Featured IFB Leaders On Expository Preaching

I don't

 

I suppose we will never be able to settle our differences in part because we will never be able to set across from one another and speak man to man. None the less I still go back to my original frustration wherein the actions of a minority of pastors in any given time period are being used to attack several thousand pastors.


According to Wikipedia there are nearly 6000 IF Baptist congregations in America and it is unknown how many IF congregations that have no formal alliance. There are 44,000 SB congregations and who knows how many Bible churches that hold to Baptistic doctrines. I believe it would be easy to see 55,000 congregations represented in these numbers and from this multitude of numbers some posters want to take say 100 pastors who were cultic, pedophiles, liars, adulterers etc. and say that they are representative of the 55,000.


Would you also say that the recent studies of police officers is representative of all police departments in all cities or is it possible that there are some horrible people who have managed to get into positions of authority. Would you say that the actions of a couple of presidents who committed fornication and adultery in office represented all presidents who have held office? If you have had members of your family who were morally bankrupt in character would you want people to say well the whole family is like that? Would you not be saying and insisting you are not the same as those who are bankrupt of character?


You see I am not defending those who were or are wicked, I am not sweeping it under the rug, and I am not condoning what they have done in any way. What I am saying is that when people attack the IFB they are allowing their limited view of a few to interfere in their judgment of all. I believe this is neither biblical nor moral in any way. I am not so much offended by the views of others as much as I just cannot understand how people can be so vehement that all IFP people need to bear the brunt of a few. Again I say name them, point them out or however you wish to expose the doers of evil but please do not cast all IFB believers into one mold because that makes you wrong regardless of your experience with a few.


May I be gracious in my responses to the board members! thjplgvp

 

I wouldn't trust Wikipedia if I were you. There is so much misinformation and disinformation on there, just as here on the BB. Paul Chappell and Clayton Reed commissioned a survey of IFB churches in America for their 2009 book, Church Still Works, and found 13,719 churches. That is only in the US.

According to what I've been told, Fundamentalists are the only group or denomination in the US in which the number of missionaries being sent out is increasing, and I believe it. (The SBC recently decided to lay off 500 foreign missionaries.) There are thousands of IFB churches in other countries around the world. Our own church is supporting a church-planting movement in an African country where literally dozens of churches have been planted in the last couple of years. (Our missions pastor is currently over there training African pastors.)

So again, don't go to Wikipedia or the BB for any accurate info on the IFB movement. (Apart from my posts, of course. Biggrin ) (Or a few others like Squire or Salty who know the facts. Anyway avoid the haters. Cool )

 

Sometimes they even call it a denomination! Or talk as if there were some great leader or a headquarters responsible for the lapses.

 

Preachers also preached on hell to the exclusion of heaven and grace. The pendulum will swing as wide as it is pulled. Then it was only topical, now it is only expository. We should avoid the wide swing of the pendulum.

 

This is a ridiculous statement. He was imperfect but he was not a cult leader. That inflammatory language is as dishonest as it is wrongheaded.

 

You did the exact same post on the "How to become an evangelist" thread, and I answered you there.

 

There is this little problem of attention span these days. Topical holds attention better. I usually put more scripture in a topical sermon than I put in an expository one. I think both have their place.

 

A boring sermon is a boring sermon, what can go wrong with one style can also go wrong with another on an equal level.

 

The thing I have noticed IN GENERAL about audiences and expository sermons is that 1/3rd are hanging on every word and 2/3rds are fighting sleep.
My biggest problem in listening to an expository sermon is that usually within the first few minutes, I disagree with the preacher on something and then spend the rest of the sermon digging in commentary figuring out who is right.

 

Oh well don't be boring

 

Squire, I wonder why you associate Hyles and BBFI churches with East Texas? Sure, Hyles did pastor in East Texas, but he was Southern Baptist back then, and I think attending East Texas Baptist (SBC) in Marshall. BBFI has roots that go back to J. Frank Norris, but we don't claim Fort Worth as part of East Texas!

The BBFI may be strong in some parts of East Texas (not sure), but I don't see their brand of Fundamentalism/Fellowship to be very strong around here.

 

J. Frank Norris started the World Baptist Fellowship, IIRC in the early 1930s and originally called World Premillennial Missionary Baptist Fellowship. But independent Baptists in the South come from several strands, some of whom had little or no connection to J. Frank Norris. There was one group that I think was called the Orthodox Baptist Fellowship, led by men like W. Lee Rector and L. S. Ballard. Some of these men may have bumped shoulders with Norris at times, but were not led by him. I think the state of modernism among Baptist in the first quarter of the 20th century drove a lot of them toward independence and fundamentalism independently of others who were driven in the same direction.

 

Yes, too often we go off on tangents.

 

Hi. Just wondering which Wikipedia article has this 6000 number? I'm noticing that their article on BBFI shows 4500 for just them alone.