My name is Todd Sloggett. I had a very obscure past. My Mother left us when I was six and my other brothers were 8 and 2. By 10 years old, I was already bouncing around the west coast getting into all kinds of trouble. By 14 I had lived in multiple places in Oregon, Idaho and California and was now homeless and hopelessly addicted to just about every vice that I could get my hands on.
I tried to act and live a “normal” life but found myself living a “double” life instead. I went to high school, played basketball, had a good girlfriend and even went to church some. All the while addicted to drugs, alcohol and partying and breaking laws.
I got away with it for almost 5 years. My freshman year of college, it all came crashing down. I dropped out of college, married my long-time girlfriend and got a full- time job. Once again, taking another shot at “normal” and once again just recreating a double life in a different place.
This time I ended up working for a respectable company, living in a house with my wife and even beginning to raise our 2 sons. And the whole time I was drugging, drinking and building up a small local gang. I had learned a lot about the gangs by running with them when I was on the streets of California.
Life spun out of control very quickly and it became so hard to tell what day it was, what time it was, which way was up and what hat I was supposed to be wearing at any given moment. I was losing it again, just like I did a few years earlier in college. During the first few years of being married and being a father, I did everything from grocery store manager to firefighter, from repo man to police officer, from salesman to bouncer to personal security. Still trying to break through in the gang world the entire time.
Finally, as sin always does, it caught back up to me. I couldn’t take things the way they were anymore and I had to decide to straighten up and stay home with my wife and kids or go back to the streets. I of course made the wrong choice.
I was probably never going to see my wife and 2 sons again…But God had different plans. After a few months of being on my own again and everything blowing up in my face over and over, I began to feel what I would later understand was nothing less than the wooing of The Holy Spirit.
The only real churches that I knew much about were the Nazarene Church that my wife went to as a kid and a couple of Pentecostal Churches that a bunch of my relatives on my mom’s side went to. I ended up going to one of the Pentecostal churches with my older cousin on a Sunday morning.
That morning, I got under the strongest of conviction. I went to the altar expecting to experience some miraculous change…or die. I was really messed up that morning. I had taken some bad stuff and wasn’t all together in my right mind. But when I got up from that altar, after about 2 and a half or 3 hours of prayer, repentance, bawling, asking questions and receiving instruction from the pastors; Todd Sloggett was a brand new man! I was clean, saved and sober and I have not drank or drugged since that moment. I have been serving the Lord with a clean and sober mind and body for 24 straight years as of this writing.
In less that 6 months I entered the ministry as a part time preacher of the gospel. For the next 11 plus years I was an Evangelist, an Assistant Pastor, a Sunday School teacher and a Missionary. What I learned was this.
The Church is comfortable being whatever definition of the church that it decides at the time. It bothered me so bad. I read, studied, prayed and fasted until it almost ruined me. Once I believed that I understood what I was supposed to be doing, I set out to do it.
With my wife and children and several others, we started a nursing home ministry in Oregon, a homeless mission ministry in Oklahoma, a national drug awareness program out of Texas that eventually spread to all states, an Affair Proofing Your Marriage seminar, a hard copy and online production company, a thrift store, a furniture company, an apparel company, an annual outreach retreat conference, we partnered with more than a dozen churches and more that 700 different ministries. Ministries from pregnancy centers to African missions to teenage run a way, rescue and return centers to women and baby’s homes to sex trafficking victim centers to Christian Podcasts and Blogs to community feeding and clothing programs.
We initially did it under the name of Sloggett Family Ministry. It was later changed to Holiness Missions to America and now we operate in 18 states and 5 Counties as HMA Ministries. Our ministry material is used in all 50 states and at least 10 countries.
These things were done by staying true to some very basic and Biblical tenants that I refuse to compromise on. Here are a few of them:
The Bible is right, not men. Scripture doesn’t change, cultures do. Preach against sin, not things. People are allowed unlimited amounts of chances with God. So if we are going to represent Him, we must do so in a way that allows for those chances. Do not minister according to culture, religious dynamics, demographics or denominationalism. Minister according to truth. Think outside the box but inside the Bible. Make a life of reaching the Least, the Last and the Lost. Understand the spirit of the scripture, not just the words of it. Love people and use things, not the other way around. The Great Commission is the purpose of life. Once you are saved, your first calling is that of an Evangelist. You just have to figure out to who. Your children, your community, Budapest, bikers…? You can’t out preach your life. God can afford anything that is done in His will. All sins are rooted in selfishness. Addictions are pure selfishness. If you want to raise a generation for Christ, raise a generation of selfless people. If you must err, err on the side of mercy. Christ was the most selfless individual that ever lived. How do I live like Him in the light of that statement? Do not live by indoctrinated principles. Neither by stale traditions of men nor by stagnant denominationalism. Be brave, be bold and be Biblical. Most church problems stem from a lack of Biblical structure OR worship of money, men and movements.
By following this course over the last quarter of a century, I have seen drunkards, drug addicts, divorces, pimps, prostitutes, gambling, anger, lust, hatred, pornography and many others chains, fail and fall at the feet of Jesus!
-An EXTREMELY brief overview of the life of Todd Sloggett up to the age of 48
