Born in the Heart of God
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- TAKE A GOOD LOVE OFFERING
- Bailey Smith
GUARD HIS TIMEThe wise pastor discovers the evangelist's hobbies and plans to give him a day off during the week. "All work and no play makes the evangelist a dull preacher." The pastor may have one of his laymen take the evangelist hunting, fishing or golfing if he cannot personally do so. The pastor should not expect the evangelist to make every visit with him. He has not been invited to serve as the pastor's shadow. Many men are unable to do their best at night for having done so much during the day. Time for prayer, study and rest is imperative. Let him spend his time witnessing to prospects, not visiting hospitals and nursing homes. Many pastors have found that visitation of prospects by appointment is most productive. The pastor should remember that the evangelist has not come to solve his personal or church problems. No evangelist should be expected to say anything that the pastor himself could not say.
Preferably, the expenses for the revival should be cared for through the church's budget so the people can give an offering to the revival team. Expenses will include publicity, entertainment, travel and revival promotion. As soon as the evangelist arrives, he should be given a check for his personal round trip travel expenses incurred in the interest of the revival. If you allow his love offering to cover his personal expenses, you are asking him to be the largest financial contributor to the revival. Most churches will take a better offering if special love offering envelopes are mailed to every member prior to the revival with an explanatory letter from the pastor. Envelopes should also be used each night of the revival. If you are taking a love offering for your evangelistic team, be sure that none of it is spent for other church expenses. The reports are far too numerous of churches whose finance committees decide that the love offering is "too large" to give to an evangelistic team. Hand each member of your evangelistic team a check at the close of the last service of the revival. Never be guilty of saying, "We'll mail you a check later." "Later" has proven to be "much later" for some evangelists. Delayed mail, delayed signing of checks and mere forgetfulness have caused some men to wait as long as one month for their love offering checks. The God called evangelist has answered a scriptural call (Eph.4:11). Be kind to your evangelistic team. Pray for them and expect God to use them in your church.63 Sunday morning love offerings should be taken at the end of the service. Tithes for the church sould be received during the service. This will protect the church budget and give the people an opportunity to hear the evangelist before they give an offering to his ministry. Shane Craven gives insight the following 2008 article Guest Pastor’s Comments: The Team of Pastor and Evangelist by Shane Craven Magazine The Voice of the Evangelist on page 50.As for how you pay the evangelist, take strong love offerings each and every service. Pastors, we need to get better at this. Spend some time talking to your people. Don't just say, "Let's take our offering for our evangelist." That's terrible! Get detailed; challenge some to give $50, some to give $1,000. He has not asked for a fee, but he needs good and strong love offerings. He has no salary like a pastor! He lives by faith every day of his life. Think about this. I would recommend budgeting a sum of money that will indeed cover his expenses and an additional sum to be added to the love offering. For instance, if you have an evangelist from Sunday through Wednesday, you are reaping his giftedness for five different services. I would recommend a minimum of $800 per service. By the time he leaves the church, gets something to eat, and gets back to his hotel room, it has been a total of about 6 hours of his time, energy, and effort, with oftentimes amazing results! Secular attorneys earn $200 an hour. We've got men of God here! Now, keep in mind, he doesn't have a revival scheduled every week of his life, so he needs bigger blessings along the way to sustain his family. God can use your dumb to be that blessing! Pastors, if you do not take up $800 per service, make sure you find a way to pay him, at least this minimum. Supplement from the budget or ask two or three of your key people to help you underwrite it. In addition to this, if you are blessed enough to take up much more than $800 per service, give ALL of the offering to the evangelist. Don't hold back part of it while you and the leadership decide to give him what you think is fair. That is not your call. Also, don't use any of his love offering to pay his expenses. This is unethical!64 Bailey Smithsent the following statement on a video tape to be played at the COSBE Worship service in 2008 I want to say a good word about my fellow evangelists! And encourage preachers how to treat the evangelist. When I was a pastor for thirty years I was always using fulltime evangelists, because they had the call of God on their life. It is tragic today to see so many of our evangelists doing other things because they cannot make a living. I want to say a good word, an encouraging word and an instructive word to our pastors especially , since I was a pastor longer than I’ve been an evangelist. Ephesians 4:11. Let me remind you so that you can understand the place of the evangelist. It is listed even before the pastor. Doesn’t mean the evangelist is more important, but today he is treated as less important. But in the list of the calling of God he is even listed before the pastor and teacher. FF Bruce, the famous scholar said that he wished that the call of evangelist had been on him. J He felt that was the highest calling.ohn Phillips and I were in a meeting sometime ago and we got in the car together, He said I wish the call of Evangelism was on my life. But Dr. Phillips, if you did not do what you do we would not have anything to preach. We are thankful for what you do. Paige Patterson President of Southwestern Seminary, My good friend, says I wish I had the call of evangelism on my life. I am not a harvester. But I had rather be doing what you are doing Bailey Than being president of any institution because I love the call of evangelism. It is a legitimate call, it is a necessary cal a very helpful call. I can say without any fear of contradiction in my life that the full-time evangelist the vocational evangelist, have helped me more than pastors, denominational servants or any other group of people in the ministry. They have helped me in so many other ways. Nearly everything I learned about effective evangelism I learned from evangelists. I am so very thankful for them. I had a church averaging 3100 in Sunday School when God called me into evangelism. The church offered me many financial reasons to stay. We had just built a 7000 seat auditorium. So you can imagine the difficulty in leaving such a church. It was just the call of God upon my life. God only had one son and he was an evangelist. The man that Jesus said there was no greater John the Baptist was an evangelist. Paul was the evangelist. As you know, he would appoint the pastors like Timothy to go and do the work. He would recommend Timothy and the others. John R. Rice used to teach in the Sword of the Lord that when the evangelist was in the church the pastor was under the authority of the evangelist. Now I don’t think you need to carry that out or you will be back doing something else. But I think the point is that the pastor needs to listen to the evangelist. What do you recommend evangelist for this week. What can we do to make it more productive? Do not put yourself in an adversarial relationship with the evangelist. Let him do what he has a talent to do and a gift to do. God’s special calling upon his life. He will be such a blessing to your church. Every time I had a full time evangelist at our church we did our very best to treat them right. I remember Junior Hill telling me he could not believe what we did at Del City while I was there in Oklahoma. We had a committee of hospitality for the evangelist. Every day the evangelist was given a gift. One day it might be a silk tie or another family might give a Cross pen. I remember one evangelist was given a golden air pressure gauge. But every day we had a family chosen to give a gift a present to the evangelist to show our appreciation for him. When an evangelist comes, be generous in every way. Learn pastor how to take up an offering. There are some wonderful men are gifted in taking an offering. Bob Pittman for instance is one of the best and you can take some tips from him. God will bless the church that blesses the evangelist. I promise you of that. When the offering is given start on Sunday morning. I have had pastors start on Sunday night and on Monday night. It makes me want to show up on Monday night. Start on Sunday morning and make an urgent appeal. Because some people will only be there on Sunday morning, they would not come back on Sunday night if Peter was there signing Bibles. So take advantage of that particular crowd. If the offering is not what it should be, add something to it from the budget! Never say to an evangelist I wish it could be more. If it should be more make it more. That is your responsibility that is your duty. I did that several times at Oklahoma if we needed to. I remember back in the 70’s we gave Sam Cathey $22000 I checked with my accountant He said that would be $40000 offering today. And our people were glad to do it and we were blessed by doing that. Let me tell you something about receiving the offering. When the offering is received, that is not the time to make the appeal. Make the appeal several minutes before the offering actually is received. I have had pastors to have people to stand and say “Now I want you to give a good offering for this evangelist, Brother Smith is here and we need to take care of him.” You cannot write a check standing up. Always make the appeal at an earlier time than when you receive the offering. Have the people seated. It is often good for the pastor to take out a pen and write a check himself. You can write for whatever you want to pastor But do it each night. Give the people an idea. They are not over giving. People can protect their own pocketbooks. Let the evangelist leave knowing you have done your very, very best. Teach your people know that you are not paying him for those days. You are making an investment for what he is doing that week and in the weeks to come and wherever he goes. When it comes to facility, put him in a good place. Ask him where he would like to stay. Put him in a clean place that he can enjoy. Not the top an associational office where I was placed one time. But treat him right. The bible has much to say about the gift and the joy of hospitality. This is one of God’s highest callings to be an evangelist. When he comes to your church do everything that you can to make him feel at home. Ask him about the schedule, he desires. Ask him about his dietary needs. Do the very best you can for him financially. Because if it is a man you know is God called he will use those funds to promote the Gospel and to win souls to Christ. How we need our evangelists out there. Of the 800 churches in our state that did not have a baptism last year only three had had revivals. We need to get back to old fashioned revivals. I love what an old country preacher said, Somebody said revivals don’t work anymore, He said they did until we quit doing them. That is exactly right. God bless us to get back to winning souls to Christ. Evangelists I love you. Pastors others out there take care of these men when they come. Teach your church when the offering is given it is given to the vocational evangelists both preaching and singing, not the church budget or split with a full time church minister. God bless you and let’s pray for revival in our great Southern Baptist Convention.65 Download 1.04 Mb. Share with your friends:
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