John Howard Morgan

Definition of a Toxic Person: A Toxic person does others more harm than good because they have so much poison inside of them from their conflict with God and themselves that it spills out in emotional, spiritual and physical damage to others. They are irredeemable by you.

The Effects of a Toxic Person
1. They leave you drained in every way, to the point of losing your sense of yourself.
2. They create a world of falsehoods and manipulate you to think its normal.
3. They leave you emotionally, or spiritually, or physically or financial injured.
4. They isolate you from healthy people.

Toxic Characteristics

1. Emotional Immaturity: They are unable to be honest with God, themselves and other key people about their key negative feelings like fear, sadness and discouragement so that these emotions leak out in destructive behaviors like anger, hyper control, insecurity, obsessiveness, narcissism and addiction.

2. Narcissism: They are so self-absorbed that they are unable to care about or empathize with or invest in the feelings, needs and aspirations of others.

3. Manipulation. Everybody else is viewed as an object to be used for one’s own purposes.

4. Spiritually Dead. Their spirits are dead to God’s redeeming voice and work.

5. Psychologically Damaged. The have been damaged psychologically beyond repair. They do not have a normal conscience or empathy toward others.

Toxic Behaviors

Keeping score. Outbursts of anger. Lying. Bending the truth to impress and manipulate. Betraying confidences. Saying questionable and shocking things. Talking about themselves and showing no interest in others. Insecurity. Arrogance. Posing and posturing to protect their image. Status symbols. Needing to be the center of attention. They make others feel dependent on them and incapable without them and sometimes trapped by them. Possessive. Hyper jealous. Sowing conflict. Putting others on the defensive as a strategy of control. Jesting in ways that are rude, racist, sexist and inappropriate to shock. Hyper-judgmental. Blaming others for their unhappiness, actions and failures in life. Not apologizing when they have done wrong. Hyper sarcastic. Obsessive. Promiscuous. Addicted.
Biblically, Get Away and Stay Away, Right Away

Biblical Truth

The toxic person is the Fool of Proverbs and the Reprobate of the New Testament (Proverbs 1:23-33, 26:1-12, Romans 1:20-28, John 12:37-42 and Hebrews 6:4-8). They are irredeemable. The only way to treat them is to separate from them physically, geographically, relationally, financially and legally and to keep them out of your life. In Proverbs the fool and the mocker are to be avoided at all costs. In the New Testament the Christian is to walk away from a reprobate and shake the dust of their presence off of their feet.

Don’t Enable a Toxic Person
You are a Toxic Person Enabler if you allow a person to do more harm than good to you without speaking up and putting up boundaries to protect your personhood.

Toxic people make a game of discovering your emotional weaknesses, and then exploiting those weaknesses so they can use you. Toxic people become chronic manipulators for lots of complex reasons, so don’t think you can “fix” them.

Toxic Addicts Have to Lose Everything for Any Hope of Change

Toxic sex, gambling, anger, control, drug and alcohol addicts have to lose everything for any hope of change. They lose their spouses, families, jobs, houses, cars, freedom and, in some cases, they have to stare death in the face for the life-changing jolt of allowing God to break through. Short of this, they play games with everyone who enables them to have some degree of a normal life and they don’t change.

Those who are married to a toxic person must divorce them for themselves and their spouse to have any chance of a future. Staying married ignores the reality of the situation. It is poisonous, ruinous and deadly.

Evangelical Christianity is Naïve About Toxic People

Evangelicals tend to naively think they can redeem anybody because with God all things are possible. The truth is, with you, all things are not possible. You have limitations and one is that you cannot fix a toxic person. If God chooses to, he can, but you will have to turn them over to God, get away from them, and trust God to take them as far down the road of destruction as he needs to, to change them. God may even turn them over to Satan for a time. God still respects the will of the toxic person and if a toxic person chooses to reject God to the bitter end, then God allows that. So, don’t make the mistake of trying to play God with a toxic person and trying to do what only God can do. Remember, sometimes even God won’t fix them because he won’t violate a person’s will.

If you have toxic a person in your life, get away and stay away, right away. Surround yourself with healthy, mature, loving people to restore your soul, your personhood and your future.

Socialism—Entitlement—Victimhood—Passivity—Activity—Responsibility—Ambition—Enterprise

In our organization, People Prosper International, we deal with the problem of poverty around the world and we show the pathway out. The first step is a change of mental culture. Culture in this sense is our automatic habitual way of thinking and acting.

Each person has a mental culture. Each family has one. Each community has a general mental culture. This taxonomy will help you understand where you are on the continuum of mental culture and it may help you move toward where you want to be.

The middle of the continuum has the two opposite positions of Activity or Passivity. Psychologists call this division of mental thinking the locus of control(i). It means a person is prone to think that what controls his or her life is either the internal forces of their choices and activities or they think their life is controlled by the external forces of what everybody else does or what happens in their world. Those with an internal locus of control tend to get active to change their situations for the better. Those with an external locus of control are prone to go passive and to wait for others or for circumstances to act or change.

We will move along the continuum first to the left. The passive person can go from Passivity to the position of Victimhood. Because they believe their life is controlled by external forces they blame their bad situation on whatever external forces seem to be the most culpable such as a person who hurt them, or their parents, or the government, or a loss, or God, or their bad DNA, or bad luck, or the police, or a political party, or some group of people. Because they have been wronged, they are a victim and that dominates their mental culture. All of us struggle with degrees of passivity and victimhood because we would rather put the responsibility on something or someone else rather than on ourselves to improve our lives. Some politicians and political systems try to leverage the human propensity to victimhood to sell their positions and gain their power.

People who have a Victimhood Mental Culture can easily move another degree to the left and that is to Entitlement. The Entitlement thinker reasons like this: since I have been victimized by someone, or a group of people, or my parents, or my community, or my country, or another country, or the government, or life then someone owes me for that damage they have done. We are not talking here about legitimate victimization such as having your house burglarized or being assaulted. In those cases, the perpetrator does owe the victim retribution. We are talking here about people who through the regular struggles of life move to an Entitlement Mental Culture. This person  reasons that they are owed a living and possibly more than that by someone or possibly by everyone.

Victimhood and Entitlement thinkers are ripe for Socialism. They are ready to give up their freedom and everyone else’s to a government which promises to give them everything that will right the wrongs of their Victimhood and fulfill their rights of Entitlement. If you wonder how in the world people can still be fooled by the promises of socialism despite the horrid historic record of socialism and the current horrid record of socialism, it is because it preys on the worst propensities of our human nature toward Passivity, Victimhood and Entitlement.

The left side of this continuum of Mental Cultures is the side where poverty rages. It can also be described as the Culture of Poverty. While there are some poor who live on the right side of this continuum because they are active and working hard, they are still suppressed by systems that reward the left side of this continuum and punish those who are on the right side.

As we move from the middle of the continuum to the right and toward prosperity, the Mental Cultures look like this.

The Activity Mental Culture of course is the mindset of the person who believes they can change their circumstances for the better with positive action. Many people who have an Activity Mental Culture have many potential reasons to feel victimized by people or by life or by God, but they refuse to live in that thinking. They choose to get active to change their lives. They believe that problems yield to effort (ii.) so they look for the best effort they can give. When you find yourself spinning your wheels in pity and depression and passivity, the most powerful thing you can do is to just make yourself get active at something positive. Positive activity breeds more positive activity and more good results.

The next step to the right is the Responsibility Mental Culture. The people who live here not only believe they can change their lives, they believe they have a duty and even a responsibility to do so. Because of their ethics, or their family culture, or their faith or just their choice they believe they should focus on positive action to improve their lives and help their families and help others and benefit society with their work.

The next step to the right is the Ambition Mental Culture. The people who live here move from duty to an inner drive to succeed. They want to achieve something that to them is significant. They live above duty. They go beyond responsibility. They take on more effort, responsibility and risk to achieve more. They may fail, but they will take the risk to succeed. When they do fail, they often try again or try in different way.

The final step to the right is the Enterprise Mental Culture. The word Enterprise comes from Latin root words which mean to literally get in the middle of something and put one’s hands on it. It means to lead yourself to create the best that you can. It is beyond Responsibility and Ambition. It is the Mental Culture to use your God-given abilities and opportunities to create the best results you can, in whatever field where you are called. We often think of Enterprise as the same word as business, but the broader sense of Enterprise is that you  put your whole self on a big problem to create the best solution you can.

In the work to end poverty and to create prosperity the first place to begin is the Mental Cultures of individuals, of families, of communities, of nations and of all those who control the socio-political-economic systems around them.

What solves poverty is Cultures of Enterprise and environments of freedom.

What determines so much of our life situations is the place on this continuum where we tend to live.

I challenge you to do a self-assessment of where you tend to live. If you want better, take a step to the right.

_________________________________

i. https://psychologydictionary.org/locus-of-control. Accessed 11.12.2018.
ii. A phrase I heard Bill Clinton use in an interview at Willow Creek Church, circa 2000.

The hounding, harassment and shaming of the employees and their families of this presidential administration in restaurants, at their homes and in public discourse by the Leftist Socialists is a violation of their civil rights. It is part of the evil that these secularists do. If they can’t advance their agenda by democratic means they will advance it by tyranny.
It is a violation of these victim’s civil rights because it is their right in a just and civil society to be able to live their personal and private lives in peace and it is their rights to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To be hounded out of a restaurant and down the street by people screaming, “Shame, shame, shame,” is a violation of all of these rights. Imagine a conservative group doing that to a gay couple in a restaurant. The outrage by the left would be massive. And they would quickly call it what it would be; a violation of their civil rights. And other conservative groups would quickly agree because they are rooted in an ethic that demands the protection of all people’s civil rights.
These were the methods of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Castro. They each created a culture of public shaming of those who opposed them or whom they targeted for contempt. Then they followed it up with violating the civil rights of their opponents. It went from barring them from free public movement to barring them from government jobs to murder. Hitler made the Jews wear stars of David on their clothing to identify themselves for the reproach of the public, to restrict their freedoms and to eventually identify those marked for death. Che Guevara, the hero of the left, was Castro’s trigger man. He would march whomever they had decided was not completely loyal to their movement outside of their camp and put a bullet in his/her head. The iconic picture of Che should be a silhouette of him holding a gun to a woman’s head and pulling the trigger.
The left has no ethical restraint on using tyranny to advance its means because the ethical basis of the left is not grounded in an absolute truth that protects the equality of all humans. They are so convinced that their atheistic vision for society is so good, that that good justifies the violation of the civil rights and human rights of their opponents. They are perfectly to violate and even murder millions of their opponents in the “service of mankind.” That is why the socialist and communist regimes of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Castro and Pol Pot arrested, tortured and murdered hundreds of millions of people in the last century. It is why that same pattern has occurred in Venezuela in our times. It is the same ethic of the Assad regime in Syria. It is control by tyranny, the polar opposite of democracy and liberty.
The extreme left likes democracy as long as they win. When they don’t they turn into the thugs that their ideology requires. These recent attacks on peaceful people are not just challenges to good manners, they are challenges to freedom itself.

When I came to be the pastor of what is now Pinon Hills Community Church (PHCC) in 1995, my vision was to grow a spiritually dynamic regional church on a state-of-the-art mission campus with ministries that would impact the Four Corners and the world for Christ. It was a lofty vision and we have been pursuing it for the last twenty-three years.

For about the last ten years God has been convincing my heart and mind that those of us who follow Jesus have a Kingdom Culture Mission (KCM). A Kingdom Culture Mission is the belief that God has called us to grow the Kingdom of Christ in every part of human culture. As much as possible the truth and values of Christ should be reflected in not only the church and the family, but also in public manners, in education, in businesses, in government and all other sectors of society. It was most elegantly stated by Jesus when he taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:10).

 
Most people don’t realize it but the founding of America on the core principles of faith, freedom and prosperity was the application of the Kingdom Culture Mission to human government. The founding document of America is the Declaration of Independence, written in 1776. It made the core case for the separation of America from England and the establishment of a new nation based on timeless principles. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the primary author of that document, however the core ideas and some of the core phrases themselves were not original with Jefferson. They were original with John Locke (1632-1704). Locke was the originator and Jefferson was the communicator. Locke was an English Christian theologian whose genius was to apply the truths of the Bible to human government. The central phrase in the Declaration of Independence of “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….,” is John Locke’s application of biblical theology to human government. Most of the rich blessings of America have come from the fact that it was founded on Kingdom Culture truths and values.

 
The only way to fulfill a Kingdom Culture Mission in the various sectors of society is for Christians to develop great kingdom churches plus other kingdom ministries, works and organizations that impact the various sectors of society; such as religion, education, government, business, non-profit work, art, science, entertainment and the media.
Over the last few years God has been convincing my heart and mind that my calling now is to move from the work of pastoring a church to the work of developing multiple organizations and ministries that grow the Kingdom of Christ in human culture.

 
In September of 2016 I asked the Board of Elders of Pinon Hills Community Church to start working with me to create a succession plan to select the next Lead Pastor for Pinon Hills Community Church so the church could keep moving forward and so I could make a transition to focus my time, energy and gifts on developing kingdom ministries like The Prosperity Project International that grow the Kingdom of Christ in our culture. I said at that time that my target date to complete the transition was approximately June of 2018.

 
I expected our Board to agree and to essentially send me on my way after we had completed the pastoral succession. Instead, after several months of prayer and deliberation, they concluded that we should expand our ministries from Pinon Hills Community Church (PHCC) to Pinon Hills Ministries (PHM) and that the broader umbrella of PHM would include the church plus our growing Christian school system called Southwest Academies, the Browning Ranch Equine Center (which came as a result of receiving the 32 acre Browning Ranch), the Pinon Hills Village Senior Community (which we are developing) and The Prosperity Project International (which we formed in June of 2016). And they concluded that I should move over from the role of pastoring PHCC to developing these other major ministries of Pinon Hills Ministries. So, we concluded that God was leading us in this direction.

 
Their reasoning was first that they agreed with the Kingdom Culture Mission that we have been pursuing. Then second, they felt like the work that was done so far to create a great church plus several other major ministries had been led by God. So, they concluded that we should keep moving forward in this calling that God has on all of us here at Pinon Hills.

 
In March of 2017 we presented the plan to expand the ministry from PHCC to PHM to the people of Pinon Hills Community Church and we presented the plan to expand our leadership by selecting a new Lead Pastor for PHCC and for me to move over to leading PHM. Our church accepted and supported the broader vision and plan.
That same month we met with William Vanderbloemen of the Vanderbloemen Search Group to prepare for our national search for our next Lead Pastor. In November of 2017 we officially launched our search with the Vanderbloemen Search Group (VSG).
By March of 2018 VSG presented four recommended candidates to our Search Team. The Search Team did its initial evaluation of these four candidates. Our Search Team released two of the candidates from our process and kept two. At the same time one of our staff members requested to submit his candidacy in the mix and the Search Team agreed to allow that.

 
In April of 2018 (this month) our Search Team took the two outside candidates and our inside candidate through a process of interviews, onsite visits and evaluations. After an intense and prayerful process, our Search Team selected one of the outside candidates on April 17, 2018 to be the candidate that they believed God had led them to recommend to the members of Pinon Hills Church. That candidate is Matt Mizell.

 
Matt and Ashten Mizell have two children ages five and two. Matt has served in two mega-churches in major leadership positions. He is serving in one of those churches now in California. Matt and Ashten have strong ties to New Mexico with family who live in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Matt has been a leader in ministry teaching and communications. He has a weekly ministry of training over 250 youth pastors nationwide in ministry and leadership. Matt’s gifts are teaching, leadership, entrepreneurship and communications. Matt is excited about leading forward on the vision of Pinon Hills Community Church and partnering in the broader work of Pinon Hills Ministries.

 
One of Matt’s ministry passions is to create a healthy church culture that begins with the church staff and that translates to the whole church. Matt has grown every organization and ministry where he has led and we expect him to lead PHCC to not only greater health but also to greater growth. He is also driven by the Kingdom Culture Mission and the church’s part of that mission to make as many disciples as possible who follow Jesus.
Matt and Ashten will be presented to the congregation of Pinon Hills Church on Sunday, April 29, 2018. Matt will preach in the 8:30 a.m. service. He will be interviewed by me in the 10:00 a.m. service and He will preach again in the 11:30 a.m. service. Then we will ask the members of PHCC to vote to affirm the selection of the Search Team by paper ballot or by online ballot. We believe that the confirmation of Matt Mizell as the next Lead Pastor of Pinon Hills Community Church is the next step in a long journey of faithfulness to God’s leading on our church and ministries.

 
Upon the confirmation of this selection by our membership we will finalize the plans for Matt, Ashten and their children to make their transition to Farmington and to begin ministry here at Pinon Hills Church this summer.

 
When Matt arrives, I will work with him for several months in a co-leadership role to help orient him to some of the dynamics of PHCC like working with our staff and our Board of Elders. I will be hands-off in his day to day leadership of the church and I will give him the room he needs to establish his pastoral leadership. At the end of those several months we will have a full handoff of the leadership of the church to Matt. After that I will serve Matt in an as-needed and as-wanted mentoring role. We will work collegially to create a synergy between PHCC and the other ministries of Pinon Hills Ministries. He will be the Lead Pastor of Pinon Hills Church and I will be the President of Pinon Hills Ministries.

 
I am excited about the future potential of Pinon Hills ministries with expanded leadership. As we pursue the Kingdom Culture Mission, these are some of the vision goals that I have for the ministries of PHM:
• Our Southwest Academies can become the premiere school system in our region to deliver academic excellence and a Christian worldview for pre-k through 12th grade on state-of-the-art campuses and winning state titles in sports and arts. Our graduates will be the leaders in defending and promoting the kingdom values of academics, faith, freedom and prosperity.
• Our Browning Ranch Equine Center can become the premiere national faith-based program that transforms people physically, mentally and spiritually through the human-equine connection.
• Our Pinon Hills Village can become a faith-based and ministry driven senior’s residential community of 400 people.
• The Prosperity Project International can lead 1 million people out of poverty by 2030 and especially transform the Christian Poor around the world to become the Christian Empowered who help change the world.
• Pinon Hills Community Church can grow to 2,500 plus attenders with ministries that impact the whole Four Corners Region and it can be a teaching church that lifts and mobilizes the ministries of other churches in the Kingdom Culture Mission.

Every one of the ministries of Pinon Hills Ministries is on a growth and development
track. Each one is designed to change lives and to grow the Kingdom of Christ. Together all these ministries will have amazing impact.

 
This is what is happening at Pinon Hills. We are expanding our ministry to pursue our Kingdom Culture Mission. We are expanding our leadership to fit the expanded ministry. We are selecting the next pastor for Pinon Hills Community Church and I am moving over to become the President of Pinon Hills Ministries.

 
As we expand our ministries and our leadership, I want to call everyone who is part of Pinon Hills to keep working with us to fulfill the vision. I also want to call every believer who is part of every other ministry in our region and around the world to the greatest work that is possible; to change lives and to grow the Kingdom of Christ. It is greater than any of us. The full fruit of our lives will not come in until after our lives and the results and rewards of our work will live beyond our lives and for eternity.
May God bless you and may God bless us as we serve The King.

Dr. John H. Morgan, 4.24.2018.

____________________________________________________

i. Wallbuilders.com. Article: John Locke Deist or Theologian? John Locke wrote a commentary on the epistles of Paul, multiple defenses of Christianity in his works The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in Scriptures, A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity and A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity. He quoted the Bible 1,349 times in his first Treatise on Government. In 1669 Locke assisted in drafting the constitution for the State of Carolina. That constitution required that citizens believe in God, be members of a church and not attack religion.

John Locke. Two Treatises on Government. (London. J. Whiston, etc. 1772.). Book II, p. 285, Chapter XI, sec.135.

Thomas Jefferson. Letter to John Trumbull. Paris Feb. 15. 1789. (Library of Congress. Thomas Jefferson: Letter to John Trumbull. Accessed at Loc.gov 2.18.2018.)

David L. Wardle. Reasons to Ratify: The Influence of John Locke’s Religious Beliefs on the Creation and Adoption of the United States Constitution. (Seattle University Law Review. 2002. Vol. 26. P.291ff.)

When I came to be the pastor of what is now Pinon Hills Community Church (PHCC) in 1995, my vision was to grow a spiritually dynamic regional church on a state-of-the-art mission campus with ministries that would impact the Four Corners and the world for Christ. It was a lofty vision and we have been pursuing it for the last twenty-three years.
For about the last ten years God has been convincing my heart and mind that those of us who follow Jesus have a Kingdom Culture Mission (KCM). A Kingdom Culture Mission is the belief that God has called us to grow the Kingdom of Christ in every part of human culture. As much as possible the truth and values of Christ should be reflected in not only the church and the family, but also in public manners, in education, in businesses, in government and all other sectors of society. It was most elegantly stated by Jesus when he taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:10).

 
Most people don’t realize it but the founding of America on the core principles of faith, freedom and prosperity was the application of the Kingdom Culture Mission to human government. The founding document of America is the Declaration of Independence, written in 1776. It made the core case for the separation of America from England and the establishment of a new nation based on timeless principles. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the primary author of that document, however the core ideas and some of the core phrases themselves were not original with Jefferson. They were original with John Locke (1632-1704). Locke was the originator and Jefferson was the communicator. Locke was an English Christian theologian whose genius was to apply the truths of the Bible to human government. The central phrase in the Declaration of Independence of “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….,” is John Locke’s application of biblical theology to human government. Most of the rich blessings of America have come from the fact that it was founded on Kingdom Culture truths and values.

 
The only way to fulfill a Kingdom Culture Mission in the various sectors of society is for Christians to develop great kingdom churches plus other kingdom ministries, works and organizations that impact the various sectors of of society; such as religion, education, government, business, non-profit work, art, science, entertainment and the media.

 
Over the last few years God has been convincing my heart and mind that my calling now is to move from the work of pastoring a church to the work of developing multiple organizations and ministries that grow the Kingdom of Christ in human culture.
In September of 2016 I asked the Board of Elders of Pinon Hills Community Church to start working with me to create a succession plan to select the next Lead Pastor for Pinon Hills Community Church so the church could keep moving forward and so I could make a transition to focus my time, energy and gifts on developing kingdom ministries like The Prosperity Project International that grow the Kingdom of Christ in our culture. I said at that time that my target date to complete the transition was approximately June of 2018.
I expected our Board to agree and to essentially send me on my way after we had completed the pastoral succession. Instead, after several months of prayer and deliberation, they concluded that we should expand our ministries from Pinon Hills Community Church (PHCC) to Pinon Hills Ministries (PHM) and that the broader umbrella of PHM would include the church plus our growing Christian school system called Southwest Academies, the Browning Ranch Equine Center (which came as a result of receiving the 32 acre Browning Ranch), the Pinon Hills Village Senior Community (which we are developing) and The Prosperity Project International (which we formed in June of 2016). And they concluded that I should move over from the role of pastoring PHCC to developing these other major ministries of Pinon Hills Ministries. So, we concluded that God was leading us in this direction.

 
Their reasoning was first that they agreed with the Kingdom Culture Mission that we have been pursuing. Then second, they felt like the work that was done so far to create a great church plus several other major ministries had been led by God. So, they concluded that we should keep moving forward in this calling that God has on all of us here at Pinon Hills.

 
In March of 2017 we presented the plan to expand the ministry from PHCC to PHM to the people of Pinon Hills Community Church and we presented the plan to expand our leadership by selecting a new Lead Pastor for PHCC and for me to move over to leading PHM. Our church accepted and supported the broader vision and plan.

 
That same month we met with William Vanderbloemen of the Vanderbloemen Search Group to prepare for our national search for our next Lead Pastor. In November of 2017 we officially launched our search with the Vanderbloemen Search Group (VSG).
By March of 2018 VSG presented four recommended candidates to our Search Team. The Search Team did its initial evaluation of these four candidates. Our Search Team released two of the candidates from our process and kept two. At the same time one of our staff members requested to submit his candidacy in the mix and the Search Team agreed to allow that.

 
In April of 2018 (this month) our Search Team took the two outside candidates and our inside candidate through a process of interviews, onsite visits and evaluations. After an intense and prayerful process, our Search Team selected one of the outside candidates on April 17, 2018 to be the candidate that they believed God had led them to recommend to the members of Pinon Hills Church. That candidate is Matt Mizell.

 
Matt and Ashten Mizell have two children ages five and two. Matt has served in two mega-churches in major leadership positions. He is serving in one of those churches now in California. Matt and Ashten have strong ties to New Mexico with family who live in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Matt has been a leader in ministry teaching and communications. He has a weekly ministry of training over 250 youth pastors nationwide in ministry and leadership. Matt’s gifts are teaching, leadership, entrepreneurship and communications. Matt is excited about leading forward on the vision of Pinon Hills Community Church and partnering in the broader work of Pinon Hills Ministries.

 
One of Matt’s ministry passions is to create a healthy church culture that begins with the church staff and that translates to the whole church. Matt has grown every organization and ministry where he has led and we expect him to lead PHCC to not only greater health but also to greater growth. He is also driven by the Kingdom Culture Mission and the church’s part of that mission to make as many disciples as possible who follow Jesus.

 
Matt and Ashten will be presented to the congregation of Pinon Hills Church on Sunday, April 29, 2018. Matt will preach in the 8:30 a.m. service. He will be interviewed by me in the 10:00 a.m. service and He will preach again in the 11:30 a.m. service. Then we will ask the members of PHCC to vote to affirm the selection of the Search Team by paper ballot or by online ballot. We believe that the confirmation of Matt Mizell as the next Lead Pastor of Pinon Hills Community Church is the next step in a long journey of faithfulness to God’s leading on our church and ministries.

 
Upon the confirmation of this selection by our membership we will finalize the plans for Matt, Ashten and their children to make their transition to Farmington and to begin ministry here at Pinon Hills Church this summer.

 
When Matt arrives, I will work with him for several months in a co-leadership role to help orient him to some of the dynamics of PHCC like working with our staff and our Board of Elders. I will be hands-off in his day to day leadership of the church and I will give him the room he needs to establish his pastoral leadership. At the end of those several months we will have a full handoff of the leadership of the church to Matt. After that I will serve Matt in an as-needed and as-wanted mentoring role. We will work collegially to create a synergy between PHCC and the other ministries of Pinon Hills Ministries. He will be the Lead Pastor of Pinon Hills Church and I will be the President of Pinon Hills Ministries.

 
I am excited about the future potential of Pinon Hills ministries with expanded leadership. As we pursue the Kingdom Culture Mission, these are some of the vision goals that I have for the ministries of PHM:
• Our Southwest Academies can become the premiere school system in our region to deliver academic excellence and a Christian worldview for pre-k through 12th grade on state-of-the-art campuses and winning state titles in sports and arts. Our graduates will be the leaders in defending and promoting the kingdom values of academics, faith, freedom and prosperity.
• Our Browning Ranch Equine Center can become the premiere national faith-based program that transforms people physically, mentally and spiritually through the human-equine connection.
• Our Pinon Hills Village can become a faith-based and ministry driven senior’s residential community of 400 people.
• The Prosperity Project International can lead 1 million people out of poverty by 2030 and especially transform the Christian Poor around the world to become the Christian Empowered who help change the world.
• Pinon Hills Community Church can grow to 2,500 plus attenders with ministries that impact the whole Four Corners Region and it can be a teaching church that lifts and mobilizes the ministries of other churches in the Kingdom Culture Mission.

Every one of the ministries of Pinon Hills Ministries is on a growth and development
track. Each one is designed to change lives and to grow the Kingdom of Christ. Together all these ministries will have amazing impact.
This is what is happening at Pinon Hills. We are expanding our ministry to pursue our Kingdom Culture Mission. We are expanding our leadership to fit the expanded ministry. We are selecting the next pastor for Pinon Hills Community Church and I am moving over to become the President of Pinon Hills Ministries.

 
As we expand our ministries and our leadership, I want to call everyone who is part of Pinon Hills to keep working with us to fulfill the vision. I also want to call every believer who is part of every other ministry in our region and around the world to the greatest work that is possible; to change lives and to grow the Kingdom of Christ. It is greater than any of us. The full fruit of our lives will not come in until after our lives and the results and rewards of our work will live beyond our lives and for eternity.
May God bless you and may God bless us as we serve The King.

Dr. John H. Morgan, 4.24.2018.

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i. Wallbuilders.com. Article: John Locke Deist or Theologian? John Locke wrote a commentary on the epistles of Paul, multiple defenses of Christianity in his works The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in Scriptures, A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity and A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity. He quoted the Bible 1,349 times in his first Treatise on Government. In 1669 Locke assisted in drafting the constitution for the State of Carolina. That constitution required that citizens believe in God, be members of a church and not attack religion.

John Locke. Two Treatises on Government. (London. J. Whiston, etc. 1772.). Book II, p. 285, Chapter XI, sec.135.

Thomas Jefferson. Letter to John Trumbull. Paris Feb. 15. 1789. (Library of Congress. Thomas Jefferson: Letter to John Trumbull. Accessed at Loc.gov 2.18.2018.)

David L. Wardle. Reasons to Ratify: The Influence of John Locke’s Religious Beliefs on the Creation and Adoption of the United States Constitution. (Seattle University Law Review. 2002. Vol. 26. P.291ff.)