Odds and Ends

Let’s Go Soul Winning (1962)

72 Comments

Note that Hyles took over Hammond in 1959 and recorded this LP only 3 years later. I do love that the selling point is that Hyles ACTUALLY WINS A SOUL TO CHRIST on the record. I wonder how many takes it took “Doug” to get saved.

72 thoughts on “Let’s Go Soul Winning (1962)”

    1. Oh, that’s just precious. To bad the butt cushions from the PRE move SFL are much more sanctified than the ones that were made after Dar-El left Florida.

    2. We have looked upon thee, Sir, with both admiration and envy for thy first. Howbeit thou hast had thine reward for verily the promise of butt cushions is naught but a cruel hoax.

  2. I remember having this book. I guess it was probably close to 30 years ago I read it and the only thing that sticks out was that he recommended that ladies wear high heels to go soul winning. And I thought even then he must be nuts. Going door to door in high heels? What kind of idiot would do that? But I’ll bet a lot of the fundy women in his church did it just because he said so!

  4. An hour? Yikes. Today I will be crocheting and thrift store shopping and not knocking on a single door – win!

  6. I will give my Fundy church credit that we didn’t do too much “cold” door knocking. We usually went to the homes of people recommended by other church members. I guess that’s safer when you live in a big city and the high schoolers are going out. I don’t remember that we ever “won” any souls. We did do a lot of “tract passing”, though. I wasn’t comfortable with either method. I still prefer to strike up conversations with people to explain the ‘hope that is in me.” It just seems kinder and more relational.

    1. I am not sure going to the homes recommended by other church members is better than cold calling. At least cold calls were not strategic planning by family and friends to do a spiritual intervention in my life. I think if someone sent soul winners to my door, I might have a few choice words. Its arrogant for anyone to assume that God is not working in people’s lives and that they do not know the Bible….but its even worse when someone I know–knows I am a Christian but decides I am not good enough so they send someone to my house.

      1. The homes we went to knew we were coming. I NEVER recommended my family….I already knew my parents’ opinions of any kind of church and we lived across town. Most folks were polite, but I never remember anyone coming to faith. I didn’t like it then, and I like it less now. It’s one of the many reasons I abandoned Fundystan when I went off to college a couple of years later.

      2. It doesn’t have to necessarily be an intervention though. Their neighbor could have expressed interest, or they heard of someone with a need.

      3. Speaking of arrogance, I once had the great pleasure of trashing a Sunday school curriculum that recommended going soul winning among one’s Kindergarten-aged Sunday school students. The thing was marketed as the “Anglican edition.” That meant that they used the revised common lectionary. Everything else was straight out of the fundie playbook!

        1. The new Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, won’t be pleased!

          Using the Revised Common Lectionary? Gonna use it on the Feast of the Holy Innocents?

        2. It’s David C. Cook’s Bible in Life Series. The first dozen lessons or so alternate between “Bible is God(‘s word), Bible is Holy (writ)” and “Obey, obey, obey.” For every age category, including the toddlers.

        3. Bah! Our curriculum for toddlers is: God made me. God loves me all the time. God is with me no matter what. God helps me. We don’t really talk about sin. They don’t have much concept of sin at age 2.
          Apparently one family has been referring to church as “God’s house”. One of my toddlers was trying to get my attention in class: ” Hey! Hey! Hey, God! I have more crackers? “

    2. I’m so holy and separated I have no idea what you’re talking about.

      Kids these days … sigh.

  9. I can’t imagine sitting and voluntarily listening to this. The more I look back on soul-winning how-tos, the worse it looks.

  10. Several thoughts:
    1) Listening to this will not be the second most important hour of my life. By my calculation, I have lived 461,428 hours, and if this ranks above 461,302, I will eat my boiled shoes.
    2) “Spread your seed everywhere.”
    3) So the only person with whom he could record this is named Hyles.
    4) The longer I listen to this, the more there is to be flabbergasted with. He does keep some girl from going to her mother by raising his fist at her. This has now fallen to hour 461,387.

    1. I will correct myself: the person in the recording is named Doug Hiles, not Doug Hyles. I missed this at first.

        1. Dear His Name Wasn’t Henry Porter:

          Word has it, he practiced what he preached.

          Christian Socialist

        2. Apparently.
          I wanted to make a snarky comment about polished shafts.
          But kudos to Mr. Hiles for finding a better church to attend.
          And I still find that anecdote about threatening to hit the girl terrible.

      2. I thought God will strike you dead if you spread your seed everywhere. Or is that only if you spill it on the ground?

  11. He also did the samething in 1986, and then sent the girl and her husband on a vacation for getting saved. Not that the two are related at all.

  12. Doug Hiles lived in Crown Point until he died in 2008. Services were held at Bethel Church.

  13. “Doug” or “Shill”?

    I remember “Witnessing practice” at Campus Crusade against CCCers in the role of “Heathen”. As someone who actually knew people outside of the Christianese bubble, it was laughable.

    And there was this Christianese AM radio half-hour at the time called “Counseling With a Purpose” purporting to be actual phone-in pastoral counseling that in retrospect had to have been staged with shills.

  14. When my school was teaching a personal evangelism course, this was part of my curriculum. My kids ripped it to shreds. I was so proud of them.

  15. Jenny Islander, what does your priest say about this “curriculum” and how did it worm its way into an Episcopal church?

    Inquiring minds want to know!

  16. This site (and all its treasures) are amazing! The humor to be found here is priceless, too! I’m amazed at how many people follow it, judging by the abundance of quickly posted comments. I would absolutely love to see a polling of the readers – to find out a little more about the readership. It’d be fun to see what backgrounds they’re from and where they’re at now.

    1. Just keep reading.

      We are from all backgrounds – cradle fundy, adult fundy, super extreme fundy, moderate fundy, pentecostal, etc. We are at all kinds of religious belief now.

        1. There’s an option for traditional liturgical church; it’s second on the list, with Orthodox given as an example. I’d say the Catholics are quite traditional and liturgical.

  18. I actually took a lot of these types of books to Half Price Books a few years ago, cleaned out my family’s library that no one had touched in 15 years. Had briefly considered taking photos of some of the covers and authors, but decided against it.

    Think I earned enough for a burrito, so it still all ended up being crap in the end.

  19. I remember that book being in our house. I never read it. Even as a kid I thought Hyles was weird. The only people who have come to my door are The Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, as a requirement for good standing in their respective religions. I could always get the JW’s to leave by insisting on saying a prayer with them, worked every time. The Mormons were always nice and not pushy and didn’t stay long.

  20. At the 12 minute mark, he happily recalls how he threatened to hit a little girl with his fists because she wanted to go into her own house. An assistant pastor was inside with the girl’s mother, trying to win the woman’s soul, and allowing the little girl to go in might have interrupted the session. So he had to threaten her. But it’s OK, because he wouldn’t really have hit her.

  21. Ahhh, the “soul-winning” lessons given at my IFB church! The fake examples! The utter failure in the door-to-door!

    And for children at Vacation Bible School? Why, if a child raised their hand, you had five minutes to “lead them to the Lord,” including filling out a card with name, address, parents, etc. Not possible! I complained that it wasn’t possible, but others seemed happy with it. Just get them to say a “prayer” and they were done. No understanding required.

    1. Why do you say that door-to-door is “utter failure”?

      I believe that the Hyles “magic say-a-prayer and you’re saved” methodology is an utter failure, but proponents of door-to-door point to (a) the successes (usually about 1 in 10,000 door) – but they are still success stories, and (b) counter with “What’s a better way to reach people?”, and I don’t have an answer to that.

      1. Better ways to reach people? There is tons of information available on relational evangelism, community events, etc. My church has many people who came to faith through knowing a neighbor, crisis counseling, or because their teen came to the youth group. There is so much more than the cold door knocking.

      2. It has been discussed here by more mathy types than myself as to the numerical efficiency for ‘soulwinning’ via door-to-door. Not that people and numbers are the same, mind you, but numbers are all the rage in Fundystan.

        Quite frankly, very few people are wanting total strangers to knock on their doors and tell them about heaven. Strangers knocking at my door to sell me politicians, deities, and other obnoxious materials are sent on their way.

        If xians are serious about “winning the lost” they need to live their religion. Authentically live it. They need to engage with their communities. Offer real ministries to the needy. Hurt with the hurting. That takes time. That takes effort. That gets ugly. It also takes money. Unfortunately, it’s way more fun to talk about how persecuted you are for gid when people toss your sorry butt off their doorstep for being pushy and rude. It’s also easier to knock on doors for 30 minutes every Tuesday night because it’s just a sales pitch. Anyone can talk but few can serve and minister.

        Why can’t churches offer meals to the needy every Saturday night? Plenty of soup kitchens are around during the week. Why can’t they feed kids lunches during the summer when schools out and they aren’t getting free/reduced meals at school? Why can’t they reach out to families after fires destroy their homes? Why can’t they offer literacy programs? That is ministry. That is love. Most people can perceive that a religious freak who shows up at their door is only out there earning brownie points with gid and not there out of genuine love for them.

        Girl Scout cookies I’ll buy. God, not so much.

        3. Jesus said He didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Those who don’t see themselves as needing a Savior can’t receive the gospel. If they do embrace it, they do so as a way to increase their importance and control others.

      3. Have you ever seen the door-to-door model in the Scriptures? Hint. It isn’t there. So you haven’t. And there seems to be a good reason.

        First, you are much more effective living your faith than by talking about it. If you read Fox’s Book of Martyrs you will see that the faith grew not by door knocking, but by being willing to give everything — and I mean everything! — for their Savior.

        When I went knocking on doors, people saw an earnest, young believer who automatically discounted everything they believed since I had the only real way to Heaven. I had the *real* relationship with God. Oh, I’d be glad enough if I found out they were “saved” the way I was. But if they weren’t, if I found a flaw in their view of God, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were on their way to hell and needed to summarily drop all beliefs they had come to over the course of their lives on the basis of a five-minute spiel coming out of my mouth.

        Yeah, I was rather silly and full of myself. Might still be, but at least I don’t think God is going to judge you on the basis of whether you accept or reject my infallible witness! And it is that attitude that permeates the door-knockers and street preachers. They know it all and they know it. If you don’t agree with them, you know nothing. The arrogance and hubris is astonishing, and I was full of it.

        Oh, I was sincere. I believed. I wanted the best for them. Or so I thought. I wanted them to go to heaven, too. I wanted God to clean up their lives. I just didn’t know what I didn’t understand.

        I believe that most fundamentalist preachers are sincere even when they are being fake. That is, I think they have somehow convinced themselves they are sincere, pure in motives and heart, and that they don’t see themselves as promoting a scam. Most. Not all. Why, I even would be willing to go so far as to say I think Jack Hyles believed himself to be serving God even as he diddled the secretary. I think Jack Shaap saw himself as God’s Man even while he had sex with the sixteen year old girl. After all, he could lead people to the Lord in a few minutes!

        Why should anyone think a five-minute, ten-minute or even an hour’s presentation would be sufficient to upend a whole life’s experience? Do people “converted” that way really stay converted? I know of several who certainly didn’t. What they lacked before in their lives the church did not fill in.

        So, I don’t care how zealous, earnest, fervent, or desirous you may be. Going door to door is a horrible way to show people Christ’s love. How about going to that elderly lady’s house and offering to mow her lawn and trim it out for free — just because you think it is the right thing to do? Or you see that homeless person on the street and you slip him some real money, enough for a decent meal?

        Your walk talks and your talk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks.

  22. At 1:18 he says that he would like to spend an hour with me and I decided that I didn’t want to spend another minute with him.

  23. Did Hyles say something on this recording about spreading our seed everywhere? My, that could open up of whole new area of discussion!

  24. Doug Hiles was my grandfather. Jack Hyles actually did present the gospel to him and my grandfather trusted Christ as his Saviour. Although, I no longer would identify with the IFB, I am grateful that Jack Hyles presented the gospel to him.

  26. Well I am Doug Hiles 51 year old son. He was saved in 1960 and the album was made in 1967. My dad was in the Airforce in 1959 and He was wondering about God. He was in Winnemucca Nevada guarding a radar tower and looked up to the sky one night and Asked God if He was real to show himself. Within 12 months Bro Hyles knocked on his door and lead my Dad to Christ. I am very thankful that Jack Hyles Went Soulwinning. My father was saved that night. My Mother was already saved. My sister was led to the Lord by my dad as was I. My three sons were lead to the Lord and serve in the various churches. One is an ordained Baptist preacher. Life wasn’t always perfect for our family, but dad did serve in church for a number of years and lead many to Christ, and yes by soulwinning. I have been faithfully married for 32 years and serve in church to this very day.

    Any questions? I’ll gladly answer.

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