Month: May 2025

Sixty years of ministry.

Daniel Segraves

May 7, 2025 | Daniel L. Segraves, Ph.D.

I am so thankful for the privilege of being involved in various aspects of ministry in the United Pentecostal Church International for the past sixty years. This has included pastoring, teaching, and writing.

It all began when I was sixteen years old. As I participated in a prayer meeting at about one or two o’clock in the morning, the Lord gave me a desire to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. My early training came from men like Clyde J. Haney, Paul Dugas, and other faculty members at Western Apostolic Bible College in Stockton, California.

In 1968, the year after graduation from WABC, I accepted an invitation from J. O. Wallace to work with him as the first Director of Promotions and Publications for the General Sunday School Department of the UPC. At that time, the headquarters of the organization were located at 3645 South Grand Avenue in Saint Louis, Missouri. This is the city where I was born.

During the time I served in this capacity, the UPC began publishing the first full-scale Oneness Pentecostal Sunday school curriculum under the banner of Word Aflame Publications. My responsibility was to function as the editor of the Junior High materials.

From 1970 until 1975, I worked as the Minister of Christian Education for a local church in Maplewood, Missouri, while at the same time developing promotional materials for various departments of the UPC. Then I accepted the pastorate of the First Pentecostal Church in Dupo, Illinois, staying in this role until 1982.

During the spring of 1982, Kenneth F. Haney invited me to become the Executive Vice-President of Christian Life College. I accepted, returning to Stockton as the administrator and chairman of the department of theology for the same school where I had been trained when it was known as WABC. When Brother Haney was elected as the general superintendent of the UPCI, he asked me to assume the role of president for CLC. I served in this office until 2007, when I returned to St. Louis to teach at Urshan Graduate School of Theology.

I retired from full-time work at UGST on July 1, 2018, becoming professor emeritus.

This is a kind of “bare bones” description of my life in ministry to this point. Along the way, I have written twenty-two books, and I am now working on the twenty-third. I have been the Bible teacher at eighteen camp meetings, and I had the privilege of preaching for the general conference of the United Pentecostal Church in Australia.

As the days of my life have progressed, I have had the opportunity to complete further education, earning the Master of Arts in Exegetical Theology and the Master of Theology degrees at Western Seminary as well as the Ph.D. in Renewal Studies with dual emphases in Christian History and Christian Theology at Regent University School of Divinity.

None of us knows the future. But if the day should come when I receive a Ministry Milestone for seventy years of service, I will be approaching ninety years of age!

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How consumerism redefines our values.

Daniel Segraves

May 6, 2025 | Daniel L. Segraves, Ph.D

In preparation for a class I’ve been asked to teach, I’m reading Hidden Worldviews: Eight Cultural Stories That Shape Our Lives, by Steve Wilkins and Mark L. Sanford (IVP Academic).

The authors relate the story of Dominic, “a monk who founded the Dominican order, and his visit to Pope Innocent III in Rome in the thirteenth century. While giving Dominic a tour of the Vatican, in which its massive treasures were prominently displayed, the Pope said (in reference to Acts 3:6), ‘Peter [signifying the Pope] can no longer say, “Silver and gold have I none.”’ Dominic responded, ‘Neither can he say, “Rise and walk.”’ Dominic’s point is that when we value the types of power available through wealth, we also devalue power of a different, and more important, sort.”

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