 1886 with a stated purpose of restoring the New Testament Church in all its glory, bringing about the unity of all Christians, and world evangelization in the last days before the prophesied second coming of Jesus Christ to Earth. Cardinal doctrines of the Church of God are affirmation of the authority of inspired Scripture alone for doctrine and practice, salvation and sanctification by grace through faith in the blood of Christ, divine healing, the baptism in the Holy Spirit as God’s desire for all Christians, so that they may have power to share the good news with all mankind, and the premillennial second coming of the Lord Jesus to fully establish His kingdom over all nations.