Church Planting Conference Session 8

[0:00] These sessions were recorded at the Church Planned Conference hosted by the Our Generation Training Center and Vision Baptist Church. It is our desire that you'll be able to learn from these great speakers as they talk about the topic of church planting.

[0:14] Alright, we're going to talk about practical reasons for churches reproducing churches. There are a couple of things here. Brother Suttles, I'll let him take this with him. This book right here, if you guys do not get this, it would be wise for you to borrow it from the pastor.

[0:30] And he gets it. The Ancient Baptist Journal, there's some good articles in here. Many of them, there are older articles written by Baptists. I just pulled it out of my briefcase. I had it with me and wanted to mention it to you.

[0:44] And this right here, if you want to take a look at this, you're able to look through this and see it. I gave it to Brother Suttles last night. This is called an advanced packet.

[0:55] That when we help a church planter, this is one of the first things we send them. And it has everything that we do that they need to get ready. It has a budget in there. It has a timeline in there, checklist, all of those kind of things.

[1:10] It has the CD. This is a resource library church planting CD. This has everything that we do on the CD. But we found, when we just gave them this, guys didn't look at it.

[1:23] They have to have something on paper, so we sent them this. And then if they want to get copies that they can reproduce and do things with, it's found on here. So anyway, if you want to take a look at this, this is a 2011 packet.

[1:38] They get updated every year with new material and so on. And so it's laying up here as well. Feel free to take a look at that. All right, we're going to talk. Yes, sir. Is there a way of contacting the office to get a copy of one of those?

[1:59] I guess you could. You can send them an email. We'll try to throw the website up. There's something on the website I think would be great for you guys to watch. It's an interview with Corey Bain.

[2:10] It's one hour long. And it was done right after the church plant. I sat down with him in his church, and we did an interview. I interviewed him on his take on the church plant, how things went.

[2:22] It was before the first Sunday. It was after the Get Acquainted meetings, but before the first Sunday. And it's on the website. The website, I hope my web guy is listening.

[2:34] It is going to be redone, or he is going to be fired. All right. All right. So there.

[2:48] You know, maybe I'm a little ambiguous on that, but, you know, it's going to be redone. It's going to be redone. Charlie, it's going to be redone.

[3:00] If you don't get this stuff to Paul, it's going to be done one way or the other. All right. So there. But it's the web page to me is a little hard.

[3:11] When you see it, it's a little there's too much. It's too busy on the front page. And so I've got a guy that's working with it to redevelop it and so on. All right.

[3:21] What's that? No, you can't look at it now. Yes, you are. BCPM.org. BCPM.org is what it is.

[3:32] All right. Practical reasons for churches reproducing churches. We've talked about the biblical basis and all of that. So now we're going to talk about the practical reasons for churches reproducing churches.

[3:46] Look, there's nothing wrong with being pragmatic. Okay. Nothing wrong with that at all. Pragmatism simply means a straightforward, practical way of thinking about things.

[4:00] And I'm going to be honest with you. When I started reproducing churches out of our church, I did it because I wanted to find something that worked better. Okay.

[4:10] And sometimes we think that if it works better than it or works, it must be wrong. You know, it can't be biblical. But if it is biblical, then it should work.

[4:23] All right. I went at it from the wrong way. Be quite honest. I didn't go at it from the biblical basis and put it together and found that it worked.

[4:35] What I did was I had spent 15 years planting two churches, pioneering them, and I said, this is crazy. I'll never make it this way.

[4:46] I've got to find something that works better in planting churches. So I put this together practically before I put it together. This is terrible to say.

[4:58] Can we turn that off? I put it together practically before I put it together biblically. Isn't that horrible to say? It is. But that's just the way it is.

[5:10] You know? I wanted, and what I want to do is I want to give you some, I want to give you some practical reasons that churches should reproduce churches.

[5:22] This is really why I did it. It all started by taking our Sunday night service and moving it to other communities and holding services there. I thought if they could see what our church was like, they'd want one too. That was basically it.

[5:35] Basically, what I wanted to do was show them what our church was like when I was pastoring. And this goes way, way back into the late 80s, early 90s when I was still pastoring.

[5:48] And I just sat down. When I became pastor of the church, told them we were going to have a church planting ministry, I just sat down and I said, what do I wish somebody had done for me when I was out there by myself?

[6:01] What can I do to help another guy plant a church? Do I dare say this?

[6:11] I didn't even see it as a pastor. At that time, I didn't even see the biblical connection to being my responsibility as being the church planter still.

[6:24] I had a great burden for church planting, but I didn't see the biblical connection there. That came later when I was challenged about the way we were going about it.

[6:35] It just so happened that the way I put it together practically really was biblical. You know, I just had it backwards. So you guys can, you know, fault me for that if you like.

[6:46] Number one, it helps fill the Great Commission. The first reason is it helps fulfill the Great Commission. The Great Commission, of course, is church planting. And it's only logical that more churches can reach more people.

[7:00] Now, did you understand this thing we put up at the first session that we did this morning? Did you understand what we were talking about with the taking the missions money and putting it into church planting and how that all developed down?

[7:16] That was the second option. The first option is the church says, okay, we're not going to put any money into church planting. We're just going to put it into foreign missions. And they put five grand a year or ten grand a year in missions, in foreign missions.

[7:29] And that equals out to $50,000 over here after 25 years. Five thousand times, five thousand, really a thousand a year over 25 years is $50,000.

[7:42] Whereas this church over here says, well, we're going to, we're still going to put, we're going to split that up and put five into missions and five into church planting. And this all equaled out 1.4 million that went back into missions.

[7:55] And it does. It's obvious. This is the reason the church was commanded to go into Judea and Samaria the uttermost, to fulfill the Great Commission.

[8:07] The Great Commission. And the more churches that are created, the more missionary dollars for our missionaries. I believe we made that pretty clear this morning in that, in that graph that we showed you.

[8:23] And I don't think here in this group, I don't think there's any question with this. One of the practical reasons for starting new churches is it helps us fulfill the Great Commission. Secondly, it actively involves church members in the Great Commission.

[8:36] Now, we already know, we already know that the first church planters were lame. We already know that. Now, we want to use them in our church for going soul winning, but we also want to actively involve them in church planting.

[8:53] I was out at the West Coast a number of years ago. A good friend of mine, Dave Tice, is in Las Vegas, and his son was starting a church in, he's in Southern, South, yeah, Southern Hills area of Las Vegas.

[9:09] And so he had several families there, and he said, these are our church planters. These were members of Dave Tice's church. These are the church planters that are going with us.

[9:21] They understood the role. These were all going out. Now, you know, Brother Tice has a great church planting ministry out there and has done that. And their people understand that they were involved in church planting.

[9:36] You see, this means they can take an active role within the local church to reproduce a new church. There's things they can do that everybody can do.

[9:46] First of all, they can canvas the area for prospects. The children can go with mom and dad to do that. Everybody can be involved. They can distribute John and Romans door to door.

[10:02] And as children go, we use saturation, you know, evangelism, if you want to call it that, where you just put it on every door.

[10:13] You just, all you do, you don't talk to people unless they stop you and talk to you. You just go door to door and get it on there. Get that information out. And I don't have time to.

[10:25] We have developed an evangelistic program for churches. I don't have time to talk about that, so I'm going to go there. That's for another time.

[10:38] All right. They also could be used in the Get Acquainted meetings. Now, these Get Acquainted meetings, I wonder if I've got, I may have some pictures coming up with this presentation.

[10:52] I don't remember whether this one does or some down the road. They can be used as greeters. They can be used as ushers. They can help with the special music.

[11:04] Now, you need to be careful with your special music. All right. Because a lot of churches may not have the same music standards you have. All right. So you want to be careful about that.

[11:16] So when you're dealing with platform opportunities and you're helping churches, churches are going to help you with this, you need to be careful that those churches are just like your church.

[11:30] I mean, that you know what kind of music you're going to get. I was with Ed Nelson. Anybody here know who Ed Nelson is? Ed Nelson is a pastor who started a church out in Denver, and he was a Western guy, and he was an evangelist at this time.

[11:48] This is back in 1993. We were starting our, under this ministry, the first church we started under BCPM helped start. It was in Hastings, Nebraska. And so we were going to go out there and use some Western churches and Nebraskan churches.

[12:03] And Ed Nelson, I'd gotten Ed Nelson to preach the meeting, a Westerner. I felt like that was a good thing to do, have somebody from the West to preach the meeting. And so I went out there, flew out there, and met with these guys. And I said, now, look, guys, let's keep the music standards high.

[12:19] Because higher standards don't offend anyone that has a lower standard, you know. And so, you know, it'd be better. I don't know what your position is on all this. I said, it'd be better not to use tape music and all this.

[12:32] And they agreed. We got an agreement out of them. So I left, and we come back and get ready for the meeting. And the new pastor, and remember, I was just putting all this together, still learning an awful lot. He had gotten this guy to come in and help him with the music.

[12:44] And this guy was going to use tape music. And so he used tape music. And so I'm down on the front row. Brother Nelson, he's sitting up there getting ready to preach.

[12:54] And this guy's wife got up to sing to tape music. And it's, you know, it's going and so on. And so she got up there, and she's singing, Check It Again. Check it again.

[13:05] You know, I died, and I've gone to heaven, and I'm standing at the gate. My name's not there. Check it again. You know, see if my name's there in the book, you know. And so on. And so I started watching Dr. Nelson.

[13:17] And, you know, he's sitting there taking it all in, you know, taking it all in. And finally he gets up, and he preaches. Well, we go out to eat afterwards. And I said to him, I said, Dr. Nelson, I appreciate the way you handled the song tonight.

[13:27] He said, well, you noticed I didn't say amen. But he taught me a good lesson that night. He said, you know, there's some things you just go on and you don't make a big deal about. You just go on and do. But he said, you know, I learned a lesson that you've got to be careful about those kind of things, you know.

[13:43] Because you don't want to do something, you know. People who are there, and I realize I'm probably, you know, moving into some rough area here.

[13:55] But people who may like that kind of thing are not offended by songs that aren't like that.

[14:11] I don't know quite how to put it. They aren't offended by, you know, good gospel music. They aren't offended by this kind of thing. But people who have that kind of position are offended by a lower one.

[14:27] So when you get into a situation in a church plant like that, you can run some people off like that. But you don't need to run them. You know, so you do your best to keep it up there.

[14:37] But they can be used for special music. They can be used for nursery workers. They can help with setting up and taking down. They can help with refreshments.

[14:52] By bringing these people together in these services, they can do all these things. And they can add life to the service simply by their presence.

[15:05] I'll tell you, I don't think, and I've been involved in a lot of these meetings, I think one of the things that this does for local churches that get involved, it energizes people to say, wow, we got involved.

[15:17] And when Sunday comes and they have that first Sunday, that grand opening Sunday of the new church, they want to know, boy, how did it go? Because they had a part in that. And they're excited about that.

[15:29] And one pastor said this, Randy Starr said this, using our people to reproduce a new church energized our church family like nothing else. And this guy's now reproduced two or three churches.

[15:40] The third thing that we find that is practical about this, it's culturally effective. People within the culture will more easily reach the community. People from that culture.

[15:55] All right. For you guys that are on other fields, look, the people you live with there, they can more easily reach their community than you can. All right.

[16:07] Now, Brother Southerners is going up to Maine. I'm telling you, now, Southerners are well-respected in Maine. They are. Todd Bell is there.

[16:17] Jason Stober's there. There's some others there. It's true in the Maritimes as well. But I'm telling you, it's a different culture. It's a different culture.

[16:28] And they'll look at him and say, so, you're from where? Even in Canada, I've still got my Canadian accent. I mean, my American accent. They'll say, so, where are you from in the States? I'll say, well, I was originally born in West Virginia.

[16:41] I've been here 41 years. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. I'm an American to them. Doesn't matter how long I've been here. Doesn't matter how much taxes I've paid.

[16:54] What I've given to that country. I'm an American. Out West. You can go out West. And you're never one of them. Out there.

[17:06] And they'll look at you skeptically the whole time. And for Southerners to go out West, it's even more difficult than going up to Maine and New England and so on. But it's important to use churches in a local area because they're from that area.

[17:24] They communicate better with visitors. They can relate better. They know things about their community that they can talk about.

[17:35] And visitors are more willing to trust someone from their culture. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the pastor.

[17:46] But when other people from around there. You know, when I was. And I learned this in Canada when I was pastoring and starting churches up there. We were starting our third church.

[17:57] And I was talking to this lady. And she said she's a Mennonite lady. We started a church in a Mennonite community. Our first church was started in a Mennonite community.

[18:09] And as I was talking to this lady. She said, oh, well, there's so and so. I said, oh, is she from. She said, no, she's from Winkler. And that lady was a part of the church that we had started in Winkler.

[18:20] All right. So because that lady was a part of the church. That was okay. Then this that made it okay for her to be. You see. Because they're both Mennonite.

[18:32] I'm not sure I make this connection here. No, I should. I should make it now. There's a difference between. I just use Mennonite, for example.

[18:45] We tried to get them to see there was a difference between Mennonite culture and Mennonite conviction. You can be Mennonite by culture, but you don't have to be Mennonite by conviction. We went into Quebec, for example, to plant a church in Quebec.

[18:57] Everything that was done there was done in French. Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. I didn't preach the meeting. We had a French pastor preach the meeting. Why? We wanted them to see that they could be Baptist, but they didn't have to be Catholic.

[19:12] They could be Catholic or French or Quebecois in their culture, but that didn't mean they had to be Catholic. They could be Baptist by conviction and yet Quebecois in their culture.

[19:25] But they wouldn't see that if we just had an Anglophone service. If just a bunch of English people went over there and had the service, they wouldn't see that at all. They wouldn't accept that.

[19:37] So that's why it's culturally effective to use people from the communities around you and those churches. Now, sometimes we've had to have churches drive two and three hours to get there to these meetings.

[19:50] But I'm telling you, it's beneficial to do that. Beneficial to do that. Also, secondly, reproducing a church within the culture removes barriers more quickly. It removes the barrier of distance.

[20:05] We can start a church. I had a friend a number of years ago. He would use Americans to come to Canada and start new churches. So he'd come down here and he'd travel around the country and he'd get people to make a commitment to come up to Canada and spend two weeks or three weeks.

[20:19] And it would cost like $25,000, $30,000 to plant the church because all these Americans were coming to Canada and he'd get a big name speaker. Let me tell you something. In Canada, you can get whoever you want.

[20:31] And it doesn't matter because they don't know him. It's like Lee Robertson preaching on the street corner one time and a drunk walked up and said, you ain't got it today, have you fella? You know, I mean, you know. He didn't know who Lee Robertson was.

[20:44] You can get any big name preacher you want, bring him to Canada. It's not going to draw a crowd. They never heard of the guy. All right? Who cares?

[20:55] And so he would spend $25,000, $30,000 to bring all these people up, knock on doors, and have a meeting. And some people came to the meeting. But you know what kind of church they thought it was going to be?

[21:07] An American church. They thought it was going to be an American church. And all these people had to travel all this distance. Well, when we started churches in Manitoba, it didn't cost us anything.

[21:19] Our people would drive 35 or 40 minutes for the evening service and go home and go back to work the next day. And then drive again the next night. And it didn't cost us anything. Because we were close.

[21:31] So it removes that barrier of distance. And it removes the barrier of religion. We've already talked about that with the Roman Catholic situation in Quebec.

[21:45] And it removes the barrier of credibility. It is great to have people in the local community or in nearby communities helping because it says credibility.

[22:01] I remember we were up in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, in that area. And I walked into a place and I said, my name is Earl Jessup. I'm with Baptist Church Planning Ministry.

[22:11] We're working on planting a church here. And we need some information. Oh, okay. I said, I am working with Greater Rhode Island Baptist Temple in Johnston.

[22:22] They said, oh, okay. That made a difference. They didn't care who I was. But when I mentioned the church that was, you know, 20 minutes down the road, that meant something.

[22:35] That meant local. That meant credibility. That meant something they knew about. All right. And when a guy like Brother Suttles or one of you guys goes into a community, uh, somewhere else, nobody knows you and they could care less about you.

[22:51] If you think you're going to today, like we said, 30 and 40 years ago, walk into a community, put up a shingle, knock on a few doors, put an ad in the paper and get a group of people together that love you and call you pastor.

[23:03] You're crazy. That didn't happen. That's not church planning. All right. Let's move on. Um, it's cost effective.

[23:15] We've already talked about this a little so we can get through this pretty quickly. Um, when you use churches, when you use churches, local churches to reproduce a new church, it costs less than bringing a missionary teams in from great distances.

[23:32] There's, there's little costs for travel. There's no cost for accommodations. And we can reduce the cost of a church plant by about 75%.

[23:44] Our average cost for planting a church when we get involved, our budget, unless there's some extenuating circumstance, we've, we talked about the, uh, the Metro Vancouver church plant last night, which costs 37,000, but the average it normally costs to start a new church, all the startup costs, plus the first month expense for the new church.

[24:07] And I'm talking about reaching every home in the trading area, reaching every home, getting every home to know where you can walk down the street and eight out of 10 people will say, we know about that new church is between five and $6,000 is what it costs us to do that.

[24:26] Now you can't do that. You can't do that when, when you, you, uh, try to bring groups from a long, long ways away. It's, it's, it's just not able to do that.

[24:38] So more money can be put into reaching the community than for travel and accommodations. Uh, and my notes here say four to $6,000 for the average church plant.

[24:48] That's, that's basically what it costs us when we go in. And a lot of that depends on, um, well, it depends on the size of the community. It depends on, on the geographical area.

[25:00] Metro areas are more expensive than, than, um, than other areas. Another reason it's cost effective is because it reduces the strain on the church planter.

[25:13] Many church planters, a guy that goes out to pioneer church, they go out and they've got to raise the money to plant the new church.

[25:25] Is that correct? You got to, you know, you're not only when, when you pioneer church here in the States, I'm talking about guy comes here, he comes to vision and says, pastor, God's called me to, uh, Bozeman, Montana.

[25:36] I'm going out there and I'm going to plant a church. And the pastor said to him, well, uh, uh, you got a sending church. Yeah, we got a sending church down here in, I don't know, Augusta.

[25:49] It's our sending church. They're going to pray for us and they're, they're helping us. And, and, uh, I'm going to go out there and, and do you know anybody out there? No, we don't know anybody out there. We're just going to go out there and start, start from scratch, go out there and, and hand out some literature and, and knock on doors and, and rent a building.

[26:07] He's got to come up with all those expenses. Okay. Okay. So the financial burden becomes pretty great because of this financial burden placed on the church planter.

[26:18] You know what he gets out there and does? He gets out there and starts to cut corners. I don't know a church planter yet that wanted to wait till he had all his money together before he left to go out and start, you know?

[26:32] And you've got the same thing with these guys that try to head off the mission. Come on, pastor. I got, I got 80%. You know, the other 20 is promised. Let me go. Right? Right? He's got his eye on some of you right now.

[26:47] And I know he tried to send for the Canfield to get rid of it. But, uh, I don't know any.

[26:58] And so what happens is these church planters basically going out of their local church, you know what? Most pastors say to them, well, brother, I guess if, you know, if you think you're ready to go, you've got enough money.

[27:08] Okay, well, let's go ahead and do it. Off he goes. And he gets out there and he realizes he has barely enough money to take care of his family, much less put any money into the church plan.

[27:23] So what's he cut? He doesn't cut feeding his family. He cuts his advertising. And all of a sudden he is starting a church and nobody knows he's there.

[27:36] And he has one old lady and her son who is, you know, a few french fries short of a happy meal.

[27:50] And he's going to be your first teacher. And because he doesn't get, because he gets started that way, he has nothing to build upon.

[28:03] Goes out and picks up a few children. And he struggles and struggles. And after a year or two years, you know what? He's back over here in Georgia. And you know what they're saying out there in Bozeman, Montana?

[28:15] Yeah, none of those Southerners. It just happens all the time, doesn't it? And then another guy comes out there and says, bless God, I'm going to do it right. And they say, well, how long is he going to be here?

[28:25] And then they don't trust him either. I'm telling you, we've got to figure out a way. And what we've tried to do is figure out a way of doing it. And I'm talking about Bozeman because we're getting ready to put a guy in Bozeman.

[28:38] And we're going to have churches that are going to have to travel three and four and five hours to get there to help us with that church plan. Because there aren't too many churches around that area. Now, but when you do this, several churches in the area, they can take an offering, help meet the cost.

[28:54] We, what we do when we, we work with a pastor is we have a pastor's luncheon and we get all these pastors together. We go over the budget and say, look, will you bring an offering to the get acquainted meetings?

[29:05] I was in Helena, Montana. Never forget it. Oh, it was so impressive in my mind. This pastor had driven across the mountains and probably driven, I think about four hours to get there.

[29:17] And he was praying for the offering. And he said, you know, we love brother black and we're glad he's here. There were visitors from the Helena area there in the service. And he said, you know, tonight we have a check for $1,500.

[29:28] We're putting in the offering because we want to see this community reach with the gospel. I'm telling you that established credibility. That said something to those people there. Here is one of their people from Montana.

[29:41] One of their churches in Montana that said, this guy must be special for that church to come this far. Give that kind of an offering. But that offering helps to meet the needs.

[29:54] This probably isn't, I don't know that I can categorically say this is true. But I can't, I don't know of any church plans that when we finish, when we put the budget together, when we finished the get acquainted meeting that had any bills that were not paid.

[30:17] I think they were all paid. I can't think of any where the pastor of the new church was left with an outstanding bill that they had to pay. We've had those things covered.

[30:30] And so it is cost effective. And it shows the community that area churches care about this new work when, when just like this situation with brother, with brother Randall that I just mentioned to you.

[30:42] All right, let's move on. Number five. It makes the beginning of the new church stronger. First of all, you've heard this. Many hands make light work.

[30:55] When area churches work together, they can get a lot done in a short period of time. It would take a church planter a number of years to get done what can be done in a few weeks when churches band together in a community.

[31:13] In Belleville, Ontario, just this fall, we had 20 churches that work together in that community to distribute literature, attend the get acquainted meetings.

[31:25] The pastor could never have accomplished what these 20 churches did when they came together. Now, Canada is a little bit different because these guys in Canada, they are for church planting.

[31:37] They know it's their responsibility. When one pastor says we're going to plant a church, the others rally around him. The next time, another pastor will say we're going to plant a church and all the pastors will rally around him.

[31:47] And we already are working on one, two, three, four different church plants right now for the next year in the GTA, the greater Toronto area. Another out west. Where churches, out west, it's very difficult.

[32:01] They'll drive a great distance. But they'll work together to get it done. And you know that brings God's blessing. Psalm 133, verse 1.

[32:12] It brings God's blessing to do that. Secondly, it makes it stronger because the crowd draws a crowd. You know, people in the community can tell when churches are working together in their community.

[32:32] I mean, we're out there knocking on doors. We're stopping at the stores. We have literature handing them out saying, listen, we're starting a new church. We'd like to invite you to come.

[32:42] Give them a gospel tract or whatever for the new church. I'm from Toronto or I'm from Barrie or I'm from Ajax or whatever.

[32:53] And our church has come over here to help. Yeah, we saw your bus come into town. You know, it just says something. So during the Get Acquainted meeting, people may come to see what's going on.

[33:08] We've had that happen. Yeah, we just want to come and see what was going on here. What in the world are all you people doing over here? We're starting a new church. The church planner cannot do this on his own without churches helping.

[33:29] Can't get it done. So there's strength in numbers. The third reason that it makes the beginning of the church stronger is because there's strength in numbers. Visitors come. When visitors see churches working together, they get involved.

[33:42] It's amazing how we've had people come and get caught up in the excitement of this thing from the community. You know, they'll come on Sunday night and see all this. They'll say, man, I'm coming back.

[33:53] They'll come back Monday night. A lot of times, well, the first night a family comes that's seriously interested, the father will come alone. You know, then if he comes back with his wife and children, you know they're interested.

[34:06] If by the end of the week they're helping put the chairs away, you got them. You got them. And I'll have pastors come to me and say, what do you think about this family?

[34:17] I said, well, this family is in. You got them. You know, this family, they're still considering it, but close. You know, and you can tell.

[34:28] You can tell. And sometimes they'll just flat out tell you, look, we've been looking for this. We've been praying for a church like this. We've been praying God would bring someone like this here to our community. Uses the King James Bible.

[34:39] Has good music. Has good preaching. Gives an invitation. We've been praying for that. Also, it helps church families that are in other churches.

[34:58] Those that have worked will pray. You'll be surprised how many people will be praying for a new church when they've been over there on one of the get acquainted services. They'll also sacrifice. We helped the church in Minnesota get started.

[35:12] There was a guy who helped us. He, when they built their building, he gave all the electrical to the building. Paved the parking lot. Why? Well, he was excited to see a new church started.

[35:24] He'd been over there involved in it. It happens. Very often it happens. And they'll also visit the new church occasionally. When I pastored, you know, this never bothered me.

[35:36] For some pastors, it bothers them, but never bothered me. I'd have people come by on Sunday morning and say, Preacher, we're not going to be here tonight for the service. I said, Oh, really? Now, we're going down to Winkler for the service down there. Wish I could go.

[35:49] I'm going to stay here and preach. Tell them I said hello. Tell them we love them. I'd often have folks come. We're not going to be here for the service tonight. We're going over to Portage of the Prairie and be in the church service over there.

[36:01] We're going over to Brandon. You know, to me, that was great. I loved that. I didn't mind my people doing that. Some people said, No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[36:11] Listen, you've got to come hear me preach tonight. You've got to be here at the church. You know? No, I want to get over there. I want to be an encouragement to those folks. And they would go over there and visit the new church.

[36:24] And that happens even in our church. We helped start a church, I don't know, three or four years ago. And the young man called the pastor and said, Pastor, you know, our pianist is going to be gone.

[36:36] No problem. We'll send a piano player down for you this Sunday and send you some special music. It's okay. It's okay. You know?

[36:50] Somebody said to me one time, Brother Jessup, how are you going to feel when the church in Winkler is larger than our church here? Because the church was growing down there. He said, How are you going to feel when that church is larger than our church?

[37:02] And here was my response. Well, who doesn't want their children to do better than the parent? You know? Winkler Church in Winkler, Manitoba that we started in, well, really out of our church we started in 1988, is the largest church in Canada today.

[37:21] And I am thrilled. Thrilled. With that. You ought to go on their website, take a look at it. Peminent Valley Baptist Church, Winkler, Manitoba.

[37:33] All right. Now, it gives encouragement to the new church. Let's move on quickly here. Visitors are encouraged by the help of local churches. They see other people caring about their community.

[37:49] You know? And then some of them see that other people believe like they do. They have been told. There are people that have been told, listen, all the churches are like this now.

[38:00] All the churches are using a different version of the scripture. And all the churches have gone to contemporary music and contemporary methodology and all of those things.

[38:11] No, there aren't any of those old-fashioned conservative churches anymore. And they're sitting there saying, well, I guess there's nobody like me anymore. I didn't know. I didn't realize that.

[38:22] And then all of a sudden, here they get on their door. They get a John and Romans that's King James Bible. Well, good night. They're starting to church. There's going to be some meetings here. And they're heading out to King James Bible.

[38:34] I think I'll go. I think I'll go. And they show up and say, wait, you mean there are other churches? You mean there are churches that still believe that King James Bible is the Word of God?

[38:48] Wow. Wow. We're going to come back. Well, I haven't heard that song. And we've had people actually say this.

[39:00] We haven't heard that song out of the hymnal for years in our church. The old rugged cross. Well, it's been so long since I've heard that song.

[39:11] Since Jesus came into my heart. I mean, song after song. And they would say, look, they don't use those anymore in our church. They're looking for that.

[39:24] And they are thrilled to see that somebody else believes like they believe. Secondly, the pastor church planter is encouraged by the help of local churches.

[39:35] He realizes he's not alone. And that there are those he can turn to when times get tough. This is key. This is key. When you use local churches in an area to reproduce a new church, when that pastor starts going through difficult times, and he will, there's somebody he can call that he knows cares about.

[39:56] And that is extremely, extremely important. And the community is encouraged by the help of local churches.

[40:10] They're open. They're open to this new church when churches are involved. When they see other churches from their area in communities around where they live that are involved, that come to their town, they're more open to this pastor and this idea of a new church being in there.

[40:27] They're more willing to accept the new pastor when local churches and families get involved. All right, let's move quickly.

[40:41] Number eight, number seven, it lends credibility to the new pastor and the church. Now, I'm telling you guys, and I talked about this yesterday, but a pastor that goes to a community, and I don't care if the notes say here from some far away place has zero credibility.

[41:00] I don't care if it's from next door. You go start a church, you have zero credibility. Zero. Zero. You can't walk in there and say, God's called me to preach.

[41:11] I'm a preacher, and I want you to know you can count on me. Look, if you think they differentiate between us and the Roman Catholic priests that have gotten into trouble, you're wrong. They don't.

[41:23] And by the way, we've got enough problems on our own plate to have to deal with. Now, they're in a community, in most cases, few, if any people in the community know this pastor.

[41:38] They don't know anybody that does know him. And he is unable to establish his own credibility. He can't get up and say, listen, I am a good preacher.

[41:50] You can trust me. Who's going to believe that? I don't even know if I'd believe that. Listen, I love my family. I'm a good family man. Who's going to believe that?

[42:02] You know what we do with these Get Acquainted meetings? What we do is we get up and say for them what they cannot say. So the pastors and church members can establish the credibility of the new pastor.

[42:16] We can say for the new pastor what he cannot say for himself. During our meetings, our Get Acquainted meetings, we normally have three pastors come to the pulpit to pray.

[42:30] One to open the service, one for the offering, one to close. Before the service, I will say to those pastors, listen, I'll get it together when we're having a time of prayer. And I'll say, look, we want you to be involved in the service.

[42:42] We want you to get up and we want you to help establish the credibility of this pastor. Let these people know he's going to do the job. And I'll tell you what, when you get a pastor comes up and says, you know, brethren, I've known this young man for 25 years.

[42:58] We've seen him grow up. And God has used him in a great way. And we've seen him get married. He's got a wonderful wife and children. Boy, he loves his family. And I'm telling you, you can count on him.

[43:10] He's going to do a good job here. You can trust him as your pastor. I'll tell you, that says something in that community. But he can't get up and say it for himself. But so we can say things for the new pastor that he cannot say for himself.

[43:25] And the visitors know that these are those from the area that love and trust and support the new pastor and his family. It's not somebody who comes from, and even this helps.

[43:37] I don't mean to belittle this at all, but it's not as though somebody comes from Georgia that goes out to Montana and says, now y'all know we love this brother. He's a good man.

[43:50] Bless God, he'll do a good job. I don't mean to. Sorry. But I don't mean to belittle that.

[44:03] That's that. That helps. But it but it helps a lot more when we have somebody from Montana that out there that says, you know, I've had this guy out of my ranch, man. He knows how to cut it.

[44:16] He's a good. He's a good worker. Knows how to shoot. That says something. It just does. I mean, take it for whatever you want. But it's helpful.

[44:31] It lends credibility when it's somebody from the area. And visitors can give credibility to the new church. When visitors come from other places, from other communities, they know that this guy's not alone or some fly-by-night preacher.

[44:46] They, you know, they realize that there's there's there's some strength here for this guy. Because they understand that local churches from their area are behind this new church.

[44:58] Not some imported Christianity. Now, maybe I threw that in there because of my Canadian background. But I'll tell you what, you'd be surprised how out in California and some of the other places, they would consider it someone from the south coming out there just as imported as going to another country.

[45:19] And so we, you know, we try to overcome that, those kind of things. Money cannot buy credibility. You can give a missionary, you give a church planner all the money you want, but it does not buy credibility.

[45:35] It does not do so. All right. All right. Let's go to number eight. Point number eight.

[45:47] It demonstrates what the new church can be like. This really helps. I've talked a little bit about this. What we try to do is we try to set the tone. We try to set the tone for the services of the new church.

[46:00] It's done through three areas. It's the music, the preaching, and the invitation.

[46:17] Now, as I said a moment ago, we try to keep our standards high. Higher standards do not offend someone. I don't get it.

[46:28] You know, I don't get, I don't understand why there's an issue here with standards. I really don't understand. You know, I mean, can you imagine a dentist putting an ad in the paper?

[46:41] We've reduced our prices. We now just sterilize our instruments after every third patient. Who wants to go to that dentist? Who wants to go to a dentist that lowers his standard?

[46:53] Who wants to buy a car that has lower standards? It's only a church that people complain about standards.

[47:08] Now, if that isn't the devil, I don't know what is. All right? So we do our best to try to keep the standards high. Through the music and the preaching.

[47:18] The preaching, I've developed a series of messages that I have preached in most of the meetings that I've done. I've sent them to others, and they preach some of the same. The first night, I preach on the manuscript of the church.

[47:31] And in that message, I do two things. One, I make it clear that the Bible is the only authority for faith and practice. That's what we believe is Baptist. And number two, that the Bible we use is the King James Bible.

[47:46] That it is the Word of God. Now, I say, look, you carry another version, that's up to you. But you just can't trust that version like you can trust the King James. You know, we're not mean about it or anything like that, but we make it very clear.

[48:00] The second night, I preach on the message of the church. The manuscript has a message. It is a straight salvation message on Monday night. On Tuesday night, I preach on the messenger of the church.

[48:12] Not the pastor. But those who are in the church that are going to be a part of the church going out into the community. And it is that night that I hammer the contemporary movement.

[48:23] I hammer it. I do. I tell you what, I think the reduction of standards. And I'm saying, look, if we're going to go out into the community, we are to be different than they are.

[48:38] When you look at the Old Testament priest, and I preach that message from Leviticus chapter 31. When you look at what disqualifies a priest in Leviticus chapter 21, and you realize that we, and they were disqualified from going in to offer up the bread of the sacrifice.

[48:58] If they had these issues in their life, they're blind, lame, superfluous, anything superfluous in their life.

[49:11] All of these standards. And it disqualified them from serving the bread. Now, in 1 Peter, 2 Peter, I don't know.

[49:24] You know, where it says that we are a priesthood of believers. 1 Peter, we offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable unto God.

[49:36] We are, and we believe in the priesthood of the believer, 24-7 we're offering up sacrifices. Why is it? Why is it that they had standards, and we think we can live however we want, and offer up spiritual sacrifices?

[49:57] Ain't no way. Now, if we're going to be the right kind of messengers, we have to live right. We have to live right. We have to be different than they are.

[50:09] Not like they are. And when our churches shouldn't be like they are. We ought to be different than what they are. And so, I lay that out.

[50:23] Make it very clear. Fourth night, I normally preach on the makeup of the church. Bring it all together. The last night, the new preacher preaches, and he preaches on the mess Jessup made of the church. That's what he normally brings.

[50:34] Now, we want him to simply give his vision as to where he's going and get people to go with him. That's all we want him to do on that last night. We try to build it up.

[50:44] All the visitors, during the Get Acquainted meeting, we try to get them to come back the last night to hear the new pastor. That night, the court is cut. It becomes an independent Baptist church, and the following Sunday is their grand opening Sunday.

[50:56] And we work toward that. So, there's a lot of things that we do in there. Now, let me say this. Listen, the Get Acquainted meeting will attract some visitors and repel others. And that's okay.

[51:09] That's okay. If this church is not for them, we say that to them. Look, it's like going out, you have the opportunity to come and test drive this church. You're going to see what this church is like.

[51:20] And for some of you, it's not going to be what you want. And that's just fine. We're telling you straight up where we're going, what we're going to be. This is where we're going. And here's where we are in the Bible.

[51:32] Here's where we are in these issues. And this is where this church is going. And it showcased. We basically showcased this new church by bringing these churches together. And as I said, it gives people the opportunity to test drive the church.

[51:46] And some will like the direction. Others will not. And sometimes you have to run people off. I was out in California during a church in Hollywood. We planned a church in Hollywood, California.

[52:00] And one night I was up at the front and someone came to me and said, Brother Jessup, you need to go outside. There's a guy that needs to be, he needs to be invited to leave.

[52:12] So I said, okay. So I got outside and get in on the conversation. And he had come a couple of nights to the meeting. And he was talking to the pastor about his, how all the judges were ungodly and wicked.

[52:25] And how he had this website and all these things he was doing. And so I stepped in and I said, I said, so can I ask you a question? Where do you go to church? Oh, I go to BBF church over here around, you know.

[52:36] I said, then what are you doing here? I said, you just go on back to BBF church. Look, I said, I want to make it clear to you. You are not going to impact this church. This church has already been duly constituted.

[52:48] The constitution is in place. The pastor has been called. It has already been organized. You have no place here. Don't come back. And so he left and didn't come back.

[53:01] And the pastor said, thank you very much. Church today is doing very well. They rent a building in Hollywood. They're in Burbank now. $8,000 a month.

[53:15] I don't know what your rent. Do you rent this building? $5,300. $8,000 a month. A month? Wow, man.

[53:28] I'm expecting a larger love offering now that your prices come down. All right. All right. Move on here.

[53:39] Let's move on. All right. What this does is this helps the new pastor by having people in the early stages that know where he's going with the ministry. Now, they're not all going to go there.

[53:51] Down in that first two years, we talked about it last night. There'll be scaffolding. They'll fall away. But I will say this. It makes a difference. 50% of church plants do not survive the first two years.

[54:06] 50% pioneer church plants do not survive two years. Because they don't have credibility. They don't have the financials they need to get started properly. And the church planter is basically out there on his own.

[54:22] And churches reproducing churches reduce the mortality rate tremendously. As I said, we've only had two churches that did not survive two years. And the reason is because it works.

[54:37] It works. That's why we started doing it. We started putting together a program that worked. And after every church plant, we would meet. We still do.

[54:48] What do we do right? What do we do wrong? We meet with the pastor and say, Pastor, look, we've worked with you with this church plant. Can you help us improve what we're doing? And how we can help the next pastor. All right?

[54:59] Okay, we're going to take a 10-minute break. And we're going to eat in one. We'll be done by one. Next one should go pretty quickly. Then we'll have some questions answered. Church planting, the long-term impact.

[55:12] Psalm 11.3 says this. If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? Answer? Answer?

[55:27] Any other answer? If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do if the foundations be destroyed? You can pour new foundations. That's good. Yeah, you have to start at the beginning again.

[55:39] Yeah, you really do. Some of that. We've got to rebuild that. We've got to see this doesn't happen. But I'm telling you, our foundations when it comes to church planting really are undermined and shaken.

[55:59] And this has been going on for the last 80 years. And we're going to talk a little bit about this. And these are some of the foundations for which we stand that are being shaken.

[56:12] The word of God. Psalm 12, 6 and 7. The words of the Lord are pure words. The words of the Lord. Not the word of the Lord. By the way, Pastor, have you seen that video on the King James Bible?

[56:29] A documentary on John Rise Davies, I believe is his name. Have you seen it? It's on Amazon.com. Absolutely super on the King James Bible.

[56:41] A historical documentary on that. Extremely well done. Extremely well done. The words of the Lord are pure words. A silver trot in a furnace of earth.

[56:52] Purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. The word. Not the word of the Lord. The words of the Lord. That's different. Yes. King James Bible.

[57:06] John Rise, R-H-Y-S Davies. I believe is his name. I've seen it four times. I learned something every time I watch it.

[57:17] And it was put out, I think, because of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. Absolutely superb. I'm sure somebody's Googling it as we speak. All right.

[57:30] The word of God, Psalm 12, 6 and 7. There's the verse. I'm sorry I didn't run this along as I should have there.

[57:40] But notice it says the words, not the word of the Lord, the words of the Lord. The words of the Lord. God has preserved and protected his word, for which we are very thankful.

[57:51] The church and the Lord Jesus Christ are under attack. 1 Corinthians chapter 3. 1 Corinthians chapter 3. For we are laborers together with God.

[58:02] You're God's husband. You're God's building. According to the grace of God, which is given unto me as a wise master builder. I have laid the foundation. And another man buildeth thereon.

[58:16] Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Thirdly, church planting.

[58:35] Acts 11, 19. I'm not even going to read that verse. You guys should have memorized it already as many times as I've given it to you. We'll move right along here. Global missions.

[58:49] These are the foundations. And this is not all of them. Global missions. Acts 16, 15. Said unto them, go ye into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature.

[59:02] Our Baptist distinctives and heritage. Proverbs 22, 28. Remove not the ancient landmark which our fathers have set. Now, here are the fundamentals of the faith.

[59:15] I'm sorry. Here are the fundamentals of the faith. There are five of them. The inerrancy of the Bible.

[59:28] The virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Now, some add others to this. I can't get it to go.

[59:40] Maybe I will now. Hang on a second. Virgin birth. The atonement, substitutionary atonement of Christ.

[59:54] I'm sure I'm giving you things you guys already know. You should know. The bodily resurrection of Christ. These are the five, what is called the five fundamentals of the faith.

[60:06] The imminent return of Christ. All right? Now, to be a fundamentalist, you believe these five basics. In the 1920s.

[60:17] In the 1920s, the issue of modernism in the universities began to fester here in the United States. Canada as well. American Baptist Convention.

[60:28] The convention of Ontario and Quebec. T.T. Shields was fighting the battle there. J.J. Seidey was fighting the battle with Acadia University in the Maritimes at the same time.

[60:39] At this point, those who held to the fundamentals. The issue was modernism versus fundamentalism. Now, guys, I'm telling you, this really hurt us.

[60:54] I don't think we saw it coming. And I'm going to try to explain. You may not agree with it. And you may have some questions about it. And I may not have the answers.

[61:05] All right? But even most charismatics agree with the fundamentals of the faith. As do other Protestant denominations. I think I'm correct in saying that.

[61:16] All right? And so these guys began to join together. And what happened was, we became fundamentalists first and not Baptists first.

[61:32] Now, you will, I mean, if you follow what I've been saying, I don't think you can accuse me of being a Baptist bride, but I am a very strong Baptist.

[61:44] All right? I want you to understand that. I'm not ashamed of that. And I really think that what has hurt us is back in the 1920s and 1930s, our Baptist forefathers became fundamentalists first and not Baptists first.

[62:06] And this, and it has caused the shaking of our foundational principles. So what has caused the shaking of our foundational principles for which we stand?

[62:18] What's created this problem? First of all, Satan's attack on the Word of God. Now, here's, I don't know if this is going to come up.

[62:29] No, it's not going to come up. But you have it in your notes. I believe the King James Bible is the Word of God. And there's a big difference between the Word is and contains.

[62:42] All right? I believe all other versions contain the Word of God. Do I believe they're useful? Yes. Do I believe somebody gets saved from them?

[62:53] Yes. Just like they can get saved from the gospel track. Do I believe in double inspiration? No. I believe in inspiration and I believe in preservation.

[63:04] I believe in both doctrines. All right? But Satan's attack has caused confusion. And it's clear to everyone that the version debate has caused confusion among God's people, particularly Baptists.

[63:19] And this version issue has weakened the authority of the Word of God in many of our Baptist brethren. Hopefully not you. No. But this weakening of the Word of God, this confusion about the Word of God, has led to confusion in four areas.

[63:42] And it's getting worse and worse today. First of all, the Bible. Secondly, our music. I heard somebody say something the other day that really helped me in music.

[63:55] He said when we sing, we are not singing for others. We are singing to God. It is to praise God. Our music ought to praise God and Him alone.

[64:08] That would make a difference in that. Thirdly, our standards. It's caused confusion about our standards.

[64:18] And fourthly, about our name. The name Baptist. Look at the number of churches that have dropped the name Baptist off of their church.

[64:34] And I believe this goes back to confusion on the Scripture. It's also not only caused confusion, but it's caused division. In Canada, among the independent Baptists, there are basically two groups.

[64:56] Maybe three groups. One are those of us who are independent Baptists that hold to the King James, conservative position on music and so on.

[65:06] There's a second group that would be independent Baptists, but use other versions of Scripture. Don't hold to the King James. Then there's a third group that would be hyper-Calvinists.

[65:20] Those three groups would be, and there are independent Baptists in those three different camps in Canada. Now, we have, in Canada, we have a national, an independent Baptist national meeting.

[65:34] There's no committee. There's no fellowship. We just, each year, a pastor says, well, next year come to our church and we'll have the meeting.

[65:45] And so he picks the preachers and he picks the theme and everybody goes there to the meeting. And at that meeting, normally, one of the pastors would say, well, brethren, how about come to my church next year?

[65:55] And so the next year we'll go to that church. And we'll have, we have in Canada around 250, 290 independent Baptist churches. And we will have between 80 and 90 churches represented from across Canada each year in that meeting.

[66:10] That's pretty good when you're dealing with a huge country like Canada. And, but yet, and it's been put together for one purpose and that's church planting. That's the reason these guys get together.

[66:21] And, and it's been a good thing for unity. But I'll tell you, across the board, it has hurt the cause of church planting. This, this attack has caused division.

[66:32] The word, the, the attack on God's word. And it has in Canada. The guys that are not King James don't come to that meeting. They don't come to that meeting in Canada. Secondly, Satan's attack on the church.

[66:45] Not only the word of God, but the church. Now, here's the reason. Baptists, maybe I should say Baptists are supposed to be local church. Protestants are not local church.

[67:01] You will not find a Protestant denomination that is local church. They all hold to a universal church position. Which means, when you are a member of the Presbyterian church, you are a member of the Presbyterian church.

[67:21] Or Methodist church. Or whatever. Now, when you're a member of the Baptist church, you're a member of the Baptist church.

[67:33] A local assembly of believers. Now, I'm sure I'm going to give you material here that you already know. Baptists are not reformers. We're not protesting anything. We didn't come out of the Reformation.

[67:46] We are, and this is going to cause some problems for some of you. We are direct descendants from the first church. Now, that does not mean there has to be a line of succession from the church.

[67:57] To where that church started a church that started a church that started a church that started a church that started a church that started a church that started a church that started your church. That makes you a Baptist church. That's not what I'm talking about.

[68:08] I believe James Beller has it right when he says this. He says this. He says, while chain-linked succession is impossible to prove, succession of the beliefs and distinctives of the Baptist to the candid observer is a fact of history.

[68:24] And I think you'll see that from other quotes that we have here, and these are already in your notes, I believe. Charles Haddon Spurgeon made the quote, I am not ashamed of the denomination to which I belong, sprung as we are, direct from the loins of Christ, having never passed through the turban stream of Romanism, and having an origin apart from all descent or Protestantism because we have existed before all other sects.

[68:50] 1861, he made this statement after moving to the tabernacle, which, by the way, does not have the name Baptist on the church.

[69:05] I don't know if you knew that or not. But I think his membership from that church would be acceptable to most. We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians.

[69:17] We did not commence for our existence at the Reformation. We were reformers before Luther and Calvin were born. We never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it. And we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves.

[69:30] We have always existed from the very days of Christ. I believe that. I believe we have an unbroken line to Christ, and that line is doctrine. Doctrine.

[69:41] Not succession of churches. Because as I showed you yesterday, that succession of churches is so easily broken. So easily broken by a split.

[69:52] And the fact is, if you go back in history to most churches, you're going to find somewhere along the way there's been a split that didn't go well. Even the Catholics and the Protestants believe this about Baptists.

[70:11] Cardinal Hossus said this, A Quaker, Robert.

[70:43] Barclay said this, We shall afterwards show the rise of the Anabaptists took place prior to the Reformation of the Church of England, and there are also reasons for believing that or the continent of Europe, small, hidden Christian societies who have held many of the opinions of the Anabaptists have existed from the time of the apostles.

[71:04] In the sense of the direct transmission of divine truth and the true nature of spiritual religion, it seems probable that these churches have a lineage or succession more ancient than that of the Roman Catholic Church.

[71:16] So why are you saying this? I'll show you in just a minute why all this is important. I'm going somewhere with this. But I want you to see the Crossing of the Centuries by William King.

[71:27] And there's a whole list of people who were involved in this. The contributors to this Crossing of the Centuries said this, Of the Baptists, it may be said that they are not reformers.

[71:41] These people comprising bodies of Christian believers, known under various names in different countries, are entirely distinct and independent of the Roman and Greek churches, and have an unbroken continuity of existence from the apostolic days down through the centuries.

[71:54] Throughout this long period, they were bitterly persecuted for heresy, driven from country to country, disenfranchised, deprived of their property, imprisoned, tortured, and slain by the thousands, yet they swerved not at the New Testament faith, doctrine, and adherence.

[72:12] Now, I want you to notice what has happened. Oh, let me move on here. Sorry I didn't put that up for you guys. Well, I went backwards there for some reason.

[72:30] Am I right on? Okay. Yeah, number three. All right. Our attachment to other denominational systems. Now, here's where I believe.

[72:43] Okay? Now, look. If you're going to take issue with this, take issue with me on it. Okay? Nobody else. This is something that I believe that this is a part of our problem.

[72:55] But the Baptist movement became part of a fundamental movement. We became known as fundamentalists. And we are fundamentalists.

[73:06] We should hold to those things. What happened in the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s, in order to thwart the growth of liberalism, there were joint citywide meetings.

[73:16] And who did we join with? We joined with the Protestants. And what I've already shown you this morning, when the three leading revivalists, who were they?

[73:30] Who were these three leading revivalists in New England that led to the Great Awakening? One from the Church of England, one from the Congregational Church, and one from the Presbyterian Church. And what do we have to show for that?

[73:43] Nothing. New England is an unevangelized field. And now, all of a sudden, in the 1920s and 1930s, the Baptists, who came out of the loins of Shubel Stearns, we, in turn, then link up with the very Protestants that kept us from...

[74:08] I mean, if it had been part of that, we wouldn't be anywhere with church planning, if Shubel Stearns had stayed up there and been a part of that. And so this joint effort, I believe, led to a weakening of Baptist church planting, Baptist teaching, and Baptist distinctives.

[74:26] Now, there's a third area here. Now, I'm going to get a little more specific.

[74:40] This, and it is an attack on the philosophy of church growth and the view of success, is a third area here that's a real serious problem. And this goes back to the 1970s, the church growth movement of the 1970s.

[74:54] In the 1970s, Elmer Townes wrote a book called America's 100 Largest Sunday Schools. And this led to a rapid growth, for those of you, for those of us who remember this period of time, led to a rapid growth in independent Baptist churches through the development of the bus ministry.

[75:12] And in this book, church after church after church after church listed in his book, didn't he write it every year? Did he put it out every year, Brother Gardner? Do you remember? Yeah, and listed this, you know, these churches, these 100 churches, these 100 fastest growing churches, whatever, you know, the Sword of the Lord back then.

[75:31] They had a big center page of these big churches. And everybody was, and listen, I got caught up in it. Man, I want my name in the book. I'd like to have my name in the book.

[75:42] You know, I'd like to, I'd like to be on the center page of the Sword of the Lord with something like that. And so what happened? What happened? Well, it led to these great, these church growth conferences, and great conferences pushing church growth with pastors at these large meetings.

[76:02] And by the way, we still have them. We still have them. I've spoken. I've been there. You know, I've been invited and not been comfortable.

[76:21] But the trend has been toward inward growth. Am I behind in my notes here? I'm sorry.

[76:33] No, I'm not. I'm okay. We'll leave it right there. That's good. The trend has been toward inward growth rather than church planting. That's what's happening. Where pastors no longer branch out, the object is not to go out there and plant a church.

[76:50] The object is everybody to come here. Okay? So, success became lots of people, lots of buildings, lots of money. I got caught up in that.

[77:00] When I went to Winnipeg, the church in Winnipeg, I had 250,000 people around our church, not another independent Baptist church within that area. I mean, we had it all to ourselves.

[77:12] Really, we had the whole city to ourselves. The whole city. And I wanted to see 505 years. That was my goal. 505 years.

[77:23] We started with 120. On our third anniversary, we had doubled. Now, when I went there, my goal was not to lose anybody. I didn't, I didn't, I hate to put it this way, but my focus was not on reaching new people.

[77:40] My first focus was keeping who I had. All right? And we immediately began, we didn't lose anybody for three years when I went to pastor that church, which was quite unusual for a church.

[77:51] We doubled in three years. During that period of time, we started four churches. One of my deacons came to me, and he said, Preacher, do you realize how many people are in church today?

[78:02] I said, what do you mean? He said, well, if you take our congregation and the four churches we've started, there are 600 people in church today. And I said, whoa, I wanted 505 years.

[78:15] We got 603 years. They're just not in our building. And I realized, the quickest way to reach Manitoba was not get everybody to come to our church, but put a church where they lived.

[78:30] I'm telling you, it really, this deacon really, he really, and he didn't even know it at the time. He really struck me with this. And, and I realized that success is, our view is wrong.

[78:45] It's not trying to get your name in the book. It's not trying to get your name in the sword and be, and not, and not attend these meetings. And it's not lots of people, lots of buildings, lots of money. But that has led to the destruction of good men and ministries.

[79:01] We've seen it. Every one of us have seen it. And it's led to minimal church planting by local churches. Because we tried to work inwardly. Thankfully, that didn't happen to me.

[79:12] Didn't happen to me. Now, let's, let's move on here to the emphasis on revival and soul winning apart from church planting. Now, we looked this morning already at the first great awakening.

[79:25] So, we're not going to spend a lot of time here on this. But the, the impact of the first great awakening, it took place again from 1730 to 1770. It was focused on evangelism and revival.

[79:38] There were three leading revivalists during that time. Jonathan Edwards, George Tennant, and George Whitefield. Go through these real quickly.

[79:51] Edwards was a congregationalist. Tennant was a Presbyterian. And Whitefield was Anglican Church of England. Now, the great awakening led to the conversion of thousands of people in New England and in other places.

[80:11] There were many who, after studying the scripture, became new lights. They got saved, and, and they, they trusted Christ. But as they studied the scriptures, they become what, what was known as new lights or separate Baptists.

[80:26] Thomas Alley, which we're doing a study on in Canada right now for, for coming up at our, our, our meeting in a couple of weeks. He came out of Rhode Island as a new light, went up to Rhode Island, became the, the, they, they called him the Apostle of Rhode Island holding meetings up there.

[80:44] And, he was not allowed to preach in the, in the Anglican churches. The Church of England, they wouldn't let him preach. And, he came out of this group as well.

[80:54] And so did, uh, Shubal Stearns come out of this group. All right? And so in, in the book, Believer's Baptism by Schreiner, and Wright, Timothy George is quoted saying this, let's see if I've got the quote up here.

[81:13] Yes. Likewise, many new light congregationalists who had been converted under the preaching of George Whitefield left that connection to become new light Baptists when they found no evidence of infant baptism in the Apostolic Church.

[81:26] When told of this development, Whitefield famously quipped that he was glad to hear about the fervent faith of his fathers, followers, but regretted that so many of his chickens had become ducks.

[81:39] They had gotten, baptized by immersion. Now, these separate Baptists were led by Isaac Bacchus and Shubal Stearns.

[81:54] And they started a church planting movement that led, that, that has held America together for, as a nation, for 250 years. We, we've already shown you that. That's why I was going to hold that until the end and decided to go ahead and use it.

[82:04] But the Great Awakening had no lasting impact, it would have had no lasting impact had it not been for the separate Baptists.

[82:15] If Shubal Stearns and Isaac Bacchus had not pulled away from that and Isaac Bacchus came south not quite as far and Shubal Stearns comes down to North Carolina, starts the great church planting movement there, if they had not done that, there would have been very little left of the, of the Great Awakening.

[82:32] In fact, there wouldn't be anything left of that today. All right, now, let's talk about this emphasis of this, the future impact of our, of our major conferences. I'm talking about the conferences today.

[82:45] I'm talking about the major conferences of the day. These conferences, they publicize revival and soul winning, but not church planting.

[83:00] Now, thankfully, the SWORD conference now has a, has a, a church planting modular during the day of some sort, but it's really not emphasized a great deal, but thankfully has something.

[83:12] Brother Townsley is now writing in the SWORD of the LORD, a church planting article, which I'm thankful for. But the fact is, it's not emphasized as it should be. It's not about church planting.

[83:23] It's about revival and soul winning. Now, who were the revivalists? Who were the guys talking about revival and soul winning? They were the Protestants. They would have been the fundamentalists of the day back in 1730.

[83:39] The only ones doing church planting were Baptists. And now we're talking about these, and we, and, and, and in the 1920s, we became fundamental and we linked ourselves with these groups.

[83:52] church planting. And because of that, we've come to this place where being fundamental, we, we, we're caught up in the same trap of talking about revival and so, and I'm not against revival and soul winning.

[84:08] We're getting ready to have our revival and soul winning conference at home at our church in Barrie, Ontario. But this year's emphasis is church planting. The whole thing is church planting this year.

[84:20] The whole emphasis. Every year it's got church planting involved, but this year it's all church planting. I mean, look, the Canadians are, are just, they understand and are, are doing what needs to be done in, in this area.

[84:34] But we, we have this emphasis, but we're setting ourselves up for failure in the independent Baptist movement and the continent of North America if we continue to just emphasize revival and soul winning.

[84:48] We have got to get back to church planting. Now, there's, also another attack upon us is, is in our Bible colleges. There's a lack of sound teaching on church planting in our colleges.

[85:00] That's one of the reasons I did the 25 session series on church planting. You know, the philosophy taught in most Bible colleges is not a Jerusalem-based philosophy.

[85:15] It is a Pauline-based philosophy of church planting. The responsibility is on, the responsibility is on the church planter, not on the church. There's little teaching done today on the Jerusalem methodology of church planting, which is what I call it.

[85:30] I call it the Jerusalem methodology of church planting, not the Pauline philosophy of church planting. Notice who's teaching church planting.

[85:43] Just examine the teachers. You can, you can check out the majority of the major Bible colleges today, and the person doing the teaching on church planting either did it years ago or has done it maybe once or twice.

[86:04] And now they're teaching about it. Now, I'm glad they got something. But how many successful church plants are associated with those teaching in our college?

[86:21] There's just not a lot done. It's just not being done. And then the emphasis on church planting in our colleges. How many colleges have a, that offer a major in church planting?

[86:41] There's none. None offer a major. How many offer a minor? West Coast. Jim Townsley. Maybe Jim, maybe, I shouldn't say Jim doesn't offer a major in church planting.

[86:57] He may. At New England Baptist College in Southington, Connecticut. He may because, you know, his church, he's got the same philosophy we do and going at it.

[87:08] Maybe Bruce Turner down at Florida Baptist College in Tampa, maybe they have a minor, I don't know. But how many colleges require pastoral majors to take church planting courses?

[87:25] You know, it's all about church growth. And how many of them are involved? A good friend of mine teaches at West Coast. This ministry was his.

[87:39] I offered this ministry to him, come on staff and take over from me and he chose to stay on the West Coast and work out of his local church. He's the church planting evangelist out of the church there in Fresno and reproduced churches and has our philosophy on our board and a really good friend of mine teaches at West Coast out there and, you know, doing everything he can to help those students.

[88:02] But most of the students that are taking it have never been involved in a church plant. Never been involved. Well, how are we going to change things?

[88:14] Now, lastly, is the false belief that the greater need is on the foreign field. We've already looked at that as you've seen. So this is the short-sighted view, worldview of pastors.

[88:29] I'm just going to quickly get through this. So, this is the pastors view church planting is secondary to their foreign missions. They shouldn't.

[88:40] It should be as vital as their foreign missions program. They invest more quickly in foreign missions than church plants. And they think the church planter should work a job and start a church.

[88:53] Now, I don't mind a church planter working a job if he has to work a job. And they say, well, Paul worked a job. That's true, he did. But do you realize that Paul apologized for working that job in 2 Corinthians?

[89:07] So, it's not the best way to do it. It sometimes has to be done. And then there's the misconception of new churches and missions. Many state fellowships, this really digs at me, require a new church to fully support their pastor before supporting missionaries.

[89:26] To me, that's not an independent Baptist church. I've got the correspondence of about 40 or 50 pages with a state rep when we were planting a church in that particular state as to whether they were going to support this guy.

[89:40] And I said, if you put those kind of requirements upon him, you are taking away his independence as a local church. The pastor of the reproducing church was with me on saying those things.

[89:51] And there is the biblical example, we've already looked at the biblical example at Philippi. Bible. I'm telling you guys, if we're not careful, we're going to be caught up in this thing of revival and soul winning, which is great, and being tied into the fundamentalist movement, instead of saying, look, Baptists, our roots, from our roots, they were church planters.

[90:18] We've got to get back to that. We've got to get back to that. And you're not going to get it from the Protestant schools where we have been taught. And most of us have come out of that kind of it, because those schools, they're the ones that are sending out the teachers.

[90:38] They're sending the teachers out to teach in the colleges, a lot of these places. And whether we like it or not, whether it's innuendo or implied, those things come across.

[90:52] I'm telling you, if we don't get back to church planting, we're going to lose this nation. What can the righteous do? What can the righteous do?

[91:06] Well, I think we can learn from our history and recreate an atmosphere of church planting revival among independent Baptist churches. We've got to rebuild our foundations.

[91:18] We've got to. If we don't, this country's going down in tubes. We're going to have to rebuild the foundations. And I know, and some of the things I've said in this session, I've got good friends who are well-known around the country that would take issue with me on some of these things.

[91:43] But I'm telling you, we're in serious trouble. We're going to have to do something about it. And so, if there needs to be a long-term impact, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen because of guys like you that go out and do this.

[92:02] It's guys like us, the three of us, Brother Robertson, us is, it's not going to be done by us. You're going to have to train churches to do it, that train churches to do it, that train churches to do it.

[92:15] That's what's got to come from it. It's got to come. Thank you for listening to the Church Playing Conference hosted by the Our Generation Training Center and Vision Baptist Church.

[92:27] You can find the complete series of recorded sessions by logging on to www.sermonaudio.com forward slash Vision Baptist.

[92:37] Thank you. Thank you.