On March 17, 2013, Steve and Carrie
Loundsbury of the Los Angeles church of Christ spoke to the Sacramento
Church. The Loundsburys serve as the
Campus Ministers for the LA Church and oversee the outreach at the University of California, Riverside, California State University, San Bernandino, and
other colleges in the Inland Empire.
They not only shared about their victories, but were candid about their
own spiritual challenges and encouraged the Sacramento Church to press on.
Carrie spoke about her rough
upbringing, from dealing with her drug-addicted father to trying to fit into
several different high schools. She
sought attention from the boys from school and sought approval, eventually
becoming pregnant out of wedlock (and subsequently aborted her child). While in college, someone tried to reach out
to her with the gospel, only to believe that Carrie was the last person on
Earth to accept Christ’s message. To the
individual’s surprise, Carrie did embrace the gospel and was baptized in 1992
in the LA Church. Her husband, Steve,
had a similar story of being ignored by the LA Church due to perception. He recalled in his sermon that when he was in
the corporate world, an intern under him, who was part the LA Church admitted
that he was too intimidated to share the gospel because of his status and his
crude behavior on the job. Eventually,
the ministry staff invited Steve to a Bible Talk and eventually baptized him
into Christ in 1989.
Later, Steve preached from Acts 9
about Saul of Tarsus receiving a vision from Christ, which eventually led him
to coming to the knowledge of the Truth.
Using Saul’s example, he reminded the congregation that anyone can
become a true disciple of Jesus and He can use us to be a multi-tool instrument
to reach the Sacramento region for Christ.
Steve and Carrie’s testimony serves as a reminder that we should not be
intimidated by people when sharing about Christ and He will use anyone to share
His message of hope and redemption. To
Him be the Glory!
