Featured IFB Leaders On Expository Preaching

According to the professionally done survey in Church Still Works, by Paul Chappell and Clayton Reed, there are over 13,000 IFB churches in America alone. There are 1000's in other countries, too, since over 6,000 IFB missionaries are out there starting churches, not to mention the nationals starting churches. (I have visited a church planting movement with 30 churches in an area of Africa.)

Wikipedia is quite often wrong. We don't allow our students to use it as a source in their research papers here in our college. I once read a Wiki article on a certain Bible manuscript which had two different views of the contents of the manuscript! Complete amateurs can correct the work of pro scholars.

 

Do an internet search on the Jack Hyles' controversy. There is plenty of evidence. One of his deacons, a lawyer wrote an excellent book on the subject. I am sorry I don't recall his name, but I read the book years ago.

 

I was curious because I didn't see a Wikipedia article with the 6000 number. Several years ago I worked on the Baptist denominations on Wikipedia and tried to get some good info on there. It can be frustrating when someone comes along and edits it out just because he or she can! Wikipedia can be a useful tool to find stuff sometimes, but only as a starting and not a stopping place. There are some articles that are good and some that are horrendous. Problem is, if you don't know the subject you will not know what you're looking at is true or not.

Several years ago I did a survey on Baptist churches that are totally unaffiliated -- so would not be counted in BBFI, WBF, IBFI, Heartland, Southwide or any like these. I Id'ed over 1200 churches. I wouldn't be surprised if there are 3 or 4 times that many. Many of these churches are flying completely under the radar of any and all who are trying to count churches and denominations in the US.

 

Tell that to the IFCAmerica. They will fight you on that one...

 

Interesting discussion - but is the argument about 2 exclusive approaches to preaching, and is preaching in church the primary means of soul-winning?

And is church growth the result of soul winning, social activity, topical sermons or expository preaching?

For the sixty years of my Christian life, I have attended churches where expository preaching has been the approach, with evangelism by leaflet, visiting, personal contact, preaching but never an "altar call."

Where topical issues are important, they may be used as a sermon introduction, or referred to in the application.

With expository preaching the application is always an important aspect, application to unsaved & saved.

 

There is not more danger or faithfulness in either verse by verse or topical preaching. To protect from poor exegesis and poor preaching one must be full of integrity, desiring God's will, be filled with the Spirit, and have a focus on the context of the passage being preached from. That can be done with either form of sermon and either form of sermon can equally be in danger of poor exegesis.

 

Yes, this is pretty much how we present Wikipedia to our students. It can give you a direction for research, but you can't depend on the information in the articles. It may be right or it may be way off. Just like here on the BB, so many posters on Wikipedia present their opinion as fact. I don't know how many times I've read here or elsewhere on the Internet that fundamentalism is on the way down, it's dying, there are very few churches left, etc. That is baloney of course to anyone who knows the real facts.

That's very interesting information. It also points to the fact that those unaffiliated IFB churches are sending out their. own missionaries. Many on the field these days are sent out from a local church with no mission board. On the other hand, many very small boards have been started out of local churches with only a few missionaries.

 

Thanks so much ! Excellent book!

 

One of the best uses I have found with Wikipedia is locating where a county is located in the U.S. I'm sure all counties have an official website, but most of them you can wade around on for awhile and still not know just where they are. Wikipedia will have a state map showing where the county is, give the county seat, list the surrounding counties, and so on. This can then be easily verified. So far I haven't found any that were wrong.

I just want to add and clarify that when I mentioned these churches are "flying completely under the radar" I didn't mean that they are trying to hide. They are going about the Father's business. Many of them have church websites on the WWW. It's just that they are not only anyone's list, so to speak, and if we're not moving in the same circles we can be completely unaware of their existence.

 

That would be a fruitful use of Wikipedia.

I'm sure this is true. There are a lot of good folk out there simply doing their best for Jesus.

 

No legitimate school does

 

No doubt that is true.

 

I don't doubt either the truth or the wisdom of that. On the other hand, I read a lot of research papers and theses on a certain topic whose advisers sometimes make quite weird decisions and accept sources that are not accurate. The following is not a question of sources, but of weird decisions. At this moment I have open on my computer a thesis "in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts" at a very legitimate and fairly well known state university. It is only 38 pages long (counting the cover page, abstract, table of contents and bibliography)!

 

John,

On another thread I quoted information from Strong's numbering using the blueletterbible.org

You told me Strong is long out of date & you could do a better Hebrew/Greek word search using other tools.

You referred to a book. Please can you give me a link to an up-to-date on-line system that will show all the occurrences of a particular word in context.

 

The authors are John R. Kohlenberger III, Edward W. Goodrick, and their new numbering system is found in several Zondervan reference tools.

 

Please provide a link to where I can see them on line.

 

John, in what sense are you saying Strong is out-of-date -- not up with USB, newly discovered definitions??

This book is probably recent enough that it isn't available online, is it? Also isn't it only the Greek NT and not the whole Bible?

 

James Strong edited his dictionary in the 19th century. Towards the beginning of the 20th century, many koine Greek manuscripts were discovered which gave much greater insight into the meaning of NT words than Strong ever had.

Well, yes, the book looks recent, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be online. As to whether it is worth the money, I'd have to know if they updated Strong's definitions.