It’s great to see so many people enjoying themselves today on the blog and the forums. As I look around this site, I can see the community really starting to grow together into a family and that warms my heart. But I don’t think we’ve been called to rest on our laurels and just enjoy each other. Any chur…er…website that isn’t growing is dying. We need to keep on reaching out with our message of hope into the fundamentalist community and bringing in the sheaves.

To that end, today I’d like to introduce a new SFL outreach program that I”m  calling “Webvangelism.” Quite simply it’s taking the good news of the freedom you’ve found here to others and trying to get them and their Paypal accounts to surf on in here and see what we’re all about. Each one, win one, and soon we’ll be overflowing our server limits again.

Now any good outreach program is incomplete without organization so here’s the plan that I’ve drafted for you all. Starting next week we’ll meet every Thursday night at 6:00 p.m. in the chat room for a brief time of prayer and instructions. Then we’ll split into groups of two and go out onto the Internet looking for fundamentalists and posting messages that I’ll write down for you word for word in advance. We’ll do this for a couple of hours (no more than three or four at most) and then we’ll meet back for status reports, war stories, and prayer requests.

Imagine the impact we could have in only an hour a week spent posting on Fundy Facebook profiles, Twitter streams, and WordPress.com comments sections! If you have someone special in mind who you think would benefit from such a cyber visit please e-mail their name to me and I’ll make a personal visit to their URL with an invitation by me or my designated spambot.

For those who are concerned about online safety,  Don and I will tackle the job of looking for fundies on seamier sides of tumblr and blogspot since we have the spiritual fortitude to withstand such things without temptation. Or at least I do. Do be in prayer for us that Don will keep himself right and that I’ll remember to watch him like  hawk.

Now perhaps some of you have work, or families or other excuses for not actually showing up to Webvangelism nights. Thankfully, I’ve been led to start a second ministry for those who can’t make it that they can do any time. I won’t go into all the details here but I’ll just say that it involves sending promotional e-mails to everybody @juno.com

I’ll see you there on Thursday night! I’m excited and I hope you all are too.

Today I’d like to share a blog post from a fundamentalist pastor who was concerned for his soulwinning stamina and feared that he might be “losing it” due to the following thoughts and actions:

- Do these people understand what they did
- Did they really did get saved
- I began to judge wether they were ready
- I began to look for people who were really ready
- I was praying for the really perfectly ready person
- I stopped the salvation presentation when the circumstances were not perfect
- I looked for kids to ride the bus….that was enough
- I failed to bring the person to the sinners prayer
- Weeks and months past and I led very few people to the Lord

Of course, rather than thinking that maybe there’s a good reason why he was feeling uncomfortable with his favorite “bag ‘em and tag ‘em” technique he decided that the problem must be with himself.

So this is how he got back “on track” for soulwinning:

- The silent partner wanted to see someone get saved….I was now accountable to someone
- I presented the soulwinning plan and quit trying to read into the person wether they wanted to listen or not
- I just went after people even if they looked like they were not really ready
- I pray before I go but don’t spend much time praying while I am out on the field
- I press on with the plan of salvation until the people stop me
- I look for kids to ride the bus and use it as a soulwinning stop
- If I go a week without leading someone to the Lord….I start to worry
- I don’t ever want to lose it again

And what happened when he gloriously decided to ignore the internal sense that something was terribly wrong with what he was doing and embrace the cognitive dissonance of his favored outreach method?

- I spend time every week to go soulwinnng(sic)
- I win about 4 or 5 every week
- I have had some great experiences
- I realized that I all I have to do is present the plan
- I have some of the kids I lead to the Lord that are still riding the bus
- I have a husband and wife and kids still riding every week that I lead to the Lord in Octoer(sic) 2010
- Let us have some testimonies next week on some people who were saved
- If someone gets saved it doesn’t have to be a dramatic testimony, just share it with others

Well, there you go. I guess it must be working if all that stuff is going on. I mean if he’s getting five people saved every week and some of them are even still riding his bus as long as a whole year later then it’s all good.

I’ve been hanging on to this video for about eight months now, waiting for it to be the right season. And now it is.

Although we featured soulwinning.info as a FWOTW over a year ago, someone recently sent me a link to this page which is was featured on that larger website. How could I possible resist sharing a manual on street preaching that is featured on chick.com?

What’s really interesting about this manual is that the author is obviously trying to to appear reasonable and nice. He purports to stand against obnoxious evangelism techniques while he himself uses slurs and recalls the time he was tempted to preach “on integration” at a civil right rally.

I salute you, Gerald Sutek. You’re a cautionary tale to us all. Be sure to check out the rest of the content on streetpreaching.com as well

Update 1: Do be sure to check out the photos page as well for lost more fundy goodness.

Update 2: A big shout out to Rob James who sent this link along! Thanks.

Here are a couple of war stories from the files of Jack “By His Own Admission The Most Awesome Preacher Since Ever” Hyles.

TOO TIRED TO SHOUT

One day I went soul winning with Bob Keyes, who was then my Assistant Pastor. Bob was an excellent soul winner and still is. I was doing the talking and the lady had a little baby who was misbehaving. About the time the lady was ready to get down to pray, the little boy said, “I want my bottle.”

Mama stuck the bottle in his mouth.

“I don’t want my bottle.”

She took it out.

“I wanna bottle.”

She stuck it in.

“I don’t want my bottle.”

Then I prayed silently, “Lord, do something about this little rascal or he is going to mess up the whole thing.” Do you know, he stopped and looked spellbound, as if he were in a trance. I said to myself, “Well, glory to God!” For about fifteen minutes that little baby didn’t move. He didn’t move his eyes; he just looked. The lady got converted.

When we left, I said to Bob Keyes, “Bob, praise the Lord!”

He said, “Amen, but why?”

“Did you see what God did to that baby?”

He said, “What?”

I said, “All of a sudden, at the crucial time, that baby froze.”

Bob said, “Well, I’m sure that the Lord had something to do with it, but I may have helped a little, because I had a ball point pen behind the coffee table going up and down, up and down, up and down. Preacher, I did that for fifteen minutes, and I’m worn out! I’M TOO TIRED TO SHOUT.”

HE COULDN´T EVEN SPELL THE WORD “JESUS”

He was a Mormon but had never been saved. It was on our regular visitation night when I first met him, and in a few minutes he was led to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Soon after, I won his brother to the Saviour. They were both rough-and-tough bricklayers but became tremendous soul winners.

I nicknamed him “Bear” because he walked like a bear and was a massive physical specimen. Though he could not spell the word “Jesus,” he has in these fourteen years since he has been saved won hundreds and hundreds to the Saviour.

One Sunday we ate in his home. He and his wife were so proud of their house because it was lovely and new. I noticed, however, that one bedroom closet door had scratches all over it. I inquired as to why that one door was so marred with scratches. Bear wouldn’t tell me, but his wife told me the reason.

Before Bear got saved he went hunting every weekend. He would put a scratch on the stock of his rifle every time he killed an animal. He asked his wife if he could use the closet door for his soul-winning “stock.” He would place a scratch on the door for every soul he had won that year. I counted 167 scratches on the door.

One day Bear picked up a hitchhiker and tried to tell him about Jesus only to find the hitchhiker was deaf. He resorted to showing the man a Gospel tract only to find that the man could not read. Bear stopped the car, got out, got on his knees, made the form of a cross, pointed to Heaven, pointed to his heart, bowed his head, and formed his hands beneath his chin in a prayer position. The man got the idea, fell to his knees and began to weep. He pointed to Heaven and to his heart, assuring Bear that he had been saved.

The man who couldn’t even spell “Jesus” now knows Him, and for these many years has led hundreds to know Him too. He is still active in his church and in personal soul winning.

For more breathtaking adventures in soulwinning that demonstrate exactly how awesome and wonderful Jack Hyles was, check out the entire text of Jack Hyles’ Favorite Soulwinning Experiences.

It’s worth noting on this July 8th edition of The Sword all three of the cover articles are by past or present SOTL editors John. R. Rice, Curtis Hutson, and Shelton Smith — two of whom have been dead for a decade or two. It’s a good indicator that their focus is firmly planted in the past.