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PROFILE: Pastor says globalism impacts life, people, church
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| Bennie Boles, senior pastor for Church of the Living Water, likes collecting empty Coke bottles from all over the world. He displays his collection in his office. |
By KOSAKU NARIOKA
This week we profile Bennie Boles, senior pastor for Church of the Living Water. He is also a police chaplain for the Deer Park Police Department.
Could you explain what do you do as the senior pastor?
As the senior pastor, just like any other church, typically, I do most of the preaching Sunday mornings, and I care for the needs of the people, hospital visits all those kind of things. I guess I’m the primary leader within the church. I’m to look at everybody that’s here the God has brought to this church, and my job is really to identify who goes where, and everybody has a place, so that’s the challenge. It’s not just nine or 10 players. It’s a couple of hundred. Counting children, we probably run about 250. We had 165 adults this past Sunday on campus. We probably got about 300 plus that call this church.
How many people work in this building?
We have five full-time staff for the church and then we have a pre-school that we opened last year which we call the Wee Care. It’s a non-profit pre-school. It is a state-licensed facility, and we do from 18 months old through 5 years old for the pre-school, and then we have the after school program. There are about nine staff persons there, so giving us a total of 13 or 14. That (Wee Care) is one of the best things we’ve done. We really had an opportunity to minister a lot of families and things like that, reach out to the community, affordable childcare, and it’s a school. We are not babysitting. It’s not a daycare.
How is the Church of the Living Water categorized?
There is basically three terms that are generally used for our church: charismatic, evangelical and full gospel. As far as a denomination that we would be close to would be Assemblies of God. We are a spirit-filled church, meaning within those terms that I gave you, there is what we call the full gospel, or the gifts of the spirit. We lay hands on people to pray for the healing of the sick and all those kind of things. I guess another church that we were probably patterned a lot after, that’s a non-denominational church, would be Lakewood. Our belief systems are pretty much the same as Lakewood Church – Joel Osteen and those folks.
Are you also a police chaplain?
Basically what that means is I am at the disposal of the police department to care for the personal needs of the officers: when officers are in a hospital, if there is a funeral needs to be done or anything like that. I officiated the service for Chief Young’s family, make hospital visits, those kinds of things, just really be there for spiritual guidance for the officers should they need it. I’m a police officer as well myself with the La Porte Police Department. I’m a reserve officer. I used to be full-time there, and I resigned my full-time position and came back to the church as an associate (pastor) back in 2002, but I maintain reserve status, which is basically a volunteer police officer.
How did you become the pastor? Are you from Deer Park?
No. I’m actually from Knoxville, Tenn. I was born and raised there. I got here to be in the military. I joined the army, and I served four years here in Texas. I met my wife at a Christian camp out in Columbus, Texas. The Country Camp is the name of the camp. It’s a full gospel, youth camp. It’s a pretty long story, but the Reader’s Digest version is a year after I met her, we got married. I guess I got to Deer Park in 1990. That’s when I left the service — honorable discharge. I really served my country for four years and felt good about that and felt like I was ready to move on to some other things. I got out the service in April and my wife and I married in August. She grew up in this church. I didn’t. Her name is Christina. So basically when I got out of service, of course I came here, because of my wife. I had an intention to go back to Knoxville and living, but I met her. Some significant transitions happened in my life. I dedicated my life to the Lord when I was in the military and really submitted to the call, what we considered the call of God –just basically something in your heart that says this is what you need to do. Upon submitting to the call, I just started attending church here. My first assignment at this church was a fifth-grade Sunday School teacher. That was back in 1990. My path to become a pastor was basically serving Brother Bryan Morrison, who was the founding pastor. He founded the church back in 1973. I believe it has been here for almost 35 years, not in this location, but the church has been in existence in Deer Park since that time. I just started serving him whatever he needed, that’s what I did.
Do you see what people are worrying about today?
Life is changing every day. It’s unnerving people. I think it’s going back to the economy. I think the reason we are concerned about the economy is that we know about the economy. Ten years ago, all you got was what the news said, what you read in the paper. You didn’t have the Internet. You couldn’t see what’s going on all over the world. Now we can know what’s going on in China and their economy and all these kinds of things. Typically, it used to be just the businessmen and stockbrokers who keep up those things, but now all of that information is available. You are able to track our gas prices and anticipate what they are going to be next week, based on the sale of oil. All these things were limited to those who were on Wall Street or in the stock market, we as everyday people, really didn’t have access to that information, but now we do. We don’t even need a stock broker any more to trade commodities and stocks. We can do it ourselves online with the Internet, and I think all of this is a bit overwhelming. How do we adjust to that? I think an awareness of the world globally is really something we are having to adjust to, and we are really not sure how to do that.
How do you see people who don’t belong to church?
That is a passion of mine that I’m actually on a bit of the quest, and I want to know why. Even with church the way we do church has changed so drastically; we are still trying to do church the way it was done 100 years ago, yet the world around us has changed so significantly. There is no way we can continue to do church the way it was done then because the life was really simple. I have found that traditionally we as pastors, just generally speaking, we as pastors answer questions: salvation, eternity, hell, heaven. We answered these questions, and over the last 100 years, it’s been easy because questions have been so few, but today we are getting questions that had not been asked … so I’m trying to stop, and really back up and listen to what our cultures are saying, listen to what our community is saying, listen to what the questions are, and then going back to the word of God and try to answer those questions.
Who do you have in your family?
My wife Christina. I have four kids — Joshua, Jessica, Jeremiah and Joy. I don’t know what happened about the “J” thing, we just started with “J” and kept having kids and we just couldn’t stop. I personally have no family here. All my relatives are in east Tennessee. I’m really, truly a transplant here in Harris County, which I found there is not a lot of people from here that live here. My wife was born in Pasadena and my kids are born here, and they are raised here. They are all in DPISD, wonderful school district. We got two dogs, seven turtles, three fish. I really, truly am a family man. I love my family. Something else that’s a little bit different I think is definitively my family comes before ministry. My family comes before this church.
What do you like to do in your free time?
One thing I do get to do is I get to go fishing. I love to fish. That’s something I get to do every now and then. Most of my free time, I spend with my family. We don’t make a lot of money, so we spend a lot of time together, just really trying to be creative. I like to hunt and fish. I don’t get to do it a lot. I get to fish more than I hunt. I love fishing.
Could you explain what do you do as the senior pastor?
As the senior pastor, just like any other church, typically, I do most of the preaching Sunday mornings, and I care for the needs of the people, hospital visits all those kind of things. I guess I’m the primary leader within the church. I’m to look at everybody that’s here the God has brought to this church, and my job is really to identify who goes where, and everybody has a place, so that’s the challenge. It’s not just nine or 10 players. It’s a couple of hundred. Counting children, we probably run about 250. We had 165 adults this past Sunday on campus. We probably got about 300 plus that call this church.
How many people work in this building?
We have five full-time staff for the church and then we have a pre-school that we opened last year which we call the Wee Care. It’s a non-profit pre-school. It is a state-licensed facility, and we do from 18 months old through 5 years old for the pre-school, and then we have the after school program. There are about nine staff persons there, so giving us a total of 13 or 14. That (Wee Care) is one of the best things we’ve done. We really had an opportunity to minister a lot of families and things like that, reach out to the community, affordable childcare, and it’s a school. We are not babysitting. It’s not a daycare.
How is the Church of the Living Water categorized?
There is basically three terms that are generally used for our church: charismatic, evangelical and full gospel. As far as a denomination that we would be close to would be Assemblies of God. We are a spirit-filled church, meaning within those terms that I gave you, there is what we call the full gospel, or the gifts of the spirit. We lay hands on people to pray for the healing of the sick and all those kind of things. I guess another church that we were probably patterned a lot after, that’s a non-denominational church, would be Lakewood. Our belief systems are pretty much the same as Lakewood Church – Joel Osteen and those folks.
Are you also a police chaplain?
Basically what that means is I am at the disposal of the police department to care for the personal needs of the officers: when officers are in a hospital, if there is a funeral needs to be done or anything like that. I officiated the service for Chief Young’s family, make hospital visits, those kinds of things, just really be there for spiritual guidance for the officers should they need it. I’m a police officer as well myself with the La Porte Police Department. I’m a reserve officer. I used to be full-time there, and I resigned my full-time position and came back to the church as an associate (pastor) back in 2002, but I maintain reserve status, which is basically a volunteer police officer.
How did you become the pastor? Are you from Deer Park?
No. I’m actually from Knoxville, Tenn. I was born and raised there. I got here to be in the military. I joined the army, and I served four years here in Texas. I met my wife at a Christian camp out in Columbus, Texas. The Country Camp is the name of the camp. It’s a full gospel, youth camp. It’s a pretty long story, but the Reader’s Digest version is a year after I met her, we got married. I guess I got to Deer Park in 1990. That’s when I left the service — honorable discharge. I really served my country for four years and felt good about that and felt like I was ready to move on to some other things. I got out the service in April and my wife and I married in August. She grew up in this church. I didn’t. Her name is Christina. So basically when I got out of service, of course I came here, because of my wife. I had an intention to go back to Knoxville and living, but I met her. Some significant transitions happened in my life. I dedicated my life to the Lord when I was in the military and really submitted to the call, what we considered the call of God –just basically something in your heart that says this is what you need to do. Upon submitting to the call, I just started attending church here. My first assignment at this church was a fifth-grade Sunday School teacher. That was back in 1990. My path to become a pastor was basically serving Brother Bryan Morrison, who was the founding pastor. He founded the church back in 1973. I believe it has been here for almost 35 years, not in this location, but the church has been in existence in Deer Park since that time. I just started serving him whatever he needed, that’s what I did.
Do you see what people are worrying about today?
Life is changing every day. It’s unnerving people. I think it’s going back to the economy. I think the reason we are concerned about the economy is that we know about the economy. Ten years ago, all you got was what the news said, what you read in the paper. You didn’t have the Internet. You couldn’t see what’s going on all over the world. Now we can know what’s going on in China and their economy and all these kinds of things. Typically, it used to be just the businessmen and stockbrokers who keep up those things, but now all of that information is available. You are able to track our gas prices and anticipate what they are going to be next week, based on the sale of oil. All these things were limited to those who were on Wall Street or in the stock market, we as everyday people, really didn’t have access to that information, but now we do. We don’t even need a stock broker any more to trade commodities and stocks. We can do it ourselves online with the Internet, and I think all of this is a bit overwhelming. How do we adjust to that? I think an awareness of the world globally is really something we are having to adjust to, and we are really not sure how to do that.
How do you see people who don’t belong to church?
That is a passion of mine that I’m actually on a bit of the quest, and I want to know why. Even with church the way we do church has changed so drastically; we are still trying to do church the way it was done 100 years ago, yet the world around us has changed so significantly. There is no way we can continue to do church the way it was done then because the life was really simple. I have found that traditionally we as pastors, just generally speaking, we as pastors answer questions: salvation, eternity, hell, heaven. We answered these questions, and over the last 100 years, it’s been easy because questions have been so few, but today we are getting questions that had not been asked … so I’m trying to stop, and really back up and listen to what our cultures are saying, listen to what our community is saying, listen to what the questions are, and then going back to the word of God and try to answer those questions.
Who do you have in your family?
My wife Christina. I have four kids — Joshua, Jessica, Jeremiah and Joy. I don’t know what happened about the “J” thing, we just started with “J” and kept having kids and we just couldn’t stop. I personally have no family here. All my relatives are in east Tennessee. I’m really, truly a transplant here in Harris County, which I found there is not a lot of people from here that live here. My wife was born in Pasadena and my kids are born here, and they are raised here. They are all in DPISD, wonderful school district. We got two dogs, seven turtles, three fish. I really, truly am a family man. I love my family. Something else that’s a little bit different I think is definitively my family comes before ministry. My family comes before this church.
What do you like to do in your free time?
One thing I do get to do is I get to go fishing. I love to fish. That’s something I get to do every now and then. Most of my free time, I spend with my family. We don’t make a lot of money, so we spend a lot of time together, just really trying to be creative. I like to hunt and fish. I don’t get to do it a lot. I get to fish more than I hunt. I love fishing.
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