Introducing Mark Cain

Please introduce yourself here, if you haven't already.
Forum rules
Members will observe the rules for respectful discourse at all times!
Please sign all posts with your first and last (family) name.
Post Reply
markofcain
Posts: 55
Joined: Sun Oct 27, 2013 9:58 am
Location: Sarasota, FL USA
Contact:

Introducing Mark Cain

Post by markofcain »

I was born and reared in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. After a childhood that was nearly devoid of direct religious influence, I experienced a radical conversion at the age of 20 from the drug subculture of that region. The year was 1979. I tell folks that I lived so far back in the sticks, that the free-love culture of the '60's took 10 years to find us.

Having been shot in the head with a shotgun at the age of 10, resulting in the blindness of my right eye, I was granted a full ride scholarship from the benevolent administration of Jimmie Carter. This gracious bestowal, though offered in 1977, was rejected by my derelict ways until after I found the Lord. At the guidance of a loving Sunday School teacher, and after experiencing a call to preach, I was directed toward the campus of the Kentucky Mountain Bible Institute (now College) (KMBC) where I pursued ministerial studies and a young lady who would later become my wife.

Upon the completion of a 90 hour AA degree from KMBC, I enrolled at Asbury College (now University) where I continued my studies in Bible. Having studied Greek at KMBC, my Hebrew training came at the feet of Jerry Miller, who taught me Hebrew, and Victor Paul Hamilton, who exemplified its indispensable service in understanding the text of the Hebrew Bible. Upon graduation from Asbury University with Biblical Studies, Biblical Languages and Classical Languages under my belt, I made my way, literally, across the street to the campus of Asbury Seminary at which I took additional classes in Greek, theological German and found the culmination of my Biblical passion in the study of Inductive Literary Structural Analysis (known at Asbury as English Bible) at the direct instruction of Robert A. Traina and colleagues.

Since the tightened belt of the Reagan administration resulted in the cancellation of my scholarship in 1983, while at Asbury, I was a bi-vocational pastor in addition to being a student. I planted a church in the area of Lexington, KY (Faith United Community Church). I worked in a computer store selling and maintaining the entire gamut of PC hardware from IBM, HP and Compaq (back in the days when a personal PC was $5,000+). There at the store I found a demo box of dBaseIII and from that discovery began my plunge into the world of programming which now includes such languages as HTML, perl, php, javascript, sql, etc.

I resigned my pastoral position and joined the corporate IT world with the advent of the .com explosion. As a company we had considerable success; took the company public and summarily were taken to the cleaners by guys who played for keeps. A friend and one time pastor asked me to join him in the planting of a church in Sarasota, FL. We worked together for several years to get the church stable and into a building program (Suncoast Community Church).

I started a pest management company and worked at a couple of churches helping to integrate technology into their worship experiences primarily in the areas of web presence, lighting, video and presentation graphics.

In 2011 I was granted an online license from the Society of Biblical Literature for the Greek NT and in November of 2011 went live with my own online version of a searchable and parsed Greek New Testament. I wrote code and parsed by hand all 134,554 words of the SBL Greek NT. It is available at http://www.markcain.com/greek.html (go to http://www.markcain.com and click on the word "Greek" at the top menu)

I am currently working on adding the MT to my website. My plans are to include parsing, a reader's lexicon and audio for the text. It will primarily be geared toward the beginner or the lapsed user.

I am happily married to the gal I pursued at KMBC. She is a teacher of mentality gifted 5th grade students (an IQ of 135+ is required for class enrollment). We have 4 children – one a church planting pastor, one a sailor, one a college student and one an entrepreneur/college student.

In what I can only determine to be an effort to return to my Appalachian roots, I picked up the 5-string banjo in my 50's.

Daily, I kill bugs, trap rats, read Greek, frail the banjo, play with coding Hebrew and wrestle with the idea of planting another church.
Mark Cain
Sarasota, FL USA

http://www.markcain.com
Post Reply