This is a special program celebrating our 48th anniversary at Harvest Baptist Church. We’re confident you’ll enjoy these stories and voices from our past.
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Episode Transcript
Chris Harper: Hafa adai, and welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper. You’ve joined us for a very special program today. Next week, we’ll be celebrating our forty eighth anniversary at Harvest Baptist Church. And through the years, Harvest Time has been a forum to share stories from our history and feature important guests from the ministry’s past.
Today will be no exception, as we’ll be bringing you two segments from a more lengthy radio program commemorating our twenty fifth anniversary. Former station manager at KHMG, John hosted this special. And keep in mind this recording is twenty three years old, so some of the items mentioned are current to the time of the original airing. Here’s John Collier to introduce our first segment about the early years of the church.
John Collier: And helping us to take a look back at some of those items is miss Mary Guymon, who has been on staff here at Harvest for a number of years, and she has done a remarkable job. We sat down a couple of days ago, and we talked about the history of Harvest Baptist Church and its various ministries. Let’s go ahead and listen in to that discussion. Mary, thank you for visiting us and helping us out today. How, or maybe I should say when did the church begin, and how did it get started?
Mary Guymon: Back in the early 1970s, there was a man named Bruce Ring back in The States, and he felt called to missions. Then he went to Christian College and heard many speakers come and missionaries from all around the world come and speak. And he said that every time he heard someone speak, that’s where he wanted to go. And yet, through all of his college years, he never felt called to any of those places. When he graduated from college, he moved to Nashville and helped out a preacher there as sort of like an assistant pastor.
He also was an assistant pastor in Kentucky, and during that time, he went to a missions conference for Baptist International Missions Incorporated. At that missions conference, a man who had seen him many times in college and who worked for the mission board came up to him and asked him, When are you going to the mission field? And his answer was, as soon as I can find some English speaking field that needs me. And the man asked him why it was an English speaking field that he was looking for, and he answered that he was 32, had a hard time learning English for his first language, and didn’t think he could learn another one. And he said that the director of the mission board now, his name is Don Sisk, at the time he was a field representative, He looked at him and he said, well, have you thought about Guam?
And he said, no. He hadn’t thought about Guam because he didn’t even know where Guam was. And he left the mission conference that day, and he went home and found a book and looked in several different books until he found a paragraph about Guam. He read about that and talked to Mr. Sisk and got more information about the island Of Guam and the ministry that would be possible to the well, to the military people here on Guam. His burden was for worldwide missions to people everywhere of every culture, but through the vehicle of starting with the military here on Guam, he would be able to establish a church and get into the communities.
He said the more he thought about Guam, the more he couldn’t get it out of his mind. And all the places he’d heard about in school, Guam was the one that kept coming back to him. And so he surrendered to the Lord to go as a missionary to Guam. He said he’d never seen a picture, never really talked to anyone who had firsthand been to Guam, but he knew that that’s where the Lord wanted him. He came on a survey trip in the early nineteen seventies, and on that trip, he met a professor from the University of Guam who was going to be taking a vacation and asked him if he could house sit when he came to Guam.
And Mr. Ring said that that would work out great, so he raised support from 1973. And in 1975, in May, he arrived on the island of Guam. The first church services started right in May. He got started right away with starting a church service with just two or three families. They met in the carport outside the professor’s home while they were staying there.
And during the first weeks that he was here, he began to look for a building that they could use as a church. And down here in Barragada, he found an old print shop that was not being used. They went to the bank and talked about the possibility of renting it, and the bank agreed. And so they had their first building to rent. Mr. Ring said that the print shop was nothing to look at.
He said that it was lots of trash and things inside that they needed to clean out. There was even a printing press upstairs in what would later be the auditorium. Some of the men of the church would later get that working and use it to print tracts and bulletins and different things for the ministry. He said that, the church needed a coat of paint when they moved in, so they looked around, saw what they could find. They found a color called Congo Brown.
And when the church members looked at him and asked him why he picked such a dark, to them ugly color, he said it was what he could find for 25¢ a gallon, and so that’s what they were using.
John Collier: Now is do we have any pictures on file anywhere that show us what it looked like in the Congo Brown? Do we know of?
Mary Guymon: Yes. There are some, and there is a picture that was taken in July 1975. They were moving into the church at that time and getting things started. The picture shows most of the original 19 members of the church.
John Collier: Do we know exactly when the 19 members, did they sign a church charter? How did that begin?
Mary Guymon: It was organized in the May 1975. They had their first services in the church, from what I understand, in July of that year. So they really got started with a building and an official place to meet in July.
John Collier: Do we know what it looked like around that building at that time?
Mary Guymon: Around that building at that time, it was basically surrounded by boonies, and over the years, more of the land has been cleared. The CBs were responsible for clearing some of that land over the years and for leveling other portions of the school campus so that building could take place on those pieces of land.
John Collier: And what was their main purpose? Did they state that purpose? Did Pastor Ring share that with you at all?
Mary Guymon: He said that his burden was for people all around the world. In coming to Guam, he was going to start by reaching out to the military, but that the local people were of concern to him too, and that was his whole point in coming. He said that the church was to grow by people bringing people, whether that was military or from the community. He said either one was all part of their goal and their vision for Harvest Baptist Church.
John Collier: And exactly how long was he pastor, Mary?
Mary Guymon: He was a pastor from 1975 when he founded the church until around 1979. And during those years that he was here on Guam, the church grew. And as it grew and became more self supporting, eventually, it was no longer under the protection of the mission board. It was an independent local church. He still received some support from different churches in The States who continued to support him even without being under the mission board.
Mr. Ring was here for those years and eventually felt that God was calling him to move on to somewhere else. From Guam, he returned to The States for a short time and then went to Germany as a missionary to the military there.
John Collier: Let’s back up just a little bit. Something happened right after the church was started that also exists today. Obviously, the church is the primary function of this ministry, but many people in this community know of our school. And tell us a little bit about when that began.
Mary Guymon: Harvest Christian Academy actually started at almost the same time that the church did. The school was originally started for the church members’ children, And it was intended to be a small school, and it operated on the ACE program, which was a program where the students worked independently a large portion of their school day with some supervisory people to monitor their progress. Over the years, the school has changed in its presentation of educational materials from the individual method to a more traditional type classroom. That’s taken several years, and the school grew in small steps. It started out being in the same room that the church services were held in.
They would put the church up for Sundays and Wednesday evenings, take it all down, and put the school up for the rest of the week. Eventually, they worked on the downstairs of the building that’s still used as the chapel today, and a half at a time, they got everything fixed up downstairs to be a school room. Another member of our church I was talking to about the history of Harvest said that they had worked very hard for several summers. Every summer, they would go in and just try fix it up, make it that much nicer again the next summer. After several years, they had it really looking good down there, and the termites found it, and they basically had to start all over.
John Collier: Oh.
Mary Guymon: They, worked very hard on improving the school year by year. It was still a small school though until another pastor came who had been a layman in the church. And when Bruce Ring had left, there had been several people who had come temporarily to help out in the church. And the church body then called John Lewis from out of their own congregation to be their pastor full time. He had been working here on Guam for several years.
Actually, he had lived on Guam for a while, returned to The States, had a few years of seminary training, and returned to Guam and was then working for J and G Payless. He was a young man at the time and the church basically grew with him and the school grew with him. He has told us that his vision for what he wanted to accomplish at Harvest was that he wanted people to see fundamentalism in the spirit of excellence. He wanted them to see when they saw Harvest something that was distinctively different. And he has tried to build for us and over the years that he was here, a reputation for excellence in education.
In asking a lot of people about their memories from earlier years at Harvest, a lot of times they’ll say, you know, nothing really stands out. It’s just been a steady growth over the years. And what we’re trying to accomplish here has basically not changed. The 31 students that the school began with has grown to a record attendance at some years of over a thousand. And in talking to different staff members and people who’ve been a part of the ministry in the past, they’ve said, we’re still doing the same thing we started doing, but now we just have a little more to work with.
And over the years, different things have been added to further the outreach of the ministry. In the nineteen eighties, Harvest Baptist Bible Institute was started, and that was part of a ministry that people wanted to see Guam reaching out to the islands surrounding us in the Pacific Ocean. Located here at Guam, we’re in a unique position to be able to offer an education to some of the college age islander students that are, usually referred to us, recommended to us by the missionaries on those islands. They can come here and participate in a three year work study program where they can earn an associate degree and return to their islands to spread the gospel there. Over the years, that ministry has grown.
It started out as an evening school, and it also involved church members and people from the community who just wanted to learn more about the Bible in a classroom type setting. And originally, there were only two students from the islands, and we’ve had more than 70 at times now.
Chris Harper: You’ve been listening to a Harvest Baptist Church twenty fifth Anniversary Special that first aired in the year 2000 here on KHMG. Today’s Harvest Time looks ahead to our forty eighth anniversary next week here at the church. In the second segment of this special, the pastor at that time, Marty Herron, told his story about coming to Harvest earlier that year. He started by mentioning the two pastors we referenced in segment one.
Marty Herron: An interesting note is that Pastor Ring had a had a large influence on Pastor Lewis. And many of things that Pastor Lewis has said and done over the years were largely influenced, by Pastor Ring. And I’m sure that even as we head into the future here at Harvest, that I have a desire, as these men had a desire, to base the ministry on Bible principle. Bible principle. And both of these men, when I asked them the question, What drove you in this ministry?
What was the motivation to cause you to do what you were doing here? And both of those men said, I came to Guam to give the gospel to Guam. And really, the core, the magnet that should draw individuals to ministry, a church, should be the gospel. And that’s what our desire here is at Harvest, is to say, we have an interest to continue that great heritage, to continue the heritage by saying, God, you have great things in store for us here. Why?
Because the core, the engine that drives us is giving the gospel to the people of Guam. The fact is, if I could, 1 Thessalonians 2:8 says it best because Paul himself said to a young church at Thessalonica, this is how he said it, 1 Thessalonians 2:8, he said, So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls. Why? Because you were dear unto us. He said, You know why, Thessalonians, I want to give my life to you?
I want to give my life to you because it was wrapped up in the gospel. I gave you two elements, he said. I gave you the gospel of God. I imparted, I literally invested the gospel unto you. And not just the giving of the gospel, but giving our own souls, our very beings.
And I look back over the history and the heritage of Harvest, and I can see people, the pastors, former pastors, many of the other pastors as well. When Pastor Lewis left, Pastor Pelletier, who was here for a brief period of time in the senior pastorship, and I know him personally. Pastor Gray, who acted as the interim pastor for the last couple of years. Those men as well, they’ve said to me the same thing that Pastor Lewis said, that Pastor Ring said, that I had a desire to give the gospel to the people at Guam. I know that giving that gospel, they also gave their own souls, their whole souls, their mind, their emotions, their will.
They love this ministry, and more importantly, they love the Lord. I’m motivated by that as a pastor here to say, You know what our desire is? If I can say it this way, we are desiring to carry on that heritage of giving the gospel and giving our own souls. In other words, the ministry at Harvest exists to glorify God. And how are we gonna glorify God?
By helping people develop a heart for God. That’s what we’re gonna try and do. And how are we gonna help them develop a heart for God? By giving them the gospel and giving their own souls.
John Collier: We’ve been looking back and you’ve been discussing some of the different men that have led this ministry. Right. And that brings us to you. How did you first hear about this ministry and get to the place where you are now as the senior pastor?
Marty Herron: Well, I do believe that it was all providentially arranged by God. I look back over, particularly the last year, and can see God’s handprint, if you may, in our even coming to Harvest. The first initial time I even heard about Harvest was probably four or five years ago when Pastor Lewis and his wife were recruiting at a number of Bible colleges and Christian colleges stateside. I was working at one of those colleges, at Northland Baptist Bible College, as the vice president of student affairs and also working at Northland Camp and Conference Center as the CAM director. And they were coming through recruiting.
And before they came to Northland, they were at another Bible college. I was at that other Bible college recruiting for summer camp workers. And I remember they were giving their story about Harvest to a number of prospective teachers that they hire, and they had a video there. And I remember our display next to theirs watching this display and watching the video and hearing a little of the conversation. I even had a brief conversation with Mrs. Lewis, introduced myself, and we had a very good conversation.
But I remember walking away from there thinking, This is really intriguing. It’s amazing that they Where is Guam? And what do they have? What do you have?
And I had heard a number of years earlier, a good friend of mine, Dan Pelletier, who again was the fourth pastor here at the church, albeit brief, but was himself as an associate pastor previous to that. And he told me about Guam and even had said, One of these days, I’d like to get you out here to preach. And so, I had heard about it. I knew some people that had taught out here and worked out here, very few. And then when I met Pastor and Mrs. Lewis, I thought, Hey, well, few days you’re going be up at Northland, which they were.
Two days later, I was up there. I went to end up talking to him and something came up and I couldn’t. And next thing you know, I find out he left that night. So, I never ended up seeing Pastor Lewis again.
Three years later, last fall, I got a phone call saying, would you be interested? Would you be willing to speak and preach at our Spirit Week? The Spirit Week, as many folks know, is the one week we set aside for the academy and teach and preach and challenge the folks as we head out to a new school year. And so, I had a good friend, Sam Horn, who had come out here the year before and preached the spirit week. He was supposed to come again last fall.
He couldn’t make it. He came to my backyard and begged me, Hey, listen, can you fill in for me? I can’t go. And would you take two weeks, one in Hawaii, one in Guam? And he said, You just won’t believe this ministry out there, what all they have.
And they’ve got a Bible institute and the Christian academy and the radio station and the church and the Bible institute. They might have some interest. They wanted some of our help. Maybe you could check that out. I said, Well, Sam, I can’t do two weeks.
I cannot go to Hawaii and Guam. Listen, let me do Guam. I’ll be willing to help you out for you, brother. And so, that’s how, two weeks later, we ended up out here in September of last fall. And during that two week period as well, Harvest called and said, Would your wife be willing to come and speak to the ladies?
Because my wife does do a lot of speaking over the years to ladies and done some radio and done some other ministries. I said, Well, we do couples retreat stateside. She does not like to leave the children, and if she feels comfortable that she can come for the week, great. Well, the Lord was in that. Circumstances, miraculous, she ended up coming, and that was really our first introduction to the ministry here a year ago, personally being able to see this ministry.
And I remember on the plane flying back to The States thinking, You know, Lord, this is an unbelievable ministry. They’ve got a church, they’ve got out of that church, a Bible institute ministering to 60 to 70 Micronesian students. They have the Christian Academy that’s reaching out, providing a Christian environment with a quality education in that Christian environment. They love the kids there. And the staff itself of both of those outreaches are phenomenal, as well as the radio station that’s reaching out to the whole island of Guam, spreading the music and message of Jesus Christ.
What a great opportunity. And we went home and walked back into our ministry at Northland that we loved, the people that we loved, very fulfilled in what we were doing. And over the next couple of weeks, found ourselves not being able to get Harvest off our hearts and off our minds, and then a phone call was made, Would you be willing to come candidate at Harvest? And over that next week, we continued to pray about it, administer what we were doing. We were very involved there at Northland as the camp director and having a ministry at the time.
We had 500 plus campers a week coming in, another 100 sponsors that we took care of for ten weeks each summer, one week sessions at a time. We had 150 college kids to minister for those ten weeks. The college at Northland, we were running 800 students, four year Bible curriculum, plus a master’s and doctoral program that we helped administrate as one of the five administrators. And all that was very full. So, when that second phone call came and said, Would you be interested?
We would like to be interested. Would you send a profile? Would you send some data? I said, Well, listen, let me give you five names to call, and you check me out with those five guys. And if you’re still interested, and that doesn’t scare you off, then let’s go from there.
And it was about a couple nights later that I was laying in bed and woke up about one in the morning and said to my wife, Honey, I can’t get to sleep. Are you awake? She says, I never went to sleep. And so we opened up the Bible, we read for a while, we prayed, and then we both laid in bed and just wept and thought, Lord, are you trying to undo the knot of our hearts to Northland? And are you trying to move us?
And Lord, whatever you want is fine. And so over the next couple of months through last fall, back and forth and open to what God wanted. And then December, the deacons asked us to come last January, which is this year, and I said, I’m willing to do so. And I had to take a trip to Dominican Republic to do a marriage seminar there with a number of churches. And was there in January that I was in the afternoons preaching, four hours each afternoon with a translator.
And each morning, I would walk to a park across from where the pastor’s church was and begin what I see to now as a real struggle of the soul. I wasn’t so much wrestling with God. I was willing to do what God wanted, but a struggle in my soul. God, is this really what you want me to do? And I find that that was a very beneficial time for me because a whole lot of people go through the same struggles.
Struggles of, God, is this what you want me to do? Should I take this job? Should I not take this job? What I do with my children? Should I not do this with my children?
What should I do with my finances? Not do with my finances. Whatever area you want to plug into that. But for me, it was very critical. Leaving a ministry of almost nineteen years and without any problems, there was no, I’m trying to get away from something.
So, when I finally got settled, a peace in my heart as God used his word to get me to that point, three weeks later showed up here in candidate in January. And at that time, I had a wonderful experience meeting with the people here. I found a group of people that were hungry, that did desire to do God’s will. Not perfect by any means, but growing and maturing. And as I shared with them my own salvation testimony that God had worked in my heart over those years and began to prepare me for the experiences that we had over all those years for bringing us to harvest.
Many of the things and activities and functions that need to be done here at Harvest, many of those functions and activities and events is what we were involved in over those years at Northland. And I can see how God prepared us for all of this, And it’s all centered around the lives of individuals, the lives of individuals. Giving people the gospel after those years, seeing people saved, giving of our lives, and seeing their lives influenced in a very positive way for Christ, helping them develop a heart for God, and they move forward, evangelizing the unbelievers, edifying the saints, and employing them as soldiers out servicing for God. And all of that came together. And that was my journey.
God took me through. But out of that journey, I’m thankful that the Lord prepared us for this place and seeing what God will have.
Chris Harper: You’ve been listening to a very special Harvest Time today. Looking forward to our forty eighth anniversary at Harvest Baptist Church next week. That was former pastor Marty Herron speaking on a special radio program recorded 23 ago during the church’s twenty fifth anniversary. This week at the church, you can join us for one of two services at 08:45AM or 10:45AM. We have Japanese and Korean translation available during our 10:45AM service, and that’s also when we live stream at hbcguam.org.
Hbcguam.org. Thank you for joining us for this historic edition of Harvest Time.