by Sam Childers
“God,” I said, “you’re going to have to do something now!” I figured with the Bible, God, and the 12-gauge I was about as safe as I could get, though I have to admit I was counting on the shotgun most.
When I finally did become a Christian, I couldn’t get enough of it. I started studying the Bible really seriously and taking Bible school courses at home. I wanted to know everything.
If God is my master, I wondered, what are my instructions?
It was about a year before I got an answer to that question. I was in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado on an elk hunt. It was a crisp, clear, beautiful day with snow on the ground and a dusting on the tall fir and spruce trees all around me, just below the timberline. I was carrying one of my favorite guns in the world, a Weatherby .340 Magnum, which I consider to be the best elk rifle on the planet. I sat down on a log to smoke a cigarette and, out of nowhere, felt the presence of God beside me.
God said, You know, it’s time for you to start preaching.
I wasn’t so sure. I still wasn’t completely living the life I thought a preacher should live; besides, I still smoked. I don’t think there’s anything in the Bible against smoking, but I didn’t know of any Assembly of God preachers who smoked. At least any who admitted to it. I said, “Yeah, right. I’m sitting here smoking a cigarette and you’re telling me I’m to start preaching.”
God said, I will take care of that problem. He told me the exact day I would quit smoking and he handled it from then on. He took care of the hardest part of my cigarette addiction and left me to do the rest. I had been smoking three packs a day, including probably half a pack at night. I would wake up, smoke a cigarette, and go back to sleep. God took away my craving for cigarettes at night. When that happened I knew it was up to me to keep away from them during the day. I struggled at first, but once I stopped I never put another cigarette to my lips.
Do I believe cigarettes are a sin? They’re no more of a sin than overeating or anything else we overindulge in. It becomes a sin when it keeps us from more important things. I believe cigarettes, TV, and a long list of other diversions can turn into sins if they keep us from a relationship with God, especially when he has called us to serve him.
Sitting there on the log in the middle of the Rockies, I knew that my life was about to drastically change. I was ready to begin my ministry as a preacher, but I wanted to ask for one favor first.
“God,” I said, “I have no problem obeying you and starting to preach. I’ll tell you, though, I’ve been coming out here to hunt in Colorado for years and I love it. If I start preaching, I’m not going to be able to get back here again for a long time—maybe never. So let me shoot a big elk today.”
Just as I said that, a monster elk came into view about five hundred yards away. He walked down a ridge, perfectly outlined against the cold, brilliant, dark blue sky. I dropped him with one shot. His mounted head and huge rack are on the wall of my living room today.
As the idea of starting a ministry sank in, I felt the need to prepare a place to do the work. In 1995 I bought forty acres across the highway from my construction company office and my house—forty acres of rolling hills covered with sandy soil and shaded by a thick canopy of tall trees. The forest kept it cool and breezy in summer, and when the snow came it looked like a Christmas card. I wanted a campground where people could meet to study, pray, and enjoy each other’s fellowship. The next year I put in a septic system, and we started having regular camp meetings on that land.
I talked to my pastor, Dean Krause, a wise counselor and mentor who supported my desire to be in ministry from the first time we discussed it, although I was still a little rough around the edges. One day I was in church at the altar praying and weeping. He came over and knelt down beside me to pray with me; he laid his hand on my back and felt my shoulder harness holding the pistol I always carried. Then he moved his hand down and felt another pistol in the small of my back. He glanced over at me, muffled a chuckle, and said, “Here I am praying with some guy at the altar, crying and praying and shouting out to God—and he’s got a gun on each side of him!” He always remembered that.
I believe guns can teach principles of Christianity in a unique way, especially to people who know more about guns than they do about the Bible.
Think about the Holy Trinity. The Father is Father God. The Holy Spirit is like a bodyguard who tells us in our minds when we’re about to do wrong. Jesus is the Son of God; we have to go through him to get to the Father. The parts of the Trinity work together like you or me firing a pistol. There’s the pistol, the bullet, and the hand. With the pistol empty, it won’t work even if there’s a hand to fire it. A hand just holding the bullet in its palm is useless without the pistol. A loaded pistol lying on the counter won’t fire by itself. It takes all three: the gun, the bullet, and the hand. I’ve used that as a demonstration many times over the years. It might seem a little crazy, but a gun takes all three components in order to become effective, and that’s what I believe about the Trinity.
God gave me the wisdom to recognize the need to use a gun to do his work in Africa, the knowledge of how to use one, and the faith to take one into dangerous situations. He allowed me to use it to protect myself and continue my work there. I do not believe that Jesus Christ ever condoned violence or told us to go out and murder, but he does want us to protect our families. To me that family includes the children of Africa. Jesus said that any man who does not take care of his family is worse than an infidel.
To someone who thinks a preacher shouldn’t be armed to go into the African bush and rescue a child, let me ask you this: What if it was your child? What if it was your young boy or girl who was kidnapped and you knew where the child was and knew he or she was in danger? Say someone like me came along and said, “Ma’am, I can go get your child. I will bring your child home to you tomorrow.” Would you say, “No, don’t do that. I don’t condone violence”? Or would you weep and beg, “Yes, please, bring my child home!”? My guess is that you’d say, “Bring him home.” So as I kept preparing for the ministry, I saw no reason to give up guns and fighting. The more I learned, the more I saw the need for them.
I applied for a license to preach with the Independent Assemblies of Pennsylvania in 1998 and preached under their oversight for two years. After that, I was talking to Pastor Krause one day and he said, “Sam, let us license you.” I thought that was a good idea, and from then until now I’ve been licensed through the Abundant Life Fellowship out of Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania. Dean still mentors me, and to this day I’m accountable as a pastor to him and his fellowship. We still talk, and he still gives me his opinion. We don’t always see eye to eye (I don’t think he ever started carrying a pistol in the pulpit), but he’s always there for me.
During these years you could say my life took a completely different direction. Then again, you could also say it was going in every direction at once. At the end of 1998, as I’ve already mentioned, I made my first trip to the Sudan. For the next three years I went back and forth to Africa, developed my campground in Central City, started building a church on the property, and ran my construction business. In 2000 I started driving the mobile clinic in Sudan and also began construction of the orphanage in Nimule.
On August 19, 2001, we had the first service in our church at the campground in Central City, which we named Shekinah Fellowship Church. The building was a long way from finished, but we couldn’t have been prouder of it if it had been a stone cathedral. All we had at first was the basement with a poured concrete floor, painted concrete block walls, and a temporary roof. The basement was on a hillside so that one end had doors and windows and sunlight filtering through the trees, while the other end was underground. We planned to put up a permanent roof as soon as we could, which would eventually be the floor of the sanctuary upstairs.
Later that year in October, Lynn and Paige went with me to Africa and were there when the first handful of children came to live at the orphanage. The first day we were
there, I was preaching under a tree when the LRA bombed the area—not once, but six times. I kept right on preaching, and the locals never forgot that. It showed them that I was serious about my work, and that I had no fear of the LRA.
Up to this point, my personal savings and profits from my construction company had paid for all my work in Africa plus the land and building for Shekinah Fellowship. Lynn and I started a newsletter, but no one was really out there trying to raise money. I couldn’t keep preaching and supporting my African mission without money, but I couldn’t make money if I was spending all my time preaching and going to Africa. To answer the call on my life, I had to move ahead on faith alone. Two of my employees agreed to buy the construction company from me. I set that process in motion, but at the last minute they changed their minds. There was no turning back for me then, so I had an auction and sold my vehicles, tools, and equipment. Financially it was a disaster. I had brand-new merchandise going for a quarter of what I’d paid for it. Air compressors still in crates went for $120. I went behind the building where no one could see me and cried so hard. The hope had been to get a big financial boost for my ministry, but it didn’t happen, and now I was out of business. I’d just sold the goose whose golden eggs had kept everything going.
After some lean and difficult years, God blessed our ministry. He had to be sure I was in all the way, in for keeps. I was able to hang in there because I had a call. That’s the most important part of becoming a pastor—you have to be sure without a shred of doubt that God has called you to preach. When God has you in his grip, you can’t help serving him. It becomes the most important thing in your life. In my case answering the call meant more than my business, more than my financial security, even more than my family.
When there’s a call on our lives, it stays there waiting patiently, no matter how long it takes for us to pick up on it. I could have spent my whole life pastoring a church or running a ministry, but I missed my first call. And the second. And the third, fourth, and fifth. Because I missed all those opportunities, when I finally did surrender to God, I felt a real passion that he had to use what was left. Even though there were a lot of scars and a lot of bad things in my past, I believe God looked at me and said, “There’s still something there in Sam Childers for me to work with.”
So he began to clean that up and mold it. Once he starts working with something, he’s not going to leave it the same. I absolutely believe that a normal preacher with a college education could never do what I do. Not because he doesn’t have the desire, but because he’s not equipped with the experience God has given me. Had I died during those years, I would surely have gone to hell. God’s mercy won’t keep you out of hell when you’re intentionally sinning as I was. But once I surrendered to him, a new plan came into play, and a new ministry was born.
Romans 11:29 says, “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Maybe you know inside that you have a call on your life, but you feel as though you’ve lost it or deserted it or missed your chance. Believe me when I tell you that the call is still there. He will never take away the gifts and the call he gave me, and the same is true for you.
Because I left all God’s earlier assignments behind, I have this new assignment he gave me. And it’s not an assignment for the healthy; it’s only for the sick. In Matthew 9:13, Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” God doesn’t call people who think they’re righteous; he calls people who know they’re sinners. I was as bad as they come, which makes it clear why God called me: he called me to go out and speak to others who are sinners.
Romans 8:27–28 is a great scripture that says, “Now He [God] who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” I absolutely believe that every time I made a mistake, God was saying, “Boy, this guy messed up again! But I’m still going to use him!”
Once he called me, I was his forever. Now I’m serving him wherever he can use me. For the time being, that means having one foot in the Stony Creek of eastern Pennsylvania and the other foot in the Nile.
NINE
in the palm of his hand
When I started building the Children’s Village in Southern Sudan, there was no master plan on paper, no blueprints for buildings. I had nothing figured out ahead of time, the way it would normally be done. God gave me the whole idea in a vision one night. I made a map of it according to his instructions, and that’s all I ever used to work from. I still have the map. The campground in Pennsylvania had been the same way—a one-night vision. I didn’t sit down and say, “The cabins go here, the playground goes here, and the church goes here.” God told me what he wanted, and that’s what I did.
After those early tukuls in 2000 and 2001, a few workers and I started building little staff houses for workers, then bigger houses, and the first dormitories for the children after that. The dormitories were simple, sturdy, rectangular buildings. The window openings had shutters but no glass, which is common in the African countryside. Glass is expensive, hard to get, dangerous when it’s broken, and too easily shattered with children scrambling all over the place. Since it never gets cold, and the eaves keep out the rain, shutters alone provide plenty of protection. We needed a bathhouse and a kitchen, so we built those as well. We cleared ground as fast as we could with the hand tools available. Foot by foot, yard by yard, we’d get another tangle of underbrush cut down and uprooted until we had an acre of it cleaned off. Then we started on the next acre.
Once I started getting settled, I felt it was very important to build a good relationship with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army as soon as I could. I had heard some criticism of the SPLA and knew that other missionaries weren’t helping them. They were technically a rebel force at the time, formed in opposition to the regular Sudanese army, but I never had any problem with the SPLA. In fact, I was impressed with how they were trying to protect the adults and children in the area. It was only later that we learned the full extent of the regular Sudanese army’s terrible mistreatment of their own people in Darfur and elsewhere as they tried to enforce the official Islamic legal code.
I had SPLA soldiers with me from the first time I went to Africa. Once they realized I was as committed to helping the people of Sudan as they were, they accepted me as their friend and fellow soldier. When I saw that they didn’t have the equipment and supplies they needed in the field, I started bringing them gifts like binoculars, tents, and sleeping bags.
I started hiring the SPLA for security work, and because we worked so close together, I became an SPLA soldier myself. They saw that my heart was to make a difference in the lives of their people, so they started calling me a commander. I carried truckloads of food, salt, sugar, blankets, and other supplies to the front for soldiers, as well as preaching to them and encouraging them in battle.
Sam back in 2000 with one of the commanders
Naturally the Lord’s Resistance Army didn’t like having a Christian mzunga in the neighborhood spoiling their fun. The Sudanese government had left them alone, thinking that if the LRA harassed the southerners who wouldn’t convert to Islam, government soldiers wouldn’t have to spend their time doing it.
The LRA continued trying to attack our compound but never succeeded. They also tried more than once to kill me. One of the times, I was walking with a couple of my men from the compound to the river. The area there had been cleared so the enemy couldn’t hide in the undergrowth. We hadn’t seen any activity or heard of any LRA nearby in the past few days.
Without warning I heard zzzzzzzZZZZTT whizzing past my ear, maybe two inches from my head. A rifle crack followed a millisecond later. The old saying that “there’s no need to duck because you never hear the one that gets you” is absolutely true; bullets t
ravel three times the speed of sound. But I ducked anyway, fell to one knee, and yanked my .357 from its holster. As I transitioned from standing to kneeling, I fired off two rounds. The two solders with me shouldered their AK-47s and sprayed the bush with lead. Since we never heard anyone run and never found a body, we figured he must have gotten away that time.
As word of our ministry got around, we became more popular, the number of children living at the orphanage grew, and the LRA tried even harder to kill me. When they saw they could never successfully attack the orphanage, they attacked a nearby village and started asking them about me—where I was and how many soldiers I had—to set up another attempt on my life. At the time I was planning what I called a crusade, a small-scale version of the events Billy Graham had held for so many years with several nights of music and preaching. Somebody claiming to represent the LRA called the radio station in Gulu and told them they would kill me if I went through with my plans.
People said I should cancel. “Kony hates you,” they said. “Kony’s out to take care of you for good, and he’ll do it!”
I didn’t care.
First of all, I figured that after everything God had brought me through to get to this point, he’d never give me up to one loony rebel commander. Second, I had never run from a fight in my life, and I wasn’t going to start now. I was here to fight another man’s war, fighting for children and innocent victims who couldn’t fight for themselves, and staying the course until the war was over. I told them, “If we don’t have this crusade, people will think the god Joseph Kony serves is greater than our God.” There was no way we could allow that. Our presentation went ahead exactly as planned, and we didn’t have any trouble.
