2theadvocate.com | Features | Pentecostal group picks BR native as leader

By MARK H. HUNTER
Special to The Advocate
Published: Nov 14, 2009

A Baton Rouge-born Texas preacher who grew up in Korea is the newly elected leader of one of the world’s largest Pentecostal denominations.

The Rev. David K. Bernard, 53, founder and pastor of New Life United Pentecostal Church in Austin, Texas, was elected last month as general superintendent of The United Pentecostal Church International, a family of 30,000 churches in 177 nations headquartered in St. Louis, Mo.

A Bible scholar, college professor and prolific writer, Bernard has authored more than 30 theological books.

He is also an accomplished nature photographer who has posted hundreds of photographs of wildflowers, butterflies, and insects on his personal Web site complete with their scientific descriptions. “I don’t want to take the time to golf or to kill animals so this is something I can do an hour at a time or two hours at a time with no phones, no appointments,” he said. “On my day off I have fun and appreciate God’s creation.”

Bernard is the son of retired missionaries: the Rev. Elton D. and Loretta (Artigue) Bernard, who reside near Gonzales. His sister is Karen Hatcher, a financial consultant living in St. Amant. His parents have relatives in the Baton Rouge area, and he also has many friends at the 2,000-member First Pentecostal Church in Denham Springs and the 400-member First Pentecostal Church in Baton Rouge, where he spent a summer as a college intern.

“I’m proud of my French and Cajun and Louisiana roots,” Bernard said during a recent telephone interview. “I hope (Baton Rouge area friends) pray for me and hope they can support someone who has their values and can lead in this office.”

Bernard was born in 1956 and his parents moved to Port Allen where they established a small church. They moved again to Hammond where they established another ‘house church,’ according to Bernard and biographical information posted on several denomination and church Web sites. It was in Hammond, Bernard said, that he found salvation at age 7.

“I slept through most of the service, but at the end they had an altar call and I remember responding,” Bernard said. “It was late at night and almost everybody had gone, but I felt an urgency to pray and I prayed until I was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in tongues.”

The family moved to Seoul, South Korea, as missionaries in 1965, where his parents served for 20 years. He graduated from Seoul Foreign School in 1974, as valedictorian and student council president.

“We lived a very moderate lifestyle and yet it was very different from the people around us,” he said. “I think it helped me to learn to adapt to any and all circumstances and gave me the ability to be comfortable in a variety of surroundings and relate to a variety of people.”

Although he grew up as a preacher’s kid, and people would tell him, “you’re going to be a preacher like your dad,” he said for many years he never felt a direct call to the ministry.

While attending Rice University in the early 1970s, he often taught Sunday school and Bible classes. He graduated in 1978, with a degree in mathematics and managerial studies, training his father credits with David Bernard’s ability to juggle responsibilities as a pastor, conference superintendent, author and father to sons Jonathan, 24, son Daniel, 21, and daughter Lindsey, 17.

“That’s how he gets so much done — he doesn’t have any ‘waste’ time to speak of,” Elton Bernard said.

Bernard called to ministry

While David Bernard attended University of Texas School of Law he also taught Sunday School and Bible study classes around the Austin area.

Although he still did not perceive a clear call to the ministry, he preached 21 times at several churches in 11 weeks while interning at a Beaumont law firm.

“I did not consider myself a preacher,” he said. “I introduced myself as a law student and yet here all these opportunities had seemingly come out of nowhere.

“My last night in Beaumont I was praying and saying ‘What’s going on, Lord?’” Bernard said. “There was a verse of Scripture, Col. 4:17, that said, ‘tell Archippus — who is an obscure character — take heed to the ministry that he has received from the Lord and that he fulfills it.’ I took that as a word to me as well because I had not sought a ministry but seemingly it had been given to me and therefore I needed to take heed and follow what God was doing.”

Bernard finished law school, earning a doctor of jurisprudence degree in 1981, was ordained the same year and married Connie Sharp, of Austin. They moved to Jackson, Miss., where he taught at Jackson College of Ministries for five years and graduated in 1984. He also published his first book, “The Oneness of God,” a World Aflame Publishing best-seller with more 750,000 copies in print in dozens of languages worldwide.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he preached extensively around the United States and served with the United Pentecostal Church International organization in various capacities in St. Louis, Mo.

The Bernards moved to Austin, Texas, in 1992, where they started a church in their home. A small group of 11 multiplied into nearly 400 families meeting in an 800-seat sanctuary on a 10-acre campus.

Now that he has been elected as conference superintendent, Bernard said he will turn many of his New Life Church pastoral duties over to his co-pastor, the Rev. Ronnie Shaw.

His term is for two years which can be renewed for up to eight years, according to organizational rules, he said.

“Our overall focus is on church growth and church planting,” he said. “It’s not going to be a radical departure because the past leadership had a progressive vision — my goal is to perpetuate that and make sure we’re meeting the needs and challenges of 2010.”

Bernard said he will also have to curtail some of his writing, but he is still focused on a doctoral dissertation in New Testament from the University of South Africa. Its short title, he said, is “The Monotheistic Deification of Jesus.”

“I’m examining, ‘How did the early Jewish Christians see Jesus as God when they were so monotheistic?’” Bernard said. “They wouldn’t believe in a different God, so how did they come up with this concept that Jesus was more than just a man in the context of their strong, monotheistic beliefs?"


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