All posts by Darrell
Testimony Time
“Who would like to share a word of testimony this evening?”
Testimony time in a fundamentalist church is an experience unlike anything one could hope to find in the outside world. It’s equal parts performance art, spiritual posturing, and the kind of long winded delivery that you might expect after mistakenly asking your hypochondriac great-aunt how she’s feeling today. It is, in short, a wonderful and awful spectacle to behold.
Testimony time has many functions. For example, it’s one of a few times when women and divorced folks get to be heard in the church without being accused of preaching. “I’d just like to thank God for the lesson he taught me this week which I’d like to share with all of you. Let me read you a few verses and then after I tell my story I’ll share a poem that I wrote…”
The Biographical testimony is also a popular one usually involving a description of the horrific sin that the teller was involved in “years ago.” The main point to note here is that while some sins are acceptable to talk about in fundy churches (“I used to be such a drunk…”) some are simply not (“I used to be so gay..”).
Another variation of the testimony is the “Bragamony” which is used for establishing the church pecking order by allowing contenders to matching stories of spiritual prowess. In this struggle for dominance, the timing of the testimony is vital. It’s important not to go first lest your story be outmatched by those following and quickly forgotten. Fall into that trap and you may have to postpone until mid-week service with a considerably smaller audience and must less impact.
“If no one else has a testimony to share let’s turn in our hymnbooks…”
Thanks to Mel, Jennifer, and many others who suggested this topic.
Soul Winning
Tim Challies has posted scans of a book named Soul-Winning Made Easy and subtitled (The Encounter Method) by C.S. Lovett. It’s a step by step illustrated guide to getting people saved.
From the book…
The controlled conversation technique is something new in evangelism and represents a real break-through in soul-winning. Older methods, dealing with excuses, seek to convince a prospect of his needy condition and humble him. … The new method ignores excuses and completely side-steps the explosive area of religious debate. Modern soul-winners have discovered that it is unnecessary to change a person’s mind before introducing him to Jesus. If he can truly be made aware of Christ waiting at the door of his heart, his responsibility becomes most clear. This makes soul-winning a positive ministry requiring fewer skills. Actually, it is a new frontier which allows Christian obedience to become fun!
Check out all of the scans.
Illustration: “The Lost Day”
I personally heard this illustration from evangelist Ron Comfort…
Once upon a time, an atheist scientist discovered that there was ‘lost time’ in the cosmic record. Through some unspecified process he learns that several hours have just gone missing. His Christian friend told him he would discover the reason for the lost time in the Bible. After reading the stories of Joshua and Hezekiah the atheist realizes that the Bible is true. He falls to his knees and is gloriously saved.
Well…you guessed it. It’s just not so.
Regardless of the amount of time involved, the discovery of a “missing” period of time remains implausible. If the sun had indeed stood still for a day a few millennia ago, we would have no way of determining that fact through astronomic observations today. We have no frame of reference, no “cosmic calendar” or “master clock” to check against to see if we’re overdrawn at the Bank of Time. The concept described here would be like giving someone a non-functioning clock and asking him to determine how much time had elapsed since the clock had stopped running. One could note the positions of the hands on the dial and make a reasonable guess about what the time of day was when the clock stopped running, but without knowing whether that time was A.M. or P.M., and without knowing the calendar date on which stoppage occurred, one could not possibly make any reasonable estimate about how long ago the clock stopped.
Jesus
From time to time one of my dear fundy friends (yes, I do have a few!) informs me that I am much to negative on this site.
With that in mind, I’d like to share a sermon by one of my favorite fundamentalists on a topic that he loved very much.
[audio:http://www.darrelldow.com/blog/CrumptonJesus.mp3]