Outreach

SFL Flashback: Teen Missions Trips

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This post was originally featured on SFL on Mar 5, 2009

From the missions journal of John Q. Goodwin, youth group president of the Come Out From Among Them Baptist Church of Loco, Oklahoma.

Preface: I have decided to keep a journal of our summer missions trip to Mexico. Jim Elliot kept a journal so it seems like a good idea for me to keep one too. Perhaps it will be useful to other who are going on teen missions trips with their own (hopefully Independent Baptist) churches.

Day 1: We have arrived in Mexico and are all very excited by the presence of so many sinners around us that we can witness to. I suppose there were plenty of sinners back in Oklahoma too but these sinners speak Spanish which makes them a lot more interesting. Also, we have located a McDonalds so we will not starve while we are here. The people at our hotel speak English which makes it a lot easier when we need to order room service and such.

Day 2: Spent the day with the missionary passing out gospel tracts and street preaching. Brother Benjamin, our youth pastor gave a great message this morning on the supremacy of the King James Version text, although I’m not sure many of the people really understood. Even Carlos, our interpreter seemed a bit confused during the part about Koine Greek. I can only hope that God uses these messages to really impress upon the hearts of people the importance of using the right Bible.

Day 3: I believe God is calling me to marry this girl Maria Sanchez whom I met at a the local church service yesterday. I cannot talk to her because she does not speak any English but she seems very godly and is also very good looking which makes it even easier to know this is God’s choice for me. I will attempt to learn some Spanish so that I can ask if she believes in courtship.

Day 4: Another rousing sermon today by Brother Benjamin, this time on sin. His hard preaching about cable television, internet porn, and gluttony should have a lot of folks here under conviction. You could tell how much people were responding by the way they kept shrugging and saying “internet?” over and over again. They obviously had never heard about the dangers of the world web of wickedness preached so clearly. It’s a good thing that we were here to stand in the gap.

Day 5: Today we took a rest from our labors and went sight seeing and shopping for souvenirs. Then we had a picnic on the beach where we shared testimonies about how this time in Mexico has changed our lives. Also, God has revealed to me that marrying Maria is not His will for me after all. Since we are going home tomorrow, I consider that God has shut that door. Instead I am going to marry Chastity Winkler, a girl in my own youth group. I plan to have my father talk to to her father once we get home.

Day 6: We’re on the bus and in a few minutes we’ll be back in the United States. Missions work is very rewarding but tiring as well and my sunburn from the beach trip yesterday itches a lot. It’s been a great trip and we have a lot of pictures to show the church and we can report over seven-hundred decisions for Christ being made. It could have been more but nobody in our group actually speaks Spanish. The missionary we were visiting seemed really happy that we came, at least he smiled a lot as he waved goodbye to us. I can’t wait to go back next year.

Public Life

Exhaustion

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Whatever else they may be, fundamentalists on the whole are very, very tired people. They’re told that they must rise before the dawn to do lengthy devotions and commit themselves to prayer. The men must go to their jobs early and stay late in order to be pleasing to their masters while the women are busy cooking, cleaning, teaching, sewing, organizing, and serving.

Then there are church duties to be maintained; church work days to attend; church projects to complete. Soul-winning and bus ministry are hours out of each week even when there aren’t one countless special services, conferences, and revivals that go on through the year. Even brief vacations carry the requirement of finding a church to attend.

So when the weary fundamentalist finally reaches that day of rest and gladness on Sunday and drags himself into his pew he will find there no more rest for his soul than he has had rest for his body. For all his labor will not be enough to sate the son of a horseleach who stands in the pulpit and screams “Give! Give!” as if the people in the pew have are not already fully spent. And so those hapless souls repair once again to their grindstones to see if they can appease the angry god who’s yoke and burden are heavy indeed.

There may be no rest for the wicked but the ultra-righteous would seem also to find little respite for their bodies and souls.

Music

GOH: Thank You

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It seems bizarre in retrospect that this song made it into the canon of acceptable music in so many fundy churches. Here we have a contemporary song sung in an “emotional style” by a singer with long hair who eventually came out as gay — all things that should have completely made this song off limits. Yet none of these anathemas stopped fundies all over the country from cleaning up this song and featuring it in their missions conferences.

I think the redeeming quality that made fundamentalists want to give this particular musical selection a pass was simply that this is an extremely man-centered and guilt-inducing song. Essentially it’s telling you that if you give your last five dollars in the offering plate RIGHT NOW then people will come up and thank you when you get to heaven. Otherwise it will be YOUR FAULT that they aren’t there.

If you ever want to send former fundy missionary kids running screaming from a church service just have someone get up and sing this as a special.

Current Events

Constitutions

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Multiple readers have informed me that FBC Hammond is voting in a new church constitution that includes this little gem for its members on page 21:

Here’s the truth: you can’t give up your right to sue. I know because my alma mater tried something very similar to this with its students but they still got sued on a regular basis. This is merely theater to squash dissent from those who don’t know any better.

A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.