So we need to be diligent, not take shortcuts, and not use gimmicks and so forth.
And listen, this is exactly what's wrong today with the new evangelical movement, okay?
Now there are different styles of churches out there, aren't there?
This church is not a new evangelical church.
What does that mean?
It means that our church is not a trendy church that's trying to be new and modern and contemporary.
This is not considered a contemporary service, in case you didn't know that.
This is what people would call a traditional service or a fundamentalist type church or
traditional church or old-fashioned type church, right?
But the new evangelical movement is a movement that says, "Hey, we need a new style of evangelism.
We need a new way to do it."
And the idea is reach people where they're at, man, and become like them to win them.
But they take that philosophy too far because, of course, there is some truth in that, amen.
There's some truth in both of those things.
But they take it so far that they basically just will throw out any kind of doctrinal
teaching.
It's too heavy for them.
You know, they'll throw out any kind of hard preaching against sin because that's going
to offend people, right?
And then they'll bring in just a very worldly, carnal style of music, a worldly, carnal style
of service, shallow preaching that lasts 15 or 20 minutes, 45 minutes of emotional music.
And basically it becomes more like an entertainment show or a concert or a night club or what
I call them the fun center.
We don't come to church to come to a fun center.
We come to church to worship the Lord, to learn the Bible, and to get organized to do
some real work for God, not to just come and have fun and feel good and have an experience
or whatever.
A new evangelical movement, instead of working hard, diligently, over the course of years
to accomplish something real for God, they want to have instant results and instant success.
Because they say, "We're failing to reach people.
We need a new evangelism.
We need to get worldly.
We need to bring in the Christian contemporary artists and whatever."
Why would they even say it's not working?
I've never seen it not work.
I mean, I've never seen people who work hard, go soul winning, and preach the word of God
fail.
They're always succeeding.
They're always reaching people.
It's like I've heard it said that if people aren't being saved, either the gospel's not
being preached or the gospel's lost its power.
Soul winning is always going to work.
Preaching the word of God with fire in your belly is always going to work.
It always has.
It always will.
So why are these people saying it doesn't work and that we need something new?
Here's why.
Because they don't work.
It doesn't work.
It's that you don't work.
See, they're slothful.
They're hasty.
They want things right now.
They don't understand that success takes time and diligence and hard work.
So instead of waiting for something real to grow, they plant weeds.
They plant tares.
And you know what?
Weeds grow up in a night and they perish in a night.
Weeds grow very quickly.
Have you ever pulled all the weeds and then you go out like a week later and you have weeds
up to your waist?
What in the world?
That's even possible!
You can almost see them growing before your eyes.
And that's how these fun centers are.
When I was a kid, we used to race trees at my grandparents' house.
We'd all go to my grandparents' house and we would find a pine tree that was our height.
Our exact height.
When we were a little kid, we'd find a little tree and we'd find the one that was our height
and say, "Okay, this is your tree.
We put our name on it and we're going to race that tree to see who can grow faster."
And sometimes you'd be winning in going through those growth spurts as a kid, right?
But then it was fun to come back years later and see that that tree would be 30 feet high.
You'd be winning, winning, winning, and then it would just pass you up.
Now it took a really long time though for that tree to grow.
It grew very slowly, but eventually it's going to win.
It's going to beat you.
It's going to be huge, right?
We see all these trees and cactuses and things.
Many of them have been growing for literally 100 years.
Whereas weeds just, they just shoot right up.
Remember the gourd of Jonah?
It just grew up in a night and it perished in a night.
And this is what weeds are like.
So basically the new evangelical movement, what they want is for the Christian life to
be a sprint instead of a marathon.
And it's not.
They want to have that Instagram, I mean they want to be running 100 and 1,000.
They want to have 3,000 people after the first five years.
Look, Faithful Word Baptist Church didn't grow that way.
You know, we grew in the first year from 9 to 7 in the first year of working hard, diligently,
going soul-winning, knocking doors, preaching the Bible.
The first Sunday we had 9, the one year anniversary we'd grown to 7, okay.
And the first year we averaged about 10 most of the year.
The second year we averaged 20, the third year we averaged 30, the fourth year we averaged
40, the fifth year we averaged 50.
You know, not exactly the stuff that successful books of how to build the church, you know.
I wasn't exactly getting the book deals in that fourth year when four years in our church
is averaging 40.
Nobody was impressed.
Nobody thought, oh man, this church, you know.
But here's the thing, people are noticing us now, but why?
Because it took a long time to get here.
It was a slow process and there were many temptations along the way to do what?
Shortcut, dip the sails, censor the message, go a little soft, don't preach people out.
Look, there's certain times as a pastor that you get up and preach and you know, you know
when I preach this sermon people will leave.
You know that they're going to and are you going to preach the truth or are you going
to water it down?
So the point is that you know, starting a church takes a long time, seeing that church
grow and succeed takes a really long time, it takes patience.
You know, you got to wait 10 years to really see the fruit bountifully coming in and now
we're enjoying the fruit of all that labor as a church and it's exciting and everything
like that.
But you know what, what about when it was just 8, 9, 10 people in my living room?
That's not that exciting but it's the diligence that keeps you going.
So we don't want to be like the new evangelical gimmicks.
We want to have patience, we want to do it right and if that slows down the process so
be it because here we are 12 years later, we've had more people saved than the evangelical
fund center.
Okay, but it took a long time to get there.