I WALK THE LINE

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 I WALK THE LINE

CraigEdwards
Craig Edwards

My friend Craig Edwards has discovered that there is no way to remain in favor with Fundamentalists unless you walk the line they draw. It does not matter if your kjv, a soul winner, live the Christian life. You must walk the line of there popelings. Below is his response to the control freaks.

I want to thank “Everyone” for each encouraging word via Facebook/phone calls/ private messages/texts. I was cancelled from a campmeeting I did for years, and during the conversation I told the host pastor why I was where I am by giving him Bible. TO each comment he answered, “That’s right.” I asked him to take the Bible and show me where I was wrong, and he said, “I can’t.” I promise I am not discouraged, bitter, or jealous. I have learned when certain religious circles attack you, the Truth and the plain truth is not relevant. It’s ok to lie, and violate Bible Truth, if that’s what it takes. I have learned who I’m not, and I’ve also learned who I am. I have but one desire, and that is to passionately follow Jesus. I still get plenty of calls for meetings and special services, by men who are in love with Truth, and Jesus. I love being at home with my family, and pastoring Blessed Hope, Mt. Airy. I am trying to be selective and prayerful about where I go, when I go. The crowd, or offerings mean nothing. I want to go where I can minister, and be a blessing and help. Doctrinally, I have not changed, and I use the same translation of the Bible I started with 48 years ago. I am learning that what Satan and people mean for evil, God means for good!!!! I am amazed that God would bring me to this place……, especially when I think about my age, and where I’ve been!!!! He has brought me to a more Biblical place than I’ve ever been……..when He did not have to. I wouldn’t go back, even if I could. I know the biggest part of my ministry is behind me, but I believe the BEST PART is yet to come!!!

“ISLAMIC FASCISM”

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HOW ISLAM AND FASCISM COMPARE

ISLAM

 

“Islamic Fascism is really a modern phenomenon. [1] It is basically a 20th-century totalitarian movement – like fascism and communism.

Islamic Fascism is designed – like fascism and communism – to appeal to idealistic young people with a Utopian future where the world will be “cleansed”. Other names for it are “Islamofascism” and “Islamism” and “Islamic fundamentalism”.

 

ISLAM

I think “Islamic Fascism” is the clearest, most descriptive name, [2] showing that this is simply the same kind of thing that the democracies spent the 20th century fighting. Islamic Fascism is genuinely fascist. It has contempt for democracy, free speech and human rights. It is full of hatred for Jews, atheists, homosexuals, and liberated women. It is linked to racist hatred of blacks in Sudan, slave trading of black Africans, and racist hatred of other ethnic minorities in the Islamic world. And, like fascism and communism, the only solution is the destruction of this philosophy. This will take a long Cold War, lasting for perhaps this entire century.”

http://markhumphrys.com/islamic.fascism.html#fascism

MINISTRY AND BUSINESS

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YOUNG PASTORS DON’T UNDERSTAND THE MINISTRY

MINISTRYKen Blue

“Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.  But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.” Acts 6:3-4.

I went to Bible College to learn the Bible and be a preacher. One comment by our Homiletic’s professor stands out in my mind more clearly than any other. He said, “Preaching is about 1/10 of the ministry”. That comment offended me, and I didn’t believe it. I loved to preach, so he can’t be correct in that comment.

When Joyce and I started the Open Door Baptist Church in 1969 we had an empty building with about one hundred empty chairs. Back then everything was about soul winning and preaching however, before that year was over, we had over a hundred in the morning service and all in the same room.  We had a problem, and something had to change, and change quick!

We had to get the nursery age out of the preaching service so, I had to find a place and a worker for that problem. The girls’ bathroom became a place and my wife became the worker but that did not completely solve the problem. The six through eight year olds were bored, restless and distracting. There was an unfinished room in the back of the building.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“Preaching is about 1/10 of the ministry”[/perfectpullquote]

This room would work, but we needed a teacher. We found a faithful lady, so that problem was readily solved. However, now it was time to move to a new location if we were to continue our growth.

We found a local school where we met for about a year but, we had to set up and take down all the chairs. So someone had to be appointed for this task. In addition, we now needed ushers, money counters, book keepers and expenses paid. I had no idea that we needed to be incorporated in Washington State. This was “business” that was required by law, and Bible College forgot to tell me about these things.

Moreover, for the first three years I was the song leader, so it was my task to select songs everybody knew. In time, God gave us someone to play a piano, but at that time, we did not have one, so that became another order of business. In addition, I also directed our small choir and taught the teachers next Sunday’s lesson…..Whew!

More and more I needed the help of others. In a few years there where hundreds of ministries that needed to be attended to, and someone had to attend them and I was learning that my professor was right.

There are many gifted preachers who can’t tie their own shoes, thus they can never build a growing church. Then, there are men gifted in management, who are not the best of preachers. Guess who builds a growing church? The one who learns how to manage the business side of the ministry!

My advice to the novice pastor is three things. Learn all you can about soul winning, (I mean getting them saved, baptized and in the church membership). Learn how to recruit, delegate and manage the total ministry and learn how to rightly divide the Bible and how to teach it. Bathe all this in prayer, depending on the Holy Spirit.

You must learn how to manage as well as preach, but if management is a weakness of yours, then find someone in the church you can trust, and let them help you in this area. “Preaching is about 1/10 of the ministry” but, “Pastoring” takes both preaching and management.

A ONE STRING MINISTRY

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ADVICE TO YOUNG PREACHERS

ONE STRING“One of the evils of such a course is to beget in his mind a monstrous development of that particular truth. He soon loses the symmetry and proportion of a Christian man, becomes too much a man of one idea, loses sight, in a great measure, of other branches of reform, and is in danger of becoming censorious, towards all others in whose minds there is not the same monstrous development of that particular truth. This is a dangerous state of mind, exceedingly injurious to his own piety and usefulness, and dangerous to the Church of God. Such men are found not infrequently to be loudly denunciatory in respect to all Christians and ministers who are not swallowed up, as they are, in that particular branch of reform. They go up and down through the Churches lecturing, making their particular topic a test question, and measuring every thing and every body by the importance they attach to the particular branch of reform in which they are engaged. To them it appears that no body else is doing any good–that nothing else is at the present time of much importance, and that little or nothing can be done for the salvation of the world, until that particular branch of reform is perfected. These brethren seem not at all aware of the state of mind in which they are. They seem not to consider that they have so long dwelt upon the bearings and influence of one branch of reform, that it has in their mind grown out of all proportion as compared with other branches of Christian reform. I beseech you, brethren, take heed lest you come to be among the number of those of whom I am speaking. Do not understand me as speaking against agencies or agents, for no doubt these agencies need to be prosecuted. But I would earnestly warn you against being drawn away from the whole work of the ministry to engage in them, without a manifest call from God. And if you should be called to engage in them, I beseech and warn you to be on your guard against the tendencies of which I have been speaking. Without being at all aware of it, many of the lecturers of different societies have diffused a very unhappy spirit through the Churches, and wherever they go, they seem to plant a root of bitterness, and to get up a kind of faction, and to embitter the minds of certain classes of professors of religion against the Church in general, and the ministry, and in short against all who have not a single eye to that particular department of reform.” Charles Finney

CONDITIONED REFLEX

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CONDITIONED TO RESPOND ON CUE?


By Ken Blue

If you are observant, you will notice that when you hear one person in church cough, others will cough also. Likewise, if one person gets up to go to the bathroom, others feel the same urge. You will notice that, many times, when you scratch your nose or face, the person to whom you are speaking will follow your lead. Television programs have long used cue card to call for laughter or applause.

My question is, have Christians unknowingly been conditioned to respond to certain cues? The Merriam Webster Dictionary says the word cue is, “a signal (as a word, phrase, or bit of stage business) to a performer to begin a specific speech or action.”

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Just how much response is prompted by the Holy Spirit, and how much is prompted by conditioning.[/perfectpullquote]

After watching preachers and congregations for 55 five years, I have witnessed this same conditioning process. Some pastors are bold and call for, or even shame their listeners if they do not give an “amen” to some point they have made. There are certain words said from the pulpit that will elicit the same response from the same people every time. I don’t have to tell you what those words are.

All this, leads one to wonder just how much response is prompted by the Holy Spirit, and how much is the result of a conditioning to respond on cue? It seems strange to me that the Spirit is leading only a certain few, in a certain section of the church to yell “amen.” Are these indeed more spiritual and responsive to God’s Spirit than others, or have they been conditioned to respond on cue?

I am not opposed to people saying amen. I was just wondering if we are really responding to the Holy Spirit, or if we are taking our cue from those who cough or take a potty break. If you can’t comfortably preach without an “amen;” you are attempting to control others. If you catch yourself saying amen because those around you are doing it, you are conditioned to respond on cue. The pastor, who must have verbal responses, should have someone hold up a cue card then the whole congregation could respond on cue.