Royal Rangers

Milton, Florida, yeah.

Well, there's the Royal Rangers in outpost number 71 ready to go.

Speedy Greg Adler.

The team is all here and on the field and ready to go.

And, and so I started going there.

They had Royal Rangers.

I didn't have a dad in my life.

So that was great.

I spent a lot of times at the altar, and I'm so grateful it marked me.

And I did go to Royal Rangers, and I did have Sunday school.

But I remember going, when I moved to Miami, my second year, I went to a school in Fort Lauderdale called Westminster Academy.

And it was started by the late, great D. James Kennedy, who's a very famous Presbyterian preacher.

Um, I wanna talk to you tonight about rekindling the flame of God.

And, uh, you know, I was raised in the Assembly of God Church organization, and, uh, they had what was called Royal Rangers.

Yeah.

[laughs]

[clears throat] Now, they used to call us Royal Strangers every once in a while, but that doesn't mean ... [audience laughs] That was probably appropriate.

[laughs] But Royal Rangers, uh, was kinda Boy Scouts, but in the church, and it was all Jesus-centered, and everything about it was pointing to Jesus.

And, you know, uh, I mean, I, I don't know about this generation, but my generation, what was there not to love when every outing was outside, and every meeting, there was half the meeting was outside and inside.

On Wednesday nights at our church, we had our Royal Ranger meeting.

... told them what happened.

happened.Travis' father, Tom, says that the next week he went to the pastor of the church that oversaw their Royal Rangers troop and told him what happened.

But instead of calling the police, Travis and his family say the pastor told him he was aware of the reports and that the troop commander was in counseling.

That's Hixenbaugh talking about his reporting for the NBC News series Pastors and Prey, which focuses on the Assemblies of God, one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in the country, and their decades-long cover-up of child sexual abuse and grooming by clergy.

Then I became praise and worship leader.

Then I joined Royal Rangers, Boy Scout, marching for Jesus, and I became a carrier of speakers at crusade.

We used to go to village crusade, myself and Buachi.

Buachi is in Belgium right now.

Bishop dad calls his IA boys Avengers.

[laughs] I think, no, Royal Rangers, right? Or something like that.

And I was telling them something about knowing God for themselves, and I realized...

I, I was, I was teaching them that, "Listen, you guys gotta know God for yourselves." Yeah, that was the meeting I had with them.

Is there a reason for that? Is there a reason why that is the lane you went into? It looks like naturally.

Well, I have to go back to my dad, uh, And by Royal Ranger, Commander Royal Rangers is a Christian mentorship program for boys and young men.

And so between those two, I couldn't get away with anything, brother.

Believe you me, I tried to get away with some stuff.