Born in the Heart of God
CHAPTER 17 THE EVANGELIST'S RELATIONSHIP TO THESOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION
Download 1.04 Mb.
|
CHAPTER 17 THE EVANGELIST'S RELATIONSHIP TO THESOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTIONThe 1970's, 1980's, 1990's and the start of the 21st century are the most exciting and wonderful times in history for the itinerant, revival evangelist in the Southern Baptist Convention. Some background history will help explain the preceding statement. HISTORY From the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, the Baptists utilized evangelists from other denominations as well as Southern Baptists to lead in revivals. Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist and others were used in Southern Baptist Churches. In the early 1900’s Baptist began to hire vocational evangelists to work with the Home Mission Board (Now NAMB). The 1913 SBC annual (HMB report) included a list of Board supported evangelist under the Evangelism Department. Weston Bruner was listed as the director of the department and General Evangelist. The evangelist listed were: John M. Anderson, Morristown, TN, J. B. DeGarmo, Blue Mountain, MS, W. F. Fisher, Lynchburg, VA, W. C. Golden, Nashville, TN, H. R. Holcomb, Clinton, Miss., F. D. King, Charlotte, NC, J.E. McManaway, Greenville, SC, J. W. Michaels, Evangelist to the Deaf, J. A. Scott, Oklahoma City, OK, T. O. Reese, Birmingham, AL, W.L. Walker, Evangelist to the colleges, Charlotte, NC, L. C. Wolfe, Muskogee, OK, Raleigh Wright, Tullahoma, TN, J. C. Owen, evangelist to the mountain schools,(6,000 conversions were reported during his short tenure as HMB Evangelist) Asheville, NC, M. J. Babbit (singer) Atlanta, GA, J. L. Blankenship (singer), Atlanta, GA, I. E. Reynolds (singer), Atlanta, GA, J. P. Scholfield (singer), Birmingham, AL, E. L. Woleslagel (singer), Asheville, NC, J. W. Bailey, Evangelist to the Negroes, Marshall, TX. The salaried vocational evangelists were profitable for the Convention. They were paid by HMB and offerings were given back to the Board.103 While men worked with the board for brief times as they were called to teach at seminaries and some took church positions, this was financially successful into the 1920’s. These were not the only evangelists in the SBC at the time. Although the emphasis of Baptists on baptism often kept them away from some camp meetings of other denominations, two week long protracted meetings were held by Baptists. William Warren Street said, The general pattern of revivalism which had been the principal technique of all the evangelical churches in meeting the needs peculiar to the frontier was still being extensively followed to the end of the century and even beyond. Practically every Baptist... throughout the eighties and nineties, had, as a part of their regular yearly programs a two weeks' revival, generally held during the winter months. Revival meetings were also a part of the yearly program of the denominational colleges which still maintained their relationship to the revivalistic churches. Revivalism, though under increasing criticism, indicated by the appearance of such books as Davenport's Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals in 1902, reached its high water mark during these years in the career of Dwight L. Moody. He had won his remarkable reputation as an evangelist in the seventies in his great meetings in the British Isles and later in the United States, but his work continued seemingly undiminished throughout the eighties and nineties, and at the time of his death in 1899 he was engaged in an evangelistic campaign in Kansas City, speaking to great audiences in a hall with a capacity larger than that of any in which he had ever spoken. These years were also the heyday of the professional evangelists. Most of them were imitators of Moody, though some of them lacked, unfortunately, his complete disinterestedness. 104 Dwight Moody was so effective that the mold he cast was followed and even until this day some pastors believe evangelists are exactly like him. Dr. Thomas Michael Atwood pastor of First Baptist Church in Starkeville, Mississippi was in evangelism for approximately six years. Upon entering the work, a pastor from a First Baptist Church told him not to go to seminary, because his zeal would be damaged. This kind of thinking is a throw back to the Moody mold. T. Dewitt Talmadge was a minister in this time and describes what evangelists are like in the following two sermon excerpts. He lived from 1832 1902. He stated in the sermon entitled "A Cavalry Charge": Well, I think it is the cavalry of the Christian hosts, the men and women who, with bold dash and holy recklessness and spurred on energies, are to take the world for God. To this army of Christian service belong the evangelists. It ought to be the business of the regular churches to multiply them, to support them, to cheer them, to clear the way for them. Some of them you like, and some of them you do not like. You say some are too sensational, and some of them are not enough learned, and some of them are erratic, and some of them are too vehement, and some of them pray too loud. Oh, fold up your criticism, and let them do that which we, the pastors, can never do. I like all the evangelists I have ever seen or heard. They are busy now; they are busy every day of the week. While we, the pastors, serve God by holding the fortress of righteousness and drilling the Christian soldiery, and by marshaling anthems and sermons and ordinances on the right side, they are out smiting the forces of darkness "Hip and thigh, with great slaughter." All success to them! The faster they gallop, the better I like it. The keener the lances they fling, the more I admire them. We care not what conventionality they infract, if they only gain the victory. Needham and Chapman, and Jones and Harrison, and Munhall, and Major Cole, and Crittenden, and a hundred others are now making the cavalry charge, and they are this moment taking New York and Philadelphia and Cincinnati for God, and I wish they might take our nation’s capital.105 He went on to say in the sermon "Shamgar's Oxgoad": Shamgar, with his unaided arm, howsoever muscular, and with that humble instrument made for agricultural purposes, and never constructed for combat, could not have wrought such victory. It was Omnipotence above and beneath and back of and at the point of the ox goad. Before that battle was over, the plowman realized this, and all the six hundred Philistines realized it, and all who visited the battlefield afterward appreciated it. I want in heaven to hear the story, for it can never be fully told on earth perhaps some day may be set apart for the rehearsal, while all heaven listens the story of how God blessed awkward and humble instrumentalities. Many an evangelist has come into a town given up to worldliness. The pastors say to the evangelist, "We are glad you have come, but it is a hard field, and we feel sorry for you. The members of our churches play progressive euchre (cards) and go to the theatre and bet at the horse races, and gaiety and fashion have taken possession of the town. We have advertised your meetings, but are not very hopeful. God bless you." This evangelist takes his place on platform or pulpit. He never graduated at college, and there are before him twenty graduates of the best universities. He never took one lesson in elocution, and there are before him twenty trained orators. Many of the ladies present are graduates of the highest female seminaries, and one slip in grammar or one mispronunciation will arouse a suppressed giggle. Amid the general chill that pervades the house, the unpretending evangelist opens his Bible and takes for his text, "Lord, that my eyes may be opened." Opera glasses in the gallery curiously scrutinize the speaker. He tells in a plain way the story of the blind man, tells two or three touching anecdotes, and the general chill gives way before a strange warmth. A classical hearer who took the first honor at Yale, and who is a prince of proprieties, finds his spectacles become dim with a moisture suggestive of tears. A worldly mother who has been bringing up her sons and daughters in utter godlessness, puts her handkerchief to her eyes and begins to weep. Highly educated men who came to criticize and pick to pieces and find fault, bow on their gold headed canes. What is that sound from under the gallery? It is a sob, and sobs are catching; and all along the wall, and all up and down and audience, there is deep emotion, so that when at the close of the service anxious souls are invited to special seats, or the inquiry room; they come up by scores and kneel and repent and rise up pardoned; the whole town is shaken, and places of evil amusement are sparsely attended, and rum holes lose their patrons, and the churches are thronged, and the whole community is cleansed and elevated and rejoiced. What power did the evangelist bring to bear to capture that town for righteousness? Not one brilliant epigram did he utter; not one graceful gesture did he make; not one rhetorical climax did he pile up. But there was something about him that people had not taken in the estimate when they prophesied the failure of that work. They had not taken into the calculation the omnipotence of the Holy Ghost. It was not the flash of a Damascus blade. It was God, before and behind and all around the ox goad.106 Sadly I record William Warren Sweet's commentary on revivalism in 1930. He stated, Revivalism still continues in many parts of the United States, especially in the South and in rural areas throughout the country, but it is no longer the universal technique of the evangelical churches. The conditions which produced it have been gradually passing, and will doubtless continue to do so. Most of the churches which formerly depended upon the revivalistic method for winning converts are now in the throes of trying to find new methods of approach.107 In the 1980,s, I asked Evangelist Jesse Hendley about the 1930's. He said that the above statement was basically true and that the Southern Baptist evangelists were scarce. However, at this time God began to raise up men such as Mordecai Ham, Hyman J. Appelman, Joe Henry Hankins and John R. Rice. The latter man left Southern Baptist ranks, however, the others have remained faithful, though utilized by other denominations. 108 In 1939, the remnants of a Billy Sunday Club in Athens, Georgia, called Brother Jesse Hendley to preach a tent meeting there. Heaven came down on the first night and by the end of the six weeks of meetings, over 1600 had professed faith in Christ publicly.109 Robert G. Torbet makes the following comment about the late 1930's and the 1940's: The methods of evangelism are changing gradually from the older forms of revivalism to the more recent devices of visitation, radio broadcasting, and varied adaptations of mass evangelism, with an emphasis upon youth response. Among Southern Baptists, the perennial revivals held in the churches constitute an important source of new members. In 1944 the Southern Convention launched a Centennial Evangelistic Crusade under the leadership of Dr. M. E. Dodd of Shreveport, Louisiana. The plan called for the holding of an evangelistic crusade in every church in the Convention.110 Today 58% of Southern Baptist churches hold revivals and Harvest days. It takes 23.73 members to baptize one convert in churches that hold revivals. Churches that do not hold evangelistic meetings need 35.87 members to baptize one person. Churhes who use revival preparation even partially prior to their revivals need 19 members to baptize one person. These statistics provided by the Research Services of the Georgia Baptist Convention for the year 2001 prove that more revivals and revival preparation would result in thousands more coming to Christ as Lord and Savior.
Download 1.04 Mb. Share with your friends:
|