Calling and Ministry
of
Bishop David C Holdridge
As a child I felt the tug of God on my heart. First Christian Church in Roswell, New Mexico, had a heritage of supporting missionaries and had a long roster of members who had entered full-time Christian service. Although it was a large downtown church, I was running the radio broadcast equipment and the lighting console while still in elementary school. I made a profession of faith and was baptized on Easter of 1952. During my high school years, I developed the habit of praying in the chapel at the church in the morning before I went on to school. Sometimes, I would pray in other churches. God blessed my studies with good grades and enjoyable classes.
At summer camp, I studied worship and liturgy and hung out with the preachers' kids. It was only natural that I would feel the call of God on my life. I made a public declaration of my calling in church one Sunday morning in the Spring of 1960 and started making plans for college and seminary
My first term in college I became seriously ill and returned home. Upon recovery, I entered the family business and became entangled in the cares of life. A few years later, I would rededicate my life to Christ and go back to college. I married Theresa Mata and some thought that my recent marriage would hinder my preparation for ministry. However, God had other plans. I was asked to preach for Westridge Christian Church on All Saints Day, 1969. It was a Sunday morning service. That evening I preached again, this time for my friend, Rev. Rolland Waters at Peoples Baptist Church. In the months that followed I ministered in various Baptist and Pentecostal churches in the area.
1970 found me involved in radio ministry being heard on two local radio stations every week. A local meeting of Seventh Day Friends was formed. I was involved with a Friends meeting while in college so I became pastor and the organist from the local Foursquare church became our church musician. Another young pentecostal preacher, Ernie McAdams, served as my assistant pastor. We first met on Saturday at Peoples Baptist Church and soon remodeled a pair of houses into our own church building with the adjacent house serving as the office and my study We advertised 24 hour relief referrals and soon becoming a seven day church instead of seventh day.
In January of 1971, I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost at Dove Ranch in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was an ecumenical charismatic retreat operated by Father Tom Bigelow, a former associate of Dennis Bennett, the Episcopalian minister sometimes credited as being the Father of the charismatic movement. Enthused by what I saw and experienced, I returned to Roswell intent on operating a similar retreat there. We acquired a large house across the street from a local oilman's office who coincidentally was in partnership with George Otis a few years later doing petroleum exploration in Israel using the Bible as a geological map. Before we were able to open the retreat center, changes in the local economy caused Theresa and I to find ourselves in Los Angeles, California, not many months later. Our first daughter, April, was born and subsequently passed away in 1971.
The Jesus People Movement was in full swing, Duane Pederson was blanketing the streets of Hollywood and the beaches of the South Bay with his Hollywood Free Paper telling the old, old story to born-again hippies and bikers for Jesus. These were the days that Lonnie Frisbee brought his simple message to any who would listen. Pat Boone and others were baptizing new believers in swimming pools and at the beaches up and down the California coastline. Brant Baker was having healing meetings on Saturday nights at Pastor Billy Adams' First Foursquare Church in Long Beach. His flyers were tacked up on telephone and power poles advertising "In Person GOD" and God the Holy Spirit did show up regularly, healing people of all manner of sickness and disease. With an anointing similar to Kathryn Kuhlman's, Brant and his Shekinah Fellowship acquired the old West Coast Theater across the street from the Convention Center on Ocean Boulevard. We eventually opened the East Long Beach Street Mission, a drop-in place where you could watch those early broadcasts of TBN, have some free coffee and donuts, and hit Anaheim Street or PCH with some gospel tracts that we printed right there.
Back and forth across the western states a few times more brought us back to Southern California. The cares of life caught up with us and Theresa and I went our separate ways for thirty years.
Meanwhile, I found myself working with Reverend Glen Chambers at Calvary Temple on Broadway and Manchester in South Central Los Angeles. As his right hand man in the late seventies and early eighties, I rubbed shoulders with numerous well known evangelists and musicians. I also held Bible studies and prayer meetings in Long Beach, supplied food to an orphanage in Mexico and distributed literally tens of thousands of gospel tracts on the streets of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
In 1983, Resurrection Tabernacle was founded in my home town of Roswell, New Mexico. Zuma Huggins, the organist who had helped me in 1971 joined with me again and we had an opening revival with guest musicians and evangelists, including Brother Chambers' younger brother Johnny, who had ordained me in the Midwest Revival Church in 1977. During the next two years, I ministered in numerous Baptist, Pentecostal, and charismatic churches, served as secretary of the local evangelical ministers alliance and as Director Of Development for a small local Christian college, and volunteered on audio and video controls at a small Christian television station.
Following this, I ministered in different churches in New Mexico and Oklahoma before founding St. Dometius' Orthodox Mission in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and St. Michael's Orthodox Mission in Las Cruces, New Mexico under the direction of my brother, Bishop Symeon Seraphim Holdridge of Denver. In the late 1990's I spent some time at the monastery with him.
Having made some friends in the Midwest, I ministered in Kentucky and Indiana and volunteered at churches and food banks that needed help with electrical and refrigeration needs..
Returning to New Mexico, I was appointed chaplain to the electrician's union, ministered to thousands of construction workers at the Intel construction site in Rio Rancho, New Mexico and pastored a small church I helped build overlooking the Rio Grande River in West Albuquerque not too far from where I had been baptized in the Holy Ghost thirty years earlier.
My wife Judith died in January 2000. I remarried and in March of 2002 left Albuquerque and God's House Church of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World where I was an associate minister and moved to Owensboro, Kentucky, with my new wife, Joyce, and my two high school age children that were still at home with us. The Lord put us in a huge old house that we used as home, church, office and 24/7 food bank. 24/7 Jesus Church Inc. was chartered by the State of Kentucky on September 26, 2002. Three other ministers serve on the board with me. By June of 2004, we were feeding a hundred different families every week and providing the only 24 hour emergency food in the area. We left the food pantry in Owensboro in the hands of faithful friends last year and relocated to Fort Worth, Texas, settling in the southwestern part of the D-FW Metroplex. Since then, I have worked with some well known ministries while maintaining our own web presence at www.24-7JesusChurch.net, a highly ranked website that reaches the world with revival, having received over 575,000 hits from over 170 countries since March of 2003.
On September 17, 2005, Archbishop Michael Wrenn consecrated me as a bishop in the Celtic Anabaptist Communion. For the past year I have been working with other ministers and bishops to extend their ministries. My wife Joyce passed into glory on June 12, 2006 and since then I have been seeking the Lord for new direction in life and ministry. God rejoined Theresa and I in Holy Matrimony in May, 2007. I am still committed to having a true 24/7 church in the New Mexico area and believe that a fellowship of house churches joined to a central facility may very well be the direction God is leading me in. Anything you can do to help us bring this dream into reality will be greatly appreciated.
