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About the Author:
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
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Dear Friend,

Let me tell you a bit about myself and my background.

I was born in Fort Bragg, on the north coast of California. My elementary school years were spent in Ben Lomond, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I received Christ as my Savior when I was nine at the Presbyterian Church our family attended, the Wee Kirk of Ben Lomond. By the time I was twelve, I could sense God leading me into the ministry, with a desire to help people come to know Christ.

Our family moved to Hayward, in the San Francisco Bay Area, when I began junior high. I attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, where I was a biology/pre-med major, graduating in 1967.

After graduation, I spend a year as an assistant pastor of a small church in Los Angeles. Three months after I married "the girl next door," I was drafted. I spent the next five years in virus and genetics research, first for the US Army, and then at Cal Tech in Pasadena. My wife and I have three children.

I discovered I was only a couple miles from Fuller Theological Seminary, and began taking night courses in Greek. In 1973 I began seminary full-time, and completed an M.Div. in 1976, and later a D.Min. in 1984.

In 1976 I was called to pastor Lindley Ave. Baptist Church, an American Baptist congregation in Tarzana in the San Fernando Valley, and was there for the next 12 years. While in Southern California, I served as chairman of our denomination's Church Planting Task Force and was involved in a number of ethnic church starts in the Los Angeles area.

In 1988, God called me to plant Church of the Live Oaks, a congregation in Rocklin, a suburb northeast of Sacramento, California, which I pastored through 2001.

In order to help support my family, in 1988 I began as editor and writer for Training and Development Alert, published by Advanced Personnel Systems in Roseville. It consisted of abstracts of the literature in the field of training and management development. In the process of writing and editing 6,000 or 7,000 abstracts of articles and books over the next seven years, I become familiar with andragogy, the science of teaching adults, and the applications of those principles to distance education.

I am fascinated about the possibilities of using online discussion groups to disciple new believers, and am working to adapt discipleship materials to that medium. Since October 1996 we've taught a variety of subjects using this medium to groups as large as 5,000. Many of these series have been turned into books.

Presently I publish two business newsletters: Web Marketing Today, and Web Marketing Today Premium.

I hope you take an opportunity to look at some of my writing in the Christian Articles Archive. One of my chief interests is to pique people's interest in following Christ by taking everyday events and looking for the spiritual meanings. I hope you find those articles useful in your own service for Jesus.

Sometimes people ask for a doctrinal statement. We believe the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired, authoritative Word of God, and our only rule for faith and practice. We concur with the Statement of Faith of the National Association of Evangelicals. You can also get a pretty good idea of our beliefs by reading the articles we've written.

I look forward to get acquainted with you in days to come. Why don't you write me an e-mail message and introduce yourself. Let me know how you found out about this website, and what God is doing with you.

Serving with you in Jesus' kingdom,
Pastor Ralph