David Leach – Elder and Pastor. He was born in London, England into a family that knew nothing about God other than a vague awareness that He existed. But they presumed they were Christian. As a youngster he attended a very old Church that emphasized ritual and tradition, which he saw as pointless. When God approached him at College through a real Christian who knew God, he brushed her beliefs aside. But 10 years later after the crises of a broken marriage, a car accident and many addictions, when God again approached him, now in Los Angeles with a large Company, through two business people, he listened. While intensely skeptical, he opened the door of his heart enough to receive God’s love and believe the initial gospel that God had forgiven him for his many wrongdoings because of what Jesus Christ had done for him personally on the cross at Calvary. He was born again.
Still proud, that is, living mostly independently from God, he was warned by God through a stranger at a service. He got serious about his relationship with God and started to grow spiritually. He attended every Church service available and listened daily to audio messages by Bible teachers he thought were real, who believed God’s word and who knew God better than he did. His addictions began to drop off like loose dirt. His child like love, trust and gratitude to God for rescuing him from a self- life of sin, misery and despair, together with good teaching, led him to surrender his will to God and to receive and start to be led by the Holy Spirit. Soon he found he was beginning to bear the fruit of God’s words out of his mouth and to have the joy of winning some souls to Christ. He became very active in the church and in a Christian businessmen’s outreach. God united him with a precious Christian wife, Maren.
After some decisions based on presumption and not God, the sad loss of a child and drifting into a period of neglecting God which resulted in his coming back under the power of addictions, he quit his corporate career. Then with Maren’s help he let God deliver and restore him, once more. His growth resumed and he was led to put himself under both an established ministry and some of God’s anointed ministers of yesteryear. In particular, Andrew Murray, A B Simpson, and Charles Finney, who all taught the sanctification part of the gospel, in addition to the conversion part, as necessary for a full salvation from sin. That is, by our receiving God’s deliverance from the power of sin, the full surrender of our will to God and of our being progressively made like Christ, by the Holy Spirit and by our ever deepening belief in God’s words.
He acquired a small business, started a home Bible study, joined a Christian businessmen’s group and after some successful soul winning outreaches he was asked to start a Church. That Church is Living Stones Bible Church in Temecula, California. It is an evangelical Church, but due to the real dangers of falling away from God he saw in his own life and in the lives of so many other Christians, it has a strong emphasis on making true disciples of Christ. In other words it proclaims the sanctification part as well as the conversion part of the gospel of our salvation from sin, so that we can keep growing, live happily and permanently in Christ, and continue to bear Him much fruit.