Although Wikipedia identifies ‘running the aisles‘ as a Pentecostal or Holiness tradition it does show up in certain fundamentalist circles as well. To be fair, this sort of thing is usually reserved for Sammy Allen-style ‘camp meeting’ gatherings of the whoopin’ hollerin’ and tree-climbin’ variety. Still, for pure entertainment value it’s hard to beat. Be sure to keep an eye on the baptistry…
(thanks to Kitty for the link)
No matter how dangerous, how silly, or how obsolete a fundy’s plan for evangelism may be, the justification is always the same: “If only one person gets saved, it’s all worth it.”
So what if the church van has four bald tires and hasn’t had a tune-up since 1978? We’re going to drive these 8 teens the 1400 miles to Mexico anyway. If we can get one person saved, the risk of death is all worth it.
Look, we may be serving those VBS kids snacks that expired in Clinton administration…but if between bouts of throwing up one of them gets saved, it’s all worth it!
We spent $148,987.50 on printing ten million copies of a gospel tract with three misspelled words and six verses taken completely out of context…but if one person gets saved from reading it, it was all worth it!
Every member of our church has been standing out on a street corner yelling gospel verses at traffic every weekend this year at a total cost of 85 man-hours, two citations for public disturbance, and a whole lot of dry cleaning. Not one person even slowed down that we know of…but if one person gets saved from from the seeds we planted, it was all worth it.
But what if it isn’t? What if the lost getting saved really isn’t really up to your efforts? And even assuming it totally depends on your evangelism antics, what if unsafe and antiquated methods drove a hundred people away in the process of winning one? That’s a net loss of ninety-nine souls in the process of winning one. Worth it?
Now I know that fundies who are reading this are going to accuse me of hating the lost and being too fat and lazy to get off my couch and go soul-winning. But if I have managed to make just one person re-think their approach to outreach…it was all worth it.
Although there may be many things that a fundamentalist pastor will instruct his congregation to do, ” get a second opinion” will never be among them. For a fundamentalist, truth is not found by listening to all the evidence and getting as many perspectives as possible. To the contrary, it is only when a person has finally shut out all voices but one that he may be sure that he has found the absolute, total and perfect truth. Truth is just another word for no dissent.
Like the man who wears two watches, how can anyone be sure that he has the truth if more than one point of view is present? It is so much simpler to subscribe the views of one preacher. One church. One camp. In the multitude of counselors there is…way too much bothersome information.
You hear only the sound of my voice…
To illustrate this point, here is a fundamentalist pastor describing the best way to get counsel…