Category Archives: Sermons

Outreach, Sermons, Standards

Gospel Gimmicks: Salvation Rope Tricks

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gospelropeWho doesn’t love a good magic show? Giving the gospel through sleight of hand is a staple of many fundamentalist children’s outreach programs. Even adults will stop and watch someone perform a gospel presentation via an entertaining act of subterfuge and trickery.

The gospel rope tricks are some of the more popular gimmicks because they are inexpensive, quickly taught and have little risk of a spectator catching on fire. That’s always a something to look for in a magic act. The real risk here is that the trick will go very badly and the whole point will be lost. “Look boys and girls the three ropes are all…uh…well…they should have been the same…you’re all doomed.”

There’s another potential danger to gospel magic acts — they do not translate well into some more superstitious cultures. Missionaries who are a little too good at illusions may meet with charges of witchcraft. In these locations it may be better to stick with handing out Chick Tracts and fake money or run the risk of finding oneself in some very sticky situations indeed.

Books, Sermons

Chalk Talks

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chalkBefore multimedia displays and PowerPoint presentations, fundamentalists had chalk. Credit where it’s due, if done well, chalk talks were a great way to keep people’s attention and make a point. If done badly, however, the presentation may end up looking vaguely like a cubist artist’s impression of a sunset at the North Pole. In short, it’s a royal mess.

In the really extravagant chalk art presentations, a black light may be used to reveal hidden images at the end of the talk. Or perhaps, the artist would draw upside down and then later reveal the real picture by flipping over the canvas. Not too many people do this anymore; it’s really a shame. Watching someone doodle on a screen in MS Paint just isn’t quite the same.

If you’ve never seen a chalk talk done, you can check out a video of none other than Peter Ruckman giving a presentation while drawing an “original autograph.”

Fun and Games, Music, Outreach, Sermons, Standards

Revivals

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revivalOnce or twice a year, a fundamentalist church will hold a series of revival services. An evangelist or special speaker who is specially trained to give spiritual CPR will come into town and spend a few nights trying to get the church’s pulse going again. The fact that they are apparently so feeble that they needs periodic five-day-long jolts from a biblical defibrillator to keep them alive does not appear to bother fundies at all. They rather seem to enjoy it.

Revivals are a great time to combine a lot of fundy favorites: hard preaching, old fashioned altars, evangelist fish stories, and coming up with new things to feel guilty about. Throw in some special music and a few covered dish suppers and it’s a great time for everybody.

Another emphasis of revival services is bringing out lost people to hear the messages. This may strike some as odd since it would seem to be a contradiction in terms to try to ‘revive’ something that’s never been ‘vived’ in the first place. But the philosophy goes that if there’s preaching on sin going on, it’s a good idea to get a bunch of genuine sinners in to hear it. And there’s a reward Bible with your name on it if you can bring in the most.

Oh, Revive us again (and again, and again, and again).

Books, Preachers, Sermons, Uncategorized

The Trail of Blood

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trail

You know that annoying kid in school who loved to brag about how General Lee was his great-great-great-great uncle’s second cousin twice removed? When that kid grows up to be a fundamentalist, he’ll probably be a huge fan of the the book The Trail of Blood.

Baptists as a denomination have only been around for about four hundred years — Independent Fundamental Baptists for considerably less. This short existence has created a certain amount of envy of other traditions who have been around for a lot longer and have an impressive pedigree that claims members all the way back to the Apostles. Inevitably, something had to be done to bolster up Baptist prestige, and that something was this book detailing “The History of Baptist Churches From the Time of Christ, Their Founder, to the Present Day.”

Now in order to make this impressive family tree, the author was forced to bring together some very strange bedfellows indeed. Cathari, Donatists, Novatians, and a lot of others were evidently all Baptists. Not fundamentalists, of course, because they didn’t have the KJV yet, but ancient paintings do conclusively prove that they did in fact have established bus ministries, so it’s obvious they’re related to fundamentalists today. And nobody would be more surprised than they to learn it.

So do not be dismayed by Roman Catholics who claim to have leaders reaching back to Peter. Fundamentalists have roots that go back all the way to Genesis with Diklah the son of Joktan and they’ll show you the charts to prove it.