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FROM THE BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF PRIMITIVE OR OLD SCHOOL BAPTIST MINISTERS BY DAVID MONTGOMERY AND MARK GREEN:
ELDER BILL ALLEN
I was not raised a Primitive Baptist. I was raised among the Southern Baptists. It was during that time, around the age of eight years, that I felt my first convictions of sin and experienced a hope in Jesus Christ, and joined the church of my parent’s membership. As an older teenager, I began to notice certaininconsistencies between what was being taught from the pulpit and what I was reading in my Bible. I began to ask questions that obviously made some of those brethren uncomfortable like, "What is this election taught in theBible? Why is it not preached?" I did not receive satisfactory answers to these questions. Then for a period of two years, the first two years that I was in college, I lived a miserable life filled with immorality.
Within the next couple of years, while still in college, the Lord introduced me to my wife, Charmion. To my amazement, I had found a person who did not think I was mistaken about the truth of God's grace! She took me to her church and I heard the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ preached for the first time! I joined that church. That was in October 1990. Charmion and I had been married in August that same year. Eventually, in July of 1993, after feeling a burden to preach the gospel and exercising for a time, I was ordained to the gospel ministry. I then served the Progressive Primitive Baptist Church in Jamestown, LA as pastor for about two years. After that, I returned to Texas and served at First Primitive Baptist Church of Wichita Falls as pastor for about three years.
As I studied, I found myself somewhat dissatisfied with some of the practices of the Progressive churches, namely use of instrumental music, acceptance of Freemasons as members, and the common Sunday School form of the Bible study program. I will say, however, that my dissatisfaction was never in doctrinal issues and that I dearly love these brethren. After much study, soul searching, and prayer, I came to the point that I felt I again needed to change course. During this time I had come in contact with Old Line Baptists. I found myself in more agreement with them on the above stated issues than I did with thechurches I was serving. I felt that I had no choice but to be true to what I felt the Bible taught. About this time I came in contact with Elder David Montgomery because some of the members of the Wichita Falls Church were living in San Antonio and were attending the church he pastored at that time. He and I began a correspondence and discussed many things and I felt a great kinship in understanding. There was a certain point at which he said he wanted to meet in person, so he arranged a meeting with me. This took place in Stephenville, Texas at the home of Elder Dwayne Shafer.
I visited the church that Eld. Shafer pastors in Stephenville periodically after that and the church there showed me a great hospitality and love. I resigned the pastorship at Wichita Falls and we moved to Stephenville in the summer of 1998. I joined the church at Stephenville by baptism in August 1998; my wife did the same several months later. I continued to feel the burden to preach the word and was afforded that opportunity in the Stephenville Church. In time, the church decided to recognize this in me and called for my ordination to serve in the gospel ministry among them. I was ordained at Stephenville, Texas, on the second Saturday of January 1999. Elder David Montgomery conducted the examination and Elder Hugh Montgomery delivered the charge. Since then I have been blessed to serve the church at Stephenville and labor in the word. |
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