Pastor: James Crawford Crenshaw, Jr.
Born in 1961 in Thomasville North Carolina, Crawford was brought up ‘in Church’ coming from a family that believed that Church was a vital part of one’s life was. His mother played piano and organ for various Churches and his family attended whichever Church she was playing at. From about age 13 to age 25 he lived a life of rebellion and drug use, always on the pursuit of happiness and meaning in life and only to wind up in deep despair and on a road leading nowhere.
One Summer day in 1985, a young man came to work and was put with Crawford to be trained to run a Carving Machine. The young man was a believer and began to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it wasn’t long before Crawford went into the ‘bathroom’ and prayed to receive Christ as his personal Savior. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. The old is gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17) became his life verse because that is exactly what happened!
The person who led him to the Lord spoke of the importance of Bible Study, prayer and Church attendance and got him off to a good start in his Christian life. He began attending a Wesleyan Church where the Pastor and people showed love and care further establishing him in the faith. Soon he began to feel the ‘stirring of God’ in his heart to ‘preach’ but didn’t know where to start. After an initial struggle with his call, he asked God to give him “Book, Chapter & Verse” if He truly wanted him to be a preacher. He took his Bible, went to a solitary place and, having ‘randomly opened’ it, he put his finger down on the page and read “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine (2 Timothy 4:1-2). That was the confirmation he needed, so he began to studying for the ministry in 1991. With the support of his wife, family, and local Church; opportunities for ministry were given, studies were completed and he was ordained at NC West District Conference of the Wesleyan Church in 1998 by Dr. Lee Haines.
In 1995 Crawford went with his family to pastor the Spring Hill Wesleyan Church in Hamlet, NC where they were for 6 years. In 2001 he and his family came to Trinity Heights Church in Archdale where he continues to Pastor.