Messages given at various Camps Farthest Out by Alex McCullough
Home » The Library » Speaker » Alex McCullough
Alex McCullough was an accomplished musician, playing clarinet for such bands as the Glenn Miller Orchestra until he had an encounter with Jesus Christ.
Alex became an ordained minister and spoke at many Camps Farthest Out all around the world. His plainspoken and humorous way of teaching helped those listening (including those of us from The CFO Classics Library) learn more about God and His healing power.
Alex McCullough closes the servant themed week at the Arkansas CFO in 1999 by telling campers that they cannot take the camp home with them, only what it made of them. Following God, he says, is a matter of obedience, not convenience. He then plays a wordless “Testimony Musical” on saxophone and clarinet, the same instruments he set aside, unplayed, for ten years after becoming a Christian.
Alex McCullough continues the servant themed week by turning healing into the week’s quiz-and-answer refrain, “why were we healed? To serve.” He then explains that he once prayed a headache away while driving with one hand on the wheel. Only “a BB’s worth” of faith was needed, he tells the Arkansas CFO in 1999, to see six weeks later that his lifelong hay fever and cat allergy were gone.
Alex McCullough asks campers “who is they?” and answers with two encounters from before he was even a Christian: comforting a homeless man in Manhattan and a trembling kitchen worker newly arrived from the Caribbean. Fear sees “they” while love sees “us,” he insists, and a true congregation, unlike a mere aggregation, becomes one. He preached it at the 1988 Southern California Healing CFO.
Alex McCullough opens the week’s servant themed talks with Jesus washing the disciples’ feet in John 13, at the Arkansas CFO in 1999. He ties it back to Matthew 20’s charge that “whoever would be first among you must be your slave.” He admits that his own upbringing with a live-in butler made real service hard to receive. He would rather his wife “slam it to me,” he says, than ever catch him acting like a pastor.
Alex McCullough retells his seven-year search for God. It ended, he says, on the Tappan Zee Bridge, when he saw “the Father and the Son” beside him in the car. At the Arkansas CFO in 1999 he ties the story to the week’s opening theme of being saved in order to serve.
At the 1999 Arkansas CFO, Alex McCullough contrasts the Sea of Galilee, which receives and gives, with the Dead Sea, which only takes. His lesson for campers is that a giving life is a living life. He then tells how he and his wife gave up his salary as a school band director and musician to enter the ministry on trust.
From his week at the 1999 Arkansas CFO, Alex McCullough draws on his Marine Corps training at Parris Island to picture standing against the “wiles of the devil.” He points to its discipline, cover, and concealment. He also remembers a boyhood friend, Monty, killed in the Second World War.
Alex McCullough closes his farewell talk with what he calls his “fantasy musicale,” a story he first told at the 1991 Nebraska CFO. In it a musician finally “heard” the old song “Come to Me, My Melancholy Baby” as an invitation, and gave his life, and later his family’s, to Jesus. He also reads John 21’s beach breakfast, urging campers to keep “seeing” Jesus after they go home.
Alex McCullough retells Peter’s rooftop vision of Cornelius the Roman centurion in Acts 10. He then turns, from his week of talks at the Arkansas CFO in 1999, to the night his friend Alan Rundle sat through a tape of McCullough’s testimony. Rundle wept at the dining table before giving his life to Christ.
Alex McCullough recalls a Thanksgiving visit to his brother Mitch. Mitch pours drinks and asks if he has become “a Jesus freak,” then sits through a tape of McCullough’s testimony. Speaking at the 1999 Arkansas CFO, he connects the evening to forgiving his father, nine years after his death.