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Ron Browning
CEO, Biblical Strategist, & Remedial Disciple(r)
NewHeart Expressions, an Exchanged Life Ministry
RE:
How has the Lord
Jesus prepared me for Ministry?
Updated Summer 2011
Chronology:
Childhood (ages 7 to 17)
I grew up as the son of a Baptist preacher who taught me basic Truth with a lot of Scripture memory, until the age of 17; from which I was enabled to teach and manipulate a pseudo Christian life.
College Years
I attended two Universities: Jacksonville Baptist College in Texas and Central State University in Oklahoma, where my primary studies involved music. Once it was determined that I lacked the desire or discipline for study, I dropped out of school. However, with a a taste for the dramatic and flamboyant to accompany my unfinished studies, I taught music in the private sector for almost 20 years as a piano and voice instructor and a musical drama and theater coach. Finally, at Music With Heart, a school for the arts I owned in Flagstaff Arizona, I was privileged to teach, coach, and direct a group of children and teens in musical drama and theater.
Salvation Experience
I came to know Jesus in saving faith at the age of 28, October 31, 1994. I knew this was a true conversion, evidenced in real repentance and faith; for it brought an obvious change to my life – for the first time I wanted to tell the truth. After 20 years of living in deception and being deceptive I desired and learned to be a truth teller before judges, in courtrooms, who held my fate (so to speak) in their hands, facing a possibility of decades of prison time – truth when it hurts! Amazingly, truth won less time in prison than my silence or schemes – five years instead of twenty-five. Saving faith not only changed my heart, but the consequences of a life lived in sin.
"Prison-ary”
I never attended seminary; however, I attended studies with Mount Zion Bible institute during my prison years (thus, the invented term "prison-ary”). At first, these studies were just to keep my mind preoccupied. Secondly, these studies became a source for my own spiritual growth in Jesus and Christian fellowship. Thirdly, these in-depth studies prepared me to make disciples of men while in prison. Men, who were sexually broken and captive to gross habitual sin. Then God did an amazing ministry of reconciliation. Once released from prison, I was privileged to continue making disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, as my new occupation. I became a para-professional disciple(r). Mount Zion is not an accredited school, though they remain Bible focused on the responsibility to make disciples.
During the years that followed prison, I was on parole and/or probation in several states, with a growing appetite to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and make disciples. The connected me with a man by the name of John Woodward, the executive director of Grace Fellowship International, an Exchanged Life Ministry.
The Exchanged Life
I attended studies with Grace Fellowship International (GFI, 2002-05) and more recently with Exchanged Life Colorado (ELM, 2006, 07) in pursuit of a greater application of Scripture in my own life and in the lives of those I have been privileged to disciple and journey with through the issues of sexual brokenness, uncontrollable fear, depression, personal failures, controlling anger, unwanted sinful behaviors, etc...
To this end I have studied:
Basic Studies in the Exchanged Life(through Conferences with GFI and ELM)
Intermediate Studies in the Exchanged Life (through Workshops with GFI and ELM)
Advanced Studies in the Exchanged Life (through Seminars with GFI), and
Advanced Training in the Exchanged Life (with Exchanged Life Colorado, ELM)
The Exchanged Life is an ongoing study for most discipleship/counselors and ministers. I continue studies with Grace Fellowship International and other Exchnaged Life Ministries around the USA. Dr. John Woodward, GFI Executive Director, stated on Feb. 27, 2008 that currently I have completed a little over half of the GFI Counseling Institute studies as a Clinical Disciple(r) (www.gficounselinginstitute.com).
When my mentor, Dr. John Woodward received his doctorate from Luther Rice Seminary in the Exchanged Life, he and I evaluated my educational progress. Due to my criminal history and a traumatic brain injury received 05.05.05, I experienced many closed doors in education and ministry. We came to believe that the pursuit of formal studies would be difficult and futile. John then summarized that God’s calling upon my life, to journey with men out of the trenches and clutches of sinful behaviors, was not dependent on formal education; rather, to how teachable I was as Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the Truth of Scripture, and how
personally surrendered I was, as Jesus revealed His Life in and through me.
John then encouraged me, with a balanced view of my education and experience. He roughly estimated that I have about six years of discipleship education and experience, in both worship (music) and in the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. As John lifted me up, I became less interested in formal education. I began to view experienced biblical studies and intimate knowledge as true growth in Christ. As one professor from Mount Zion Bible Institute shared with me, "Ron, you have the heart of the pastor”. Eventually, I began to see how Christ has given me to the Church as a pastor; or what some would refer to as a discipleship counselor, discipler, and an Exchanged Life minister.
Currently, I have certificates as an Exchanged Life Counselor, a member of the Association of Exchanged Life Ministries, and a licensed minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by World Ministry Fellowship. NewHeart Expressions is a para-church organization, serving as the platform God has provided me to minister from. NHE is a not-for-profit organization and listed the IRS, under the covering of World Ministry Fellowship, out of Plano TX. The Lord has blessed me with the favor of a local church, where I serve on the worship team. My Church fellowship has blessed me to continue discipling men, walking with the sexually broken through NewHeart Expressions.
Finally, the following Scripture certifies my calling, gifting, passion, and position.
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Acts 4:13 (NASB)
Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.
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1 Cor. 9:2 (NASB)
If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
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2 Cor. 3:5, 6 (NASB)
Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
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