Alan Hutchens

I was called to preach on August 10, 1971, when I was sixteen. That was during the summer after we Union Cross brats were told that most of us were being shipped to Parkland. I preached my first message just before my seventeenth birthday, in December of 1971. In God's providence, I've had my own interdenominational and itinerant ministry of Bible teaching and music since that time, called Sound Doctrine Ministries. This has taken me in a circle from Manistee, MI, to Santa Clara, NM, to Key West, FL, to Red Lion, PA, and points between these.

Along the way, I have served as pastor/associate pastor/music director for congregations in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. I have been privileged to record four vocal musical albums. And, I have served as a teacher for six of these years, the high point being a year as academic dean of a small college in Salisbury, NC. Currently, I serve officially as academic dean of a nondenominational college and seminary in central Florida.

Through these years, I have remained single. Mom passed from cancer in 1974. Dad passed from a stroke and pneumonia in 1998. At this time, my family consists of my three and a half-year-old Maltese, named Bobby. Because of congestive heart failure and acute kidney failure, which was diagnosed in April of 2011, I have been disabled from teaching. On a limited basis, my ministry continues. I am available to minister in Word and/or in song wherever and whenever I am scheduled.

I could talk about my best friend, Charlie McGee. I could laud and applaud my heroes: Doug Marion; Jimmie Thore; and, Dennis Smith. I could go on for hours about many other great friends, such as: Dale Holder; Paige Lauten; Catherine Payne; Sherry Boyles; Tony Hall; Eugene Cason; and, numerous others. I could talk about dearly departed friends, like: Kathy Boone; Susan Marion; Neal Payne; and, Wiley Huffman. Or, I could talk about my unrequited crush on Susan Elium, or about being hopelessly in love with Marilyn Settle. I could brag about all my cousins who graduated from East. However, that would be needlessly embarrassing to a bunch of Tuttles, Montgomerys, and Harrells. They'd just as soon that you didn't make the connection.

Fred Lewis