What has the preeminence in fundamentalist circles? What do they glorify above all else? Christ? Christ’s church? The fellowship of the saints?
In fact, if you listen, you’ll find that the predominant thing glorified in all of fundamentalism is the act of confrontational evangelism and the people who do that “ministry.”
Soulwinning is what calls people to the ministry.
Soulwinning is what defines your usefulness to the ministry.
Soulwinning is even the cure for depression!
And yet, the way these people do this never shows up in the Bible or anywhere in church history outside of the last century or two. How very strange.
Today’s challenge is to remember back to a time you either went “soul winning” or had soulwinners knock on your door with less than the desired effect.
Share your tales of the dangerous, the disastrous, and the downright silly.
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.
A bearded man in a car grinds to a stop near a group of children and asks them a question out of the window.
“Come closer kids,” he calls when they answer, “I can’t hear you.”
The children stop their playing and stare at the beckoning stranger. Then they wisely choose to tell some adults about this character instead of approaching him. So the man drives off…and goes and finds another group of kids to try it on again.
Multiple people call the cops who interview the scary stranger and eventually release the following message:
Ah, it wasn’t a child molestor. It was a soulwinner. Evidently some of them are hard to tell apart.
I guess that whole “wise as serpents; harmless as doves” thing just doesn’t quite register with some people. All too often soulwinning is seen as carte blanche permission to engage in behavior that would otherwise get you arrested.
A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.
