The Denomination Formerly Known as the Southern Baptists

Some thoughts on the decisions coming out of the annual SBC meeting in New Orleans...

There's a new name written down in Georgia, and it's mine, oh yes it's mine!
**With apologies to whoever wrote, "There's a New Name Written Down in Glory"

The messengers voted to change the name of the SBC to the GCBC (Great Commission Baptist Convention).  This is a great name change since the SBC is no longer strictly "southern".  As a church planter in New York State I am glad for the change.  It may be hard for some of the brethren south of the Mason-Dixon line to accept, but the word "south" has as much appeal to northerners as the word "yankee" has to southerners.  All of the same kinds of images and baggage that comes with "yankee" comes with "Southern" in northern ears.  And frankly, many northern evangelical churches actually remember the fights of the 70's and 80's within the SBC regarding little things like the inspiration of the Scriptures and they remember that the SBC became compromised since they even had to have the discussion and controversy when they stood for the truth.  Some distance from that heritage is a good thing.  I will barely mention the fact that the SBC was started as a reaction to an issue we'd all like to forget: slavery.  The south's support of that institution has not been forgotten.  

However, I can't help but think that we have painted ourselves in a corner a bit with our choice of a new name.  To have the brazenness to say that we are "Great Commission Baptist Churches" requires some sort of proof.  It's sort of like calling yourself a "Holiness" church.  Someone who reads that church sign has to think, "Well, let's see how holy you all really are!" If they set the bar that high it's not long before outsiders take notice about what that church really does.  When this happens, an impartial observer often finds that the name is overstatement.

Reporting high numbers of conversions through sinner's prayers and dubious if not unbiblical evangelistic methods does not a "Great Commission Baptist" make.  I am happy to be called a Great Commission Baptist because evangelism is a huge part of our church's work.  We strive to do it Biblically and we do a lot of it.  If a name change actually changes churches, then I'll expect to see a lot of Great Commission Baptists out in our area actually doing evangelism, but if the last year or so is any indicator, I shouldn't hold my breath.  When revival hits the GCBC then there will be a change in more than the name.  In the meantime, I hope the name change is not just overstatement, posturing or chest thumping. 

I see that hand!

Speaking of flawed methodologies, the messengers of the various GCBC churches voted to uphold a statement on the sinner's prayer that is patently ridiculous.  In the document, the author ignores the issue of regeneration and takes a number of Scriptures out of context in order to uphold a tradition that is unbiblical.  The question is, "Why?"  Anyone with a Sunday School education could debunk the document but few took the time to do so.

Here are the reasons: 1) if you say that praying a sinner's prayer is wrong then you are saying that all of those who did and are now nowhere to be found might not actually be saved.  And in a denomination that depends heavily on over-reported numbers for PR, it's simply not good PR to admit this fact.  2) In the churches, pastors would have to explain to over-protective parents that their apostate sons and daughters are actually apostate and not "backslidden" and that they should be treated as the unbelievers they are and not as being "in rebellion" or any number of euphemisms we have dreamed up for apostates.  3) Thousands of pastors in the GCBC and outside of it would have to admit they (and those who taught them) were wrong.  So don't hold your breath on any document coming from any denomination at any time in any universe or alternate dimension repealing the sinner's prayer.

After all, how could missionaries make any money if they can't report results?  Call this reason number four. 
  
When someone can show me in the Scriptures just one example of Jesus and the apostles (or anyone else for that matter) leading someone in a "repeat after me" sinner's prayer, I'll start using it. 

The First Real African American President

 The GCBC voted in our first African American president (and I'll leave you to your own imaginations about what I mean by "real").  I am glad for this in a denomination that started over the issue of slavery.  I am even more excited by the fact that Luter started out as a street preacher before he was a pastor.  The bio sketch on his church's website reports, "With no church to preach in, Luter set up shop every Saturday at noon on the corner of Galvez and Caffin Avenue where he would preach to anyone who would listen."  Amen!  He's a radical!  Once a month his church engages in several hours of street evangelism in addition to many other evangelistic ministries.  

This is an appropriate leader for a denomination that takes the name "Great Commission Baptist" on themselves.  I hope that many pastors and aspiring pastors will take it upon themselves to follow his example in great commission work and take the work of preaching to a street corner and not just the pulpit.  

Early Retirement

I am taking an early retirement. 

No, I am not independently wealthy.  No, I am not at the age where I can receive Social Security benefits (I'm 40).  No, I am not quitting my job as a church planting pastor or as a representative with The Lost Cause Ministries. 

I am retiring from the drama--the drama of the street evangelism community.

This does not mean that I am quitting street evangelism.  Not by a long shot.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am doing more evangelism as a church planter than I ever thought about doing when I was solely a street evangelist. 

It means that I am retiring from the de facto position of policing the community.  It's not my job.

Once upon a time, it was (quite literally) my job.  I worked in a para-church ministry which helped establish evangelism teams across the United States and in eight other nations.  I interviewed the leaders, prayed over establishing them, wrote resources for them, and received reports from them.  I often intervened in issues related to evangelism.  Occasionally I fired them from their unpaid positions.  In the process I got to be known as a leader of leaders and as a result, I have hundreds of friends around the world who respect my thoughts on evangelism and theology.  I spoke at conferences and churches across the country and in other countries.  I helped organize large scale outreaches and wrote a book on evangelism.  I have one more book in the works and an idea for a third.

As a result of my background in evangelism over the last eight years, I often find myself in the middle of drama.  Sometimes it is theological--someone is bent on going heretical and I get a phone call or an email.  Sometimes it is political or personal.  Often it is methodological.  In the past I had time for all of this stuff.  I don't any more.  I've already written all that I am going to write about the errors in the street evangelism community.  I am done.   

Why?  I'm a church planting pastor.  I don't have time for any additional drama.

The evangelism that I do now is part of the process of gathering a body of believers for the purpose of worshipping the Lamb that was slain.   I'm not primarily in the business of equipping any professing believer in evangelism.  I am in the business of equipping Christ is King Baptist Church to do the work of the ministry.  My responsibility and authority extends no further than that. And honestly, even when I was paid to do it, I never had any real authority to oversee evangelists anyway.  That authority belongs to the local church alone.  

I have no plans for correcting the errors that there are in the street evangelism community outside of what I can deal with here in our church.  Street evangelists are not accountable to me.  They are not accountable to any parachurch ministry.  They are accountable to their respective local churches.  I've found that when I try to correct people I have never met, the usual response is something like, "Who do you think you are anyway?"  Good question.


So, if you choose to neglect the local church, preach out of pride, interrupt your grandmother's funeral with an open-air sermon, carry sandwich boards with neon-light flames and a stadium amplification system, think all Calvinists are twice the sons of Hell as John Calvin (or Arminians are twice the sons of Hell as Arminius),  and choose to divide with brothers in Christ over it, then have at it.  I am not getting involved.  My prayer is that the Lord will bring you to repentance.  He doesn't need me to play the role of the Holy Spirit in your life.  If you are one of His sheep, He will see you through to the end without my help.  If you are not, then He can take care of that as well. 


There are 150,000 in Syracuse, NY that need the gospel.  There are 700,000+ in our county.  These precious souls need evangelism, discipleship and a local church that is Biblical.  There is enough to do here for a month of lifetimes.  Yes, the world still needs the gospel and I will gladly take it to them where the mission is connected with a local church or church planting.  But it is impossible for anyone to reach the world by himself.  Hence, the need for the local church.  Invest there and you will invest wisely. 

A verse keeps rolling around in my head that is applicable here: 

"...aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you." (1 Thess. 4:11). 

So that's it.  My resignation letter.  I hope my friends will come by to visit me in my retirement and that we'll be able to preach together here in Syracuse.  Your help is welcome and all retirees like to see old friends. 

Respectfully Submitted,

Jon Speed

We've Been Doing It All Wrong, Part II

A friend has asked for some clarification on a couple of points regarding the essay, We've Been Doing it All Wrong.  There are several things that should be said based on some feedback to the original article. 

1.  I am NOT saying that people should not ever travel to any special events and evangelize.  I AM saying that the majority of your efforts should be focused in your area in conjunction with your local church.  There is Biblical warrant for traveling to evangelize; perhaps the best example is Philip in Acts 8.  However, Philip understood the role of the local church and was committed to it since he served it as a deacon (Acts 6).

I AM also saying that we need to make a serious effort to identify sound local churches and encourage those who are interested to attend them.  We also need to be much more deliberate in referring people to good local churches.  

2.  I am NOT saying there is no role for a traveling evangelist.  I AM saying that even the traveling evangelist has a responsibility to be directly accountable to the local church.  I am currently training a man who wants to become a traveling evangelist who plans on taking six months on the road and six months off.  When he is not on the road he is planning on serving his local church in the area of evangelism and in other ways. One cannot have real accountability without face time. 

I AM also saying that if you spend more time on the road than serving and living in your church, there may be a problem. Additionally, the role of the traveling evangelist ought to be to build the visible church in the areas he is preaching.  Where are the evangelists, who like Leonard Ravenhill, stayed in an area after many were converted there, and served them until they could find a pastor (a period of several years)? 

3.  Some who read what I have written disagree with me and that is fine.   Sometimes we have a tendency to find loopholes in the argument that someone puts forward so that we can find an exception.  If we can find an exception, then we can marginalize the argument and not listen to any of the concerns that are raised even if those concerns are valid.  Not only is this immature, it is spiritually dangerous.

I am not the authority on Biblical evangelism.  No one, including the evangelist you respect the most, is.  Jesus is the Lord of the Harvest and God's Word is our standard.  Nothing else.  If my essay causes you to evaluate what you are doing from a Biblical perspective, then that is what I was aiming for.  If you find that you are wrong, the answer is not to defend yourself because it would mean changing something you like to do.  The answer is to repent and change the way you do things.  If you find you are in the right, praise God.  But in the multitude of counselors there is safety.  Ask for more than your own opinion on this. 

4.   Writing on this stuff is a calculated risk.  I risk offending friends who I love dearly, some of whom I have trained to do evangelism years ago.  I risk offending financial supporters of our ministry.  I risk people who I have personally trained to do the exact opposite of what I am proposing here.  I risk my own small platform in the street evangelism community.  This is a risk I am willing to take for the sake of the glory of God in the church (Eph. 3:21) and for the sake of truth.  If this means that people accuse me of losing my zeal for evangelism, or becoming compromised, then that is something I am willing to live with because my conscience is held captive to the Word of God.  I will mourn the loss of friends, but I cannot soft peddle truth just so people will like me.

Commit to the local church.  Bury yourself there and be content to never be heard from again just so long as Jesus is famous and the local church is strong.

We've Been Doing it All Wrong

Paul Washer on The Great Commission

 "The Great Commission is not limited to the making of individual disciples, but involves bringing each believer into an interdependent relationship with others in the context of a local church." --Paul Washer

I just got my copy of HeartCry Missionary Society's Magazine for this quarter and Paul Washer has an excellent article on The Great Commission.   This quote may be one of the most significant things Washer says in the article, although it is all very good.

Some of my street evangelist friends may chafe a bit when they read a quote like this.  We have been taught that we need to evangelize everyone we meet and leave the results to the Lord.  We carry gospel tracts with us everywhere we go and we have been trained to engage complete strangers in order to share the gospel with them.  Some of my friends travel the world presenting the gospel over and over again to strangers in open-air preaching, one-to-one and mass tract distribution.  Living Waters reported recently that in a period of 12 or 13 years they have had a part in distributing 150 million gospel tracts.  Other tract ministries could report numbers in the millions as well. 

I love street evangelism.  I believe it is a primary way of spreading the gospel that many believers ignore today.  I believe that a resurgence in this methodology, if rooted in sound theology and in reality with the Lord of the harvest, could result in revival in the church and a large ingathering of souls into the Kingdom.  I believe so much in this methodology that I have written and edited several tracts that have a fairly wide distribution.  I wrote a book making the Biblical case for street evangelism.  I still stand by what I wrote there. 

Methodological Error

But let's shoot straight for a moment.  Where are the large numbers of people being added into existing local churches?  Where are the church plants that have come from these efforts? 

Our methodology is off.  We have no Biblical warrant in the context of the entire New Testament to simply proclaim the gospel with no concern for the planting or strengthening of churches as a result.  We have no Biblical warrant for the ministry of traveling evangelists who go into a city, proclaim the gospel widely, and do nothing to teach them to observe all that Jesus commanded (Mt. 28:18-20). We have no basis to organize large scale street outreaches in cities or at events where we have no plans on referring believers to good local churches.  Entire ministries have been built on this erroneous concept.  While they have served an important role of bringing the gospel to many, we are not called to bring the gospel to someone and then leave them there. If I am wrong, show me from the pattern we have in Acts that I am wrong. 

Furthermore, we cannot call it missionary work when traveling street evangelists exclusively visit other ministries who are already doing evangelism in a city.  This kind of thing can be encouraging once in awhile, but to make this a pattern of ministry is Biblically unwarranted.  Paul traveled and visited churches he established in order to train and encourage them.   The best thing most traveling street evangelists could do would be to settle in a sound local church or become a part of a church planting team and use their talents there. 

When we reject the Biblical model for what is happening right now based on the fact that, after all, people are hearing the gospel we are being pragmatists.  God knows better than we do how to do evangelism and He has ordained only one organization for its propagation: the local church.  Is God able to use the local church to reach those same people that you have reached without using a methodology which is contradictory to revealed truth?

Let's be clear: I am not advocating an abandonment of street evangelism.  I am advocating doing evangelism prolifically in the area where your local church is. And I am advocating your deep involvement with that local church beyond evangelism.

What We Need is Not What We Want

You need to have friends who do not evangelize but who are prayer warriors.

You need to have friends who do not evangelize but who are passionate students and teachers of the Word.

You need to have friends who love to serve the poor and destitute.

You need to have friends who scrub toilets at church and wash dishes after fellowship dinners.

You need to have friends who love to sing praises to God.

You need to have these friends with the intent of not only pushing your evangelism agenda, but listening to their agendas as well.  You don't know everything.  And evangelism is not the sum total of Christian existence.  You need to learn to love the pre-schoolers in your church.  Maybe you need to change some diapers in a nursery or go to a school concert to support a teenager in your church.  You need an avenue to love the brethren, including those who do not do evangelism.  You need a place to live and die with the family of God.  You need to live out the commands of Scripture that are attached to the "one anothers" of the epistles.  If you only beat the drum of evangelism and don't live out the commands we have for the community of believers, your obedience is half hearted.

I am afraid many of us, myself most definitely included, need to get over ourselves.  Evangelism will not die with us when we die.  It will live on in the local church.  Bury yourself there and be content to never be heard from again just so long as Jesus is famous and the local church is strong. 

Quotable Quote of the Day

"For there is nothing so boring, stale, flat and unprofitable as holy things retailed in the absence of the Spirit. This is one of the devil's most cunning tricks, to cause the Word of God to be dispensed by lazy, sleepy, moribund creatures, who find preaching the most burdensome part of their work and cannot help showing it. I have heard people praying, preaching and teaching and have been so desolated and my heart has been so opposed to the whole depressing exercise, that I almost wished the things they said were not true so that I could refute them. The whole soul of man, even ungodly man, cries out against the Word of God as a dead thing."

--William Still in "The Work of the Pastor", page 26.

Something about this quote resonates in my soul. There is little that is more tragic than men preaching the great truths of God's Word in a way that sounds like someone reading the stock quotes from the Wall Street Journal. Since these truths are reality, we ought to preach with some fire, some passion, some unction. It's part of Satan's deception that men who preach false doctrine preach with more passion than those who have the truth. It's part of their appearance as "ministers of righteousness" who are nothing more than ministers of darkness (2 Cor. 11:14-15).

It is more than just preaching passionately, but from the springs of living water that one draws from one's own well. I have heard street preaching which is as original as an infomercial and perhaps just as spontaneous. It is very carefully choreographed and rehearsed because it is the same message that has been preached 100 times before. Many times, it is a collection of random one-liners and zingers collected from other street or pulpit preachers forced into a template. To hear this stuff, one would think that Jesus and the Apostles always preached stock sermons and never varied. But in the gospels and Acts we see the exact opposite: nothing but variation depending on the circumstances. The content was always solid exposition of truth, but what truth was used depended on the leading of the Spirit, who in His wisdom, applied the truth to the circumstances.

Spirit empowered preaching comes from the preacher's time in the Word and prayer. The other kind of preaching can be taught to a well trained parrot.

Food for thought. --JS

Ten Commandments for Evangelists

1. Thou shalt not engage in shameless self promotion, as if you deserve the glory that God alone deserves.

2. Thou shalt not make an idol of evangelism. God deserves worship, not His work.

3. Thou shalt not give the enemies of God occasion to blaspheme. Reaping the results of being a jerk for Jesus is not persecution, it is defamation of God's character by your actions.

4. Thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy by taking opportunity to rest, worship and serve in the local church. This means your local church, not someone else's.

5. Submit to authority. This includes police officers, local church leadership, and the leadership of evangelism teams that you agree to submit yourself under by joining their outreaches, accepting their hospitality, etc. If you cannot submit, you cannot (and should not) lead.

6. Thou shalt not murder a heckler in your heart. He is not your enemy.

7. Thou shalt not preach against sexual sin while you are looking at internet pornography, having sex before marriage or cheating on your spouse. Yes, it needs to be said. In this case, hypocrite is spelled Y-O-U.

8. Thou shalt not steal time from your family to devote to evangelism. If you care more about the souls of strangers than you do for your family's, you are worse than an infidel.

9. Thou shalt not lie about the size of your crowd, the work of your ministry, the number of conversions, or your time with the Lord.

10. Thou shalt not covet a full time evangelism ministry. If God wants you to have it, He will give it to you without sending you into debt.

Monumental Video

I am blessed to know and call "friend" Marcus Pittman who did the production of this video for Monumental. I have already written a review of this movie, but I like this creative overview by IV His Son.