Where it began…

I was born on May 23rd, 1955 in Prestonsburg, Kentucky and spent ten years of my life in the hollers of Floyd County. I began School at a little three room schoolhouse with no running water with two outdoor toilets alongside Little Mud Creek at Spruce Pine. Our playground consisted of bare ground where all of us boys drew rings in the dirt and played marbles for keeps.

Mom and Dad moved me and my sisters to Kendallville, Indiana when I turned ten years old. Leaving the hollers of East Kentucky and the three room SprucePine School, I grew up in Kendallville, graduated East Noble High School by the skin of my teeth and an added summer school and fall semester. I was a high school wrestler for a time and this is where I began to learn to play guitar and to play in my first real band. Somewhere around my 21st year I left Kendallville to play music, run hard and play dumb like a lot of young men my age.

New life in Christ…

I was born again on November 23rd, 1987. When my spirit was made alive by the Spirit of the Living God I was changed and I have never been the same. It’s been a ride and I have made more than my share of bad choices and mistakes, but God is greater and His love and promise to keep me is realized in my life. None of us will get it all right, but if we are in that supernatural relationship with our Creator and Father God, through Jesus Christ, He will complete the good work in and through us that He promised He would.

My family…

God has spared me and given me a mission to help others who may find themselves dealing with the death of a loved one, or having been in a cult or an abusive religious environment in a manner like I and my family were. Jesus does not equate to man’s religion. Jesus confronted the religion of Judaism that ruled the land of Israel when He came as Immanuel about 2000 years ago. Jesus came to deliver His people from it all and to give us an abundant life. I am eternally grateful that He delivered me and my family from the clutches of the bondage of the legalism of the Hebrew Roots movement.

My wife Karen and I will be married 46 years this year (2025), and we raised a son and three daughters. Our oldest daughter went to be with Jesus in 2020. We miss her, but we know that she is not lost! She simply went on ahead of us! We will see her again, soon! In addition to that, another of our daughters lost her left arm completely in a car crash in 2013 and has been raising two little boys on her own since then, and our other daughter and son have suffered a lot of trauma in their lives. A lot of it stems from hurt from man’s religion.

God has shown me that a lot of people have been hurt by the professing church that bases their own life in man’s religion and focus on judging others by the same self-righteous legalism. My remaining children are among them. Those who have been through it, or know the stories of others who have been there, begin to conflate the self-righteousness of religion with Jesus the Christ and our heavenly Father. It is sad to see and at times infuriating. But then I realize that many of those in the throes of religions legalism need to experience the never-ending love of God and His great mercy and grace.

Our family has been through a lot. Personally, I have been delivered from having a triple bypass open heart surgery and three strokes, and most recently I was in the hospital near death for twenty-four days in January and into February of 2025. I was diagnosed with Stage 4, lymphatic, non-Hodgkins, small cell lymphoma leukemia. My oncologist said I spent most of my time in the hospital trying to die on him. Much of that time is a blur of visions and hallucinations that are far too much to tell you on this website page. But God has healed me! My blood work is now back to normal and the suspected tumor they saw in the back of my throat is gone, per a recent video with a camera looking at it directly! To God be all the glory. I’ll be 70 years old on May 23rd, as I write this on the 22nd, and I have a lot of the aches and pains that come with a body with the miles and years I have on mine, but He is not done with this old man yet.

Beginning in Jesus with a disastrous side trip into religion…

Most of my Christian life I attended and I served at Messiah Fellowship of Howe, Indiana, and located in Brighton, Indiana, before it went off the rails into a cult-like group. Jesus, my First Love, delivered me from that lie. Messiah Fellowship began as Maranatha Christian Fellowship, and under a different pastor, who then was called away to another city to being a new work. He handed the reigns over to his assistant pastor and before long there was a major split and the fellowship became marred with division and a revolving door where hundreds of people came in and before long left, disillusioned by what they experienced. I didn’t see it when we first arrived at Maranatha in 1993. It hindsight I can see all the signs that I either didn’t recognize or pushed aside as the years went by. Sadly, I was a part of the problem.

Around 1995 or 1996 Maranatha Christian Fellowship became Calvary Christian Fellowship located in Brighton, Indiana. We began attending the fellowship in August of 1993, and I began with the worship ministry in 1994. Within a few short years I was teaching in the children’s ministry, and began managing WQKO and WCVM Christian radio stations, with CSN International. They were located in the fellowship facilities. As the pastor, myself, and another brother in leadership began to drift into the legalism of the law we eventually became a Hebrew Roots cult. All the other elders resigned and left the fellowship and people just stopped coming.

During my time with the fellowship I was an teaching elder and in ministry for nearly three decades. The last decade and a half I was the vice president of the corporation. Around 2007 Calvary Christian Fellowship was legally renamed Messiah Fellowship as it descended into full blown observance of the law of Moses and into a Hebrew Roots cult. I drank the Kool-Aid. Thank you, Lord, you kept me from dying from it in that bondage.

I own my part in the harm our actions caused to hundreds if not thousands of people. I was divisive and separated myself from the body of Christ at large, believing that we at Messiah Fellowship had a lock on the truth. I was wrong! I hurt a lot of people and separated myself from them. But Papa God has been so faithful in reconciliation and restoration in those relationships that were damaged with years of estrangement. I am so blessed that God has given me insight, along with His loving forgiveness, to proclaim the truth of the Gospel and expose the lies of the Hebrew Roots movement. The greatest gift of all is the great mercy and grace of our heavenly Father and His Son Jesus.

Where I am today…

My wife and I have moved from Lagrange County now live on the north side of Auburn and our ministry is primarily in the greater Kendallville area, though we are called on to help many in surrounding counties and in other states from time to time. I have served in the recovery ministry for going on four years. I have been involved in Celebrate Recovery as a ministry leader much of that time, along with being a program supervisor, lead case manager and director of development for Inspiration Ministries until I left in May of 2024. I am an ordained and credential minister with Christian Leaders Institute, and recognized Soul Center in the ministry, and in the process of leading a small group in a Bible study and looking to plant in a church building very soon as First Love Outreach Fellowship. My wife and I, along with our young son, have been gone from Messiah Fellowship for five years.

Today, Messiah Fellowship is still in bondage to the legalism of the law of Moses. From a membership height of several hundred, it is now around fifty or less souls who attend. However, Messiah Fellowship and other Hebrew Roots style ministries are not alone in their legalistic and divisive practices. Many other expressions of Christianity, in many denominations and independent churches are in their own form of legalism.

Thinking that their church and pastor is somehow better, knows more, and is the benchmark for others in their own brand of legalism, and it breeds divisiveness, separation along with an arrogance and hatefulness in many. The need to point out the sins and wrong doctrine, based on “you’re not doing it right,” literally they mean, “you’re not doing it like my church,” becomes the way many roll. It seems that the goal of such a one is to constantly point out sin and shortcomings of everyone else, according to their own private interpretation and their personal church doctrine. I believe that the Scripture is clear, and it is confirmed by the Spirit of the Living God, that this is not how His body is to roll.

Reading the Bible in context shows us that this is not the job of the true Church, the Body of Christ. We are to show the love and kindness of the Lord that led us to true repentance and into a born again relationship with God the Father through His Son’s finished work of the cross. We are not qualified to be the ones to convict the world of sin. I have learned, being a disciple-pupil of the Holy Spirit, that it is the kindness and love of God that leads one to repentance. Beating people over the head with the Bible and hammering them about the sin in their lives, breathing fire and brimstone is not of Jesus.That’s the job of God the Holy Spirit, who Jesus promised He would send in John Chapter 16.

“And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” -John 16:8-11 NKJV

My credentials, if that is important to you…

  I’ve been involved in ministry nearly all of the 38 years since becoming born again in 1987. I studied at Calvary Chapel Bible College, and completed seminary training with Christian Leaders Institute. I am ordained by Christian Leaders Institute, registered with Christian Leaders Alliance.

Before ordination by CLI, I was ordained by the laying on of hands by the leadership at Harvest Fellowship in Fort Wayne. I’ve known Pastor Paul Mowery for decades, through our mutual ministry in affiliation with Calvary Chapel and with CSN International Christian Broadcast Network.

My ordination was endorsed by Pastor Sam Maddox of Albion, by signature, and by endorsement recommendation by several pastors in Noble County, Indiana. I’ve known Pastor Sam for about two years and partnered together for recovery ministry when I led The 112 Celebrate Recovery Ministry on Main Street in Kendallville, Indiana. Sam pastors Albion Wesleyan Church at 800 E. Main St., in Albion, Indiana and is a good brother and friend, and one of the men of God I look to for accountability in my walk and ministry.

Today, Karen and I still live in NE Indiana where I serve as a pastor, produce a podcast, preach the Word, write and record songs and lead worship and share the goodness of God. We are currently leading a Monday evening Bible Study and are looking to grow a group of disciples of Jesus Christ in whom the Spirit is bearing the fruit of love in service to God and to others.

If you have questions, would like to know more, join with us, or are interested in booking me for any sort of event, I am available to discuss it. You may call me at 260-336-4106 or you may send me an email to bannerkidd55@gmail.com.

First Love Outreach Fellowship is a registered soul center with Christian Leaders Alliance and is in accountability with Harvest Fellowship of Fort Wayne, Indiana and Albion Wesleyan Church of Albion, Indiana, the Seeds of Change pastoral group for small churches, and many other fellow pastors of differing denominations and affiliations in Northeast Indiana.