Month: February 2010

ATF releases composites of arson suspects

TYLER?Federal authorities have released descriptions of three “individuals of interest” in nine confirmed church arsons across East Texas since Jan. 1. In all, 11 church fires have occurred in the region this year.

Composite sketches of three men were posted at the website of television station KLTV in Tyler http://www.kltv.com/global/story.asp?s=11976780.

Two Baptist churches, less than two miles apart, were burned beyond repair on Feb. 8 despite the response from four volunteer fire departments.

Investigators from the Smith County Fire Marshal’s office and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were investigating the fires at Dover Baptist Church and Clear Springs Missionary Baptist Church in Smith County.

Federal investigators upped the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspect to $25,000 from an earlier figure of $10,000, ATF special agent Tom Crowley said.

Mary Thompson, administrative assistant to Smith County Fire Marshall Jim Seaton, said the first fire was reported at 8:33 p.m. by a resident who lives across the street from Dover Baptist Church, near Tyler. About an hour later the fire at Clear Springs Missionary Baptist Church was reported.

Volunteer firefighters from stations in Chapel Hill, Dixie, Lindale, and Red Spring responded to the calls. Due to the circumstances surrounding the other fires, Thompson said it is now standard procedure for representatives from ATF and the fire marshal’s office to respond to church fires.

“That’s just a given,” she said.

Crowley, based in the ATF’s Dallas office, said the latest fires are possibly associated with a string of church blazes set since Jan. 1. There have been seven other confirmed arsons?three in Athens, two in Tyler, one in Lindale, and one in Wills Point. Each of the fires was started from inside the churches and representatives from some of the churches reported items were stolen prior to the buildings being set on fire.

An arsonist’s attack on a church in the central Texas city of Temple is being investigated as well. Crowley said the ATF office in Houston is investigating that blaze and the two agencies are conferring to determine whether or not the torchings are related.

Fires in Canton and Martin’s Mill are also under investigation.

The ATF is directing the multi-county investigation and is following up on a number of leads.

Anyone with information for investigators related to the church arsons is asked to call 903-675-0061 or 903-675-0062 or 1-888-ATF-FIRE.

?With reporting by Bonnie Pritchett and Jerry Pierce of the Southern Baptist Texan.

Two more Texas churches burn

SMITH COUNTY?Two more Baptist churches, less than two miles apart, burned Feb. 8 making a total of 11 East Texas churches damaged or destroyed by fire since the New Year and nine under investigation as arsons, authorities said. The latest buildings consumed were declared a total loss despite the response from four volunteer fire departments.

Investigators from the Smith County Fire Marshall’s office and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were at Dover Baptist Church and Clear Springs Missionary Baptist Church Feb. 9 trying to determine the cause of the fires. Because arson has been confirmed in seven other church burnings in the region, ATF special agent Tom Crowley said it is the suspected cause of the latest fire, but confirmation will take a few days.

Federal investigators have, once again, upped the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspect to $25,000 from an earlier figure of $10,000. Ironically, the increased reward was due to be announced Tuesday before the additional fires, Crowley said. Anyone with information about the fires is asked to call the ATF at 903-590-1475.

Mary Thompson, administrative assistant to Smith County Fire Marshall Jim Seaton, said the first fire was reported at 8:33 p.m. by a resident who lives across the street from Dover Baptist Church, 21166 FM 1995, near Tyler. About an hour later the fire at Clear Springs Missionary Baptist Church on County Road 426 was reported.

“That’s just a given,” she said.

Crowley, based in the ATF’s Dallas office, said the Feb. 9 fires are possibly associated with a string of church blazes set since Jan. 1. There have been seven confirmed arsons?three in Athens, two in Tyler, one in Lindale, and one in Wills Point. Each of the fires was started from inside the churches and representatives from some of the churches reported items were stolen prior to the buildings being set on fire.

An arsonist’s attack on a church in Temple is being investigated as well. Crowley said the ATF office in Houston is investigating that blaze and the two agencies are conferring to determine whether or not the torchings are related.

Fires in Canton and Martin’s Mill are also under investigation.

The ATF is directing the multi-county investigation and is following up on a number of leads. There are a variety of reasons why someone would target churches, not one specific motive that would help narrow the search Crowley said.

Hands-on help for Haiti

The “Buckets of Hope” ministry is one means Southern Baptists are using to meet immediate human needs amid the deadly earthquake in Haiti.

WHAT IS IT?

A “Bucket of Hope” consists of a white, plastic, five-gallon bucket packed with selected food. For approximately $30, any person or church group can purchase the materials and assemble a Bucket of Hope. The food contained in a single bucket will feed a Haitian family for a week. Participants are requested to include a $10 cash contribution, placed in an envelope and attached securely to the lid of the bucket, to offset the cost of transporting the relief buckets to Haiti.

To reach their destination, each bucket must be exactly alike with a specific list of items inside. Detailed instructions, available in a downloadable PDF file at sbtexas.com, must be followed.

The buckets will leave for Haiti from a staging warehouse in Hialeah, Fla., where each bucket will be labeled “Bucket of Hope,” indicating it is a gift of Christian love from Southern Baptists. An evangelistic presentation will be affixed to each bucket.

The project deadline is March 15. For bucket collection details, contact Amber Nygaard by e-mail at anygaard@sbtexas.com or by calling her toll-free at 877-953-7282 (SBTC).

Because retailers have a limited stock of the buckets, churches planning to prepare more than a few buckets should order the standard, white 5-gallon buckets through the manufacturer, usplastic.com (item number 3826), said SBTC Disaster Relief Director Jim Richardson. Also, a web link to the item may be accessed at sbtexas.com/Haiti.

Prayer, repentance key to awakening, experts say

As Southern Baptists lament their denomination’s declining baptism numbers and lackluster spiritual growth, many leaders want to know what causes revival.

According to two experts, the answer involves both prayer by Christians and a sovereign work by God.

“The obvious cause [of spiritual awakenings] is God’s people beginning to pray,” said Roy Fish, retired professor of evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “I don’t believe that there is a major awakening in history, or maybe no awakening at all, that ultimately didn’t begin somewhere in prayer.”

When awakening comes, that prayer blossoms into deep conviction of sin in a church and fresh joy in the members’ relationships with Jesus, he said.

Yet Fish added that awakening?a term he uses synonymously with revival?is not merely the result of believers meeting certain conditions in a formula. In fact, two churches could seek God identically but only one congregation experience revival, he said.

GOD’S SOVEREIGN DECISION

The ultimate key to a major outpouring of God’s blessing is his sovereign decision, Fish said.

“You just cannot take away this aspect of sovereignty,” he said. “It is vital in the study of the history of awakenings.”

Any time a preacher or teacher promises an outpouring of God’s Spirit if only humans will fulfill a formula, Christians should listen with a critical ear, Fish warned. He noted 19th-century revivalist Charles G. Finney as someone whom Baptists should read with “a lot of caution.”

Finney taught that revival is the work of man and compared it to farming. Just as a farmer is destined to grow a crop if he meets certain conditions, a church is destined to have a revival if it completes certain spiritual activities, Finney said.

“Nobody today that I know of really goes along with Finney at that point,” said Fish, adding that some of Finney’s other teachings are very helpful.

But Christians who desire revival are not left without recourse. Those who want a fresh work of God in their congregation should pray as a group, search their hearts and repent of their sins, Fish said.

“The thing we’re desperately lacking today,” he said, “is brokenness and coming to a place where I say, ‘Yes, there are some things wrong in my life, and I want revival. And I’m willing to get rid of the things that dishonor God and put into my life more things that please God.'”

Gregory Frizzell, prayer and spiritual awakening specialist with the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said revival is the result of both human and divine causes. It happens when God draws Christians closer to himself, convicts of sin and grants his people a desire for greater spiritual depth. From a human perspective though, prayer accompanied by deep conviction is the catalyst, he said.

“The type of prayer that brings revival is what I call a God-seeking kind of prayer,” Frizzell said. “It’s not just, ‘O God, we want you to bless us. O God, we want you to fix our problems,’ or ‘God, we want you to do something for us.’ It’s really, ‘God, we want you to change us and we want you to glorify yourself.'”

Unlike Fish, Frizzell draws a distinction between revival and awakening. Revival occurs within the church, he said, while awakening is a community phenomenon that results in lost people being saved. Fish argues that revival chroniclers of the past used the terms synonymously and that the Bible calls believers to awake as well as revive. Yet both agree that terminology is not the most important aspect of any discussion on spiritual renewal.

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Lecture series marks 40th anniversary of W.A. Criswell’s legacy institution

DALLAS Marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of Criswell College, 10 denominational leaders, ministers, and Southern Baptist seminary and college personnel paid tribute to the legacy of the school’s founder, W.A. Criswell, in a lecture series Jan. 19-21 on the college campus.

Speakers shared from the heart concerning the late pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas; many of them served under Criswell’s leadership at the college or during his nearly 60-year tenure at the church. Speakers included Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS), Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), and David Allen, SWBTS dean of theology.

Other speakers included Lanny Elmore, former minister of missions at FBC Dallas, who presented a biographical and anecdotal sketch of the former pastor, and Criswell alum and Bible study teacher Susie Hawkins.

Participating Criswell College personnel included Lamar Cooper Sr., interim president, James W. Bryant, senior professor of pastoral theology, Alan Streett, professor of evangelism and pastoral ministries, Jim Sibley, director of the Pasche Institute for Jewish Studies, and Andrew Hebert, director of the office of enrollment services.

BAPTIST ICON

James Bryant, Criswell’s senior professor of pastoral theology, hailed Criswell as a Baptist icon?an assessment rooted in his preaching abilities and denominational leadership.

Bryant said Criswell belongs alongside history’s great men of Christendom such as Charles Haddon Spurgeon. But Criswell exceeded Spurgeon in scholarship, Bryant argued.

“Like Spurgeon, Criswell had a photographic memory. He was known to quote Scripture for 15 minutes during his sermons without missing a word. He wrote out his sermons in long hand, memorized them, and then preached them from memory,” Bryant said, noting that Criswell’s pastoral skills were also legendary. “He was venerated by rich and poor, educated and uneducated, elite and common and by Jews and Catholics as well as Baptists and other evangelicals.”

In addition to his preaching, Criswell’s legacy lives on through his denominational service, Bryant added.

“Through his preaching at various conferences and conventions, Criswell helped shape the future of the [SBC]. He was often the unwitting helmsman who turned the Southern Baptist ship of Zion back to the right, an almost unheard of thing among denominations in modern times. His great address at the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference when the [SBC] met in Dallas in 1985 was said by the late W.O. Vaught to have ‘saved the Southern Baptist Convention’.”

Yet, perceiving that change was not likely to come to the convention, Bryant said, Criswell followed Spurgeon’s lead by founding a school in which to train preachers in doctrine and exposition. Bryant remembered the day he first learned of Criswell’s plan.

“?[D]uring the sermon at the 8:15 A.M. service, [Criswell] said, ‘We are going to establish a Bible Institute.’ Then he turned toward me on the platform and added, ‘And Dr. Bryant is going to organize it.’ Over Dr. Criswell’s strenuous objection ? I led the organizing committee to insist that it be named The Criswell Bible Institute, for two reasons. One, if it were named after him, Criswell would be bound to stay interested in it. Two, the name would immediately convey a doctrinal stance, conservative to the core.”

In addition to the institute, Criswell College also stands as a legacy to the man who founded the school, which began in 1970.

“It is stamped with his love for the Bible, his love for the lost, and his love for Israel,” Bryant said. “The little school which Criswell founded has barely 2,000 alumni, but among them are many gr

Think twice, send once

Having graduated from two seminaries and a Bible college, I’ve attended a lot of chapels. One particular day sticks out in my mind. A well-known pastor of that era stood before us, opened his Bible and began a message punctuated with non-sequitur ridicule of various political figures. He commented on those who were liberal, some who were funny looking, and even strayed into some assumptions of immorality for which no proof existed. His exposition was solid but instead of our usual discussion of the way he handled the Bible, we students spent our time criticizing the way he misused the pulpit.

Our preacher had, no doubt, looked out there and assumed he had a friendly audience that would find his comments amusing, even refreshing. He did not know who was visiting campus, what prospective students were in the audience, or what his hearers needed to hear from the Lord that day. He missed an opportunity at the very least.

I’ve been reminded of that occasion when I receive any number of goofball forwards in my e-mail box. Some of them address immigration reform, some the president, some patriotism in general, and occasionally I’ll get one about women drivers. By the time I get the forward, it has hundreds of recipients attached to it. I don’t know some of these people and the sender has no idea whom I’ll pass it along to, with his name and address book attached. I can easily imagine that some of the more disrespectful messages will reach a lady who’s tired of jokes about the driving habits of her gender, maybe another will be a barb to someone who sees the joke as being against anyone who’s come to America recently, legally or otherwise. Jokes about the president risk edging into the truly racist or at least demeaning of our legally elected office holder.

And then there’s Twitter. I have a Twitter account for the TEXAN (sbtexan) that I use to announce new posts on our news site. Some folks that I follow are clever, others offer short devotional thoughts, still others use the forum to promote their speaking schedule or writing ministry, a few regale us with the details of their daily menu or workout schedule, and a few use it for short bits of political advocacy. If your primary identity is pastor rather than pundit, I think Twitter or other immediate electronic media are poor forums for political commentary, especially when it goes beyond what the Bible clearly says about public morality.

Maybe this is something I’ve learned from writing columns pretty regularly since 1989. I’ve written at least a handful of embarrassing articles. A couple stand out in my mind for their poor research. More than a couple have been riddled with grammatical mistakes. A few times I’ve gone off half-cocked and misused the platform my readers have provided. Those are the times I regret most. Currently, my column is read at least twice by me, once by my managing editor, and usually by my wife. If I’m concerned that the column might be provocative, I’ll ask Dr. Richards to read it. My process has become more elaborate as experience has taught me to dread communicating poorly. If you’re speaking in a more immediate forum?e-mail or Twitter to name two?use these filters I try to remember as I write a column for print.

>Think of your readers, those you know and those you can’t imagine: Even in the day when newspaper articles had to be photocopied and manually passed around, I was surprised where something I wrote turned up. Some who did not welcome my opinion had a hard time believing I didn’t make hundreds of copies and mail them to strangers. Occasionally I’d be surprised to hear a counterpoint I’d never considered from someone I’d never thought would read it. Now, I frequently think of who might find what I’m saying most unwelcome and try to make my case to that person, not just those who mostly agree with my opinion. Who’s going to read your mail or message? Forwards and retweets make your message worldwide in seconds. Would you have said what you said about Hillary Clinton if you knew your lost and less-conservative father-in-law would read it? Then don’t say it; because he will likely read the message you’d most rather he didn’t.

>Think of what people will mistakenly infer: It is a truism that our messages are more interesting if they are negative. We can fall into that easily and present a false picture of ourselves and our ministries. Collecting hundreds of followers or “friends” or readers only increases the likelihood that most people who see your words will know little of your heart. To avoid this a writer could map out everything that’s important to him and make sure that he gives those things some significant attention on a regular basis. That being a boring and silly idea, we should go with a second option?write less and say things that have some intent. It’s OK to amuse people, write something with a little bite, even preach at folks when you’ve got something to say, but say things that you can stand behind. Say things that are as kind and thoughtful as you are, even when you must say something edgy.

>Reflect your priorities: What’s your calling? What role do you play in your circle of influence? While I have some doubts that one can have a deepening relationship with another using 140 characters at a time (that’s the limit on a Twitter posting, a “tweet”), I believe we can damage a relationship in fewer characters than that without much effort. If you’re a pastor or church leader, visitors will judge your church by what you post. Is it at least harmless? Is the outcome of the healthcare debate or immigration reform more important to you than your relationship with those church members who voted for Barack Obama in 2008? If not, watch what you say. Will people who receive e-mail forwards find those treasures consistent with your life message or at least not contrary? If in doubt, just delete them.

The problem could be called transparency gone mad but it’s really a caricature of that overused virtue. We can be transparent when our motives are pure and our hearts are striving for holiness. Bad transparency is really poor impulse control that drives us to say and do everything that passes through our minds. Save some of those jewels for people who know you well—people who understand you well enough to forgive you when you’re a dope.

No, dear readers, this is not Ledbetter going off on technology again. I use it and I am sometimes grateful for the strange minds that come up with new ways of communicating. None of these tools should be our master, though. Just because we can impulsively tell our rapt audience we’re having Spam for breakfast or that we strongly dislike the governor is no reason that we must tell them. If we’ll run counter to the stated purposes of some communications tools; if we’ll think half a tick about our readers and our priorities before hitting “send,” we stand a better chance of keeping the doors open to the kind of old-school communication that matters most.. We might find people drawn to what we stand for rather than confused or offended by what we appear to be.

Share Jesus intentionally, biblically

Writing an article about witnessing is always convicting. Sharing Jesus with others is like praying. We talk a lot about the need but don’t do enough of it. I always feel woefully inadequate to urge others to be a witness. I am going to do it anyway.

My last full-blown presentation of the gospel was about three weeks ago. I have been using the same accountant for a number of years. I have shared a word of witness, a gospel tract and other small testimonies all through this time. I had never gotten him one-on-one to inquire about his relationship with Jesus.

I invited him to a steak lunch at a nice restaurant. We were in a relaxed atmosphere. Starting with small talk I moved the conversation toward spiritual matters. He expressed some involvement with religion but did not have a clear answer about his relationship with Jesus. I shared with him the story of Nicodemus from John, chapter three.

You see it is my firm conviction that salvation is a conscious decision to place one’s life under the Lordship of Jesus (repentance) and to trust Jesus’ blood for the payment of sin (faith). These two volitional inward acts unleash the power of God in our lives. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 confessional statement says repentance and faith are inseparable experiences of grace. I believe the new birth is essential to knowing Christ and having eternal life.

There is a movement away from decisional salvation. Usually we soft sell the gospel by failing to confront people intentionally with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Lingering in some minds are the caricatures of evangelists pulling folks down the aisle. Evangelism is not singing “Just As I Am” through 10 times in order to get someone to come forward in a public invitation. Some preachers have used emotional appeals while providing little Biblical content to get “decisions.” All of these abuses may be true, but it doesn’t negate the fact that people need to be confronted about making a conscious decision to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior.

I wish I could tell you that my friend prayed to receive Christ. He didn’t. He maintained that he had some type of encounter with God that didn’t ring true with the Scriptures. I prayed with him. I pray for him every day. The salvation ball is in his court now. I have done what God commissioned me to do.

I confess that I don’t witness every time I should. I wish I did. But I do make an effort to share about our Savior. Jesus said if we followed Him, He would make us fishers of men.

Events like the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Evangelism Conference are a time when all of us can be encouraged to be soul-conscious. This is about the work of Jesus. When pastors become soul-winners, they provide leadership by example. Pastors, staff members, laypersons, let God bring a personal Great Commission Resurgence in your life. We all can do our part to see His Name glorified.

Some Texas congregations seeing revival, repentance

Several Texas churches have felt the stirrings of revival recently, and in at least one instance it spread into a movement that awakened congregations across an entire community. Such reports provide encouraging signs of spiritual awakening.

Such stirrings?quite apart from whether or not they are indicators of a widespread movement?are not unnoticed by those who fill pulpits frequently.

“Last week a group of about 175 teenagers gathered for a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting in Haslet, Texas. Northgate Church was coordinating the event. When the gospel invitation was given over 100 of them filled out commitment cards indicating they received Jesus as their personal Savior,” observed Jim Richards, Southern Baptists of Texas Convention executive director. “Youths will come to Christ if we will simply present the Word to them.

“This is one example of a number of moves of God I am seeing all across Texas.”

At East Paris Baptist Church in Paris, an eight-day revival meeting in November resulted in more than 600 people professing faith in Christ for the first time. When the church referred them to nearly 80 sister churches across the community for follow-up, one congregation reported that the revival saved it from dying.

“God worked in such a way that many churches in our area benefited spiritually,” said East Paris pastor Mike Fortenberry. “That’s what’s exciting to me, that not only were we blessed as a church but that God brought many into his kingdom, and then he placed many of them in our area churches, where I pray they will be fruitful believers.”

Yet the revival emerged out of difficult circumstances.

“Our church had a couple of glitches in the two or three years prior to this, and our church had really been hurt,” the pastor said. “There was a spiritual dryness not just in the people but in my own life.”

When members recognized their church was struggling, some began to pray. Efforts included home prayer meetings, a 24-hour prayer chain and fasting. Through prayer, Fortenberry became convinced that God’s will was for the congregation to hold an eight-day protracted meeting with evangelist Ken Freeman. So they scheduled the meeting despite the fact that such long revival gatherings are uncommon in contemporary church life.

The results were astonishing.

“What happened was not a man thing,” Fortenberry said. “God just chose to show up. That’s the crux of what took place those eight days.”

The initial service on a Sunday morning drew 550 people and saw more than 20 first-time professions of faith. Fueled by assemblies Freeman conducted in area public schools, attendance increased each night as the professions of faith continued. By Wednesday, 1,200-1,400 people were lined up to enter the church’s 800-seat auditorium. So beginning Thursday, it held two services nightly.

A high point of the meeting occurred Wednesday night when more than 230 salvations were recorded in one service. No service saw fewer than 20 first-time professions of faith.

“Many of the decisions ? not only came to church, but they did follow the Lord in believer’s baptism,” Fortenberry said. “So we have just been tremendously blessed through this revival experience and plan to have Ken (Freeman) come back in the future.”

In all, East Paris has baptized between 40 and 50 people since the meeting and continues to follow up with another 100 or so people.

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Pursuing God’s agenda in local church

THE WOODLANDS?Darrell Robinson has never forgotten that God’s plan for reaching the world grows out of the local church. In his newly released book, “Synergistic Evangelism,” he explains that the spiritual awakening for which so many Southern Baptists are praying will unify local church members to pursue God’s agenda.

“They needed and we need extraordinary prayer that will bring us to intimacy with God, brokenness, repentance, and yielding to God,” he writes. Only then did the disciples become so united that they pursued Jesus’ passion for the souls of the lost.

“The power of God for salvation is not in our cleverness, not in our religious entertainment, not in our slick advertisements or programs, not in avoiding biblical truth to keep from offending people,” Robinson writes. “The power is in the gospel of Christ. But, some have lost confidence in the power of the gospel.”

In just 148 pages, Robinson provides practical instruction that brings together all of the elements of evangelism into a strategy that local churches can embrace. He provides a refresher course for church leaders who have forgotten or abandoned some of the essential steps in creating a culture focused on evangelism.

While churches may be particularly successful in staging evangelistic events, evangelistic invitations, social ministries, or neighborhood witnessing, Robinson explains how all of these tools combine for maximum outreach to those who need Christ.

He takes on the usual excuses for abandoning evangelistic outreach?from fear of causing offense to yielding to a changing culture. “Satan has us where he wants us?paralyzed regarding evangelism,” Robinson writes. “If pastors and leaders buy into the myth that they do not want to witness, then they lower their expectation for the level of commitment for which Christ calls.”

Furthermore, “if the early Christians had believed and behaved like this, the gospel would not have survived the first century. They prayed that God would give them boldness to share Jesus no matter what they did to them,” he writes, citing Acts 4:39-41.

“If you ask lost people what it will take to reach them for Christ, you are asking the wrong people. They do not know what it will take to reach them for Christ. They are spiritually blind and need the light of the gospel to open their understanding as to where they are and how they need Christ.”

Robinson guides the reader through each element of a balanced evangelistic strategy. Beginning with public proclamation, he offers an assessment of whether current methods employed by most churches are accomplishing the goal of sharing the gospel in a clear and easy-to-understand manner. “Most preaching is made up of interesting homilies and excellent oratory, but does not present the gospel of Christ and call people to Christ,” he warns.

In addition to sharing the plan of salvation and a clear invitation to receive Christ, “a climate of evangelistic concern and urgency” must be created. Every worship service should accomplish three priorities, he reminds: glorify God and praise the Lord Jesus; train and equip believers through the preaching of the Bible; and present the gospel and reach the lost.”

MUSIC AS A HANDMAIDEN

Those involved in music and singing can do much to create a climate for evangelism, Robinson said. He commended the example of Curtis Brewer, minister of music at First Baptist of Odessa, who led the choir to participate in witness training and commit to reach one lost person for Christ. “When a choir member saw a person for whom they were praying and were attempting to reach come into the congregation, he or she was filled with joy and prayed through the entire service for that person.” That commitment spreads to the entire congregation and lifts the spirit of the service, he added.

After addressing other elements of public proclamation, Robinson offers step-by-step instruction on giving an evangelistic invitation, challenging a growing trend of minimizing its importance.

COMPASSION

Caring ministry is the second biblical technique Robinson points to from the book of Acts. He encourages churches to prevent well-intentioned outreach from turning inward as time passes.

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Ravenhill book still hot 50 years later

Until recently, this writer’s knowledge of the late Leonard Ravenhill was merely anecdotal. A pastor told of he and a buddy visiting Ravenhill’s home outside of Tyler in the late 1970s, hoping to glean some wisdom from the man with the pen of fire. They arrived and were invited in, only to be stunned by what they saw: There sat Ravenhill, the story goes, holding court with a couple of young musicians.

Instead of excusing themselves for a soft drink, the young students stayed and listened as Ravenhill explored the mysteries of God with a rising Christian artist named Keith Green, who was Ravenhill’s neighbor, and a tag-along friend named Bob Dylan.

A recent conversation with SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards brought Ravenhill to mind again. Back in his pastor days, Richards used to read Ravenhill’s “Why Revival Tarries” (Bethany House Publishers, 168 pages) annually.

“Our church didn’t always have revival, but I always had personal revival,” Richards said of his reading what Ravenhill’s friend A.W. Tozer called “a voice from above.”

Written in 1959 and reprinted numerous times since, his lamentations over the culture of his day could be translated generally to our postmodern age. Sin is still sin, immorality is still the rule rather than the exception. Lost men are still blind. Saved men are still slumbering in creature comforts, on the path of least resistance, and of least spiritual yield, to Heaven.

The book is a collection of 20 essays on prayer and awakening aimed at preacher and layman alike and taken from Christian periodicals of the middle 20th century.

AGONIZERS WANTED

The seasoned saint will find few novel things in the book, but its jarring reminders, rebukes and exhortations were marvelously discomfiting to this needy soul. Repeatedly, Ravenhill refers to the truly praying kind as “agonizers.”

“Poverty-stricken as the Church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.”

And in case the reader is feeling victorious for remembering to pray five minutes, Ravenhill writes: “This world hits the trail for hell with a speed that makes our fastest plane look like a tortoise; yet alas, few of us can remember the last time we missed our bed for a night of waiting upon God for a world-shaking revival.”

Several times, Ravenhill, a British evangelist who preached powerfully across the pond during World War II before moving his ministry to the United States (he died in 1994 at a ripe age), complains of a toxic materialism in the church of the 1950s, not unlike today or in Sodom in ancient days, with “pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness,” having our light snuffed out by the “bushel of business” or the “bed of idleness.”

He writes that America cannot fall “because she is already fallen! This goes for Britain, too!” In fact, Ravenhill laments in his day the declining numbers of those answering a call to preach in Britain; one wonders, with similar results today here, if America’s churches are empty European cathedrals in waiting.

He also decries, among other things, “hell’s broth” (alcohol), citing its deadly social and spiritual fruits, and lobotomization?a hot-button bio-ethical issue of the day.

“When enlightened men dehumanize other men in this fashion, it is time to stop and ask if the great Goddess of Science has not received too much veneration from men,” Ravenhill argued.

Replace lobotomy with human cloning and utilitarian ethic