A street preacher's thoughts on "BLM are racist thugs" at the University of Oklahoma

On November 16, 2016, two street preachers of some infamy appeared on the campus of the University of Oklahoma to make a name for themselves. I am to some extent familiar with these men as we run in some of the same circles both in real life and on social media. I am compelled to offer some commentary based on a great deal of experience in similar situations, as a preacher, as an alumnus, and as an outside observer, given that the behavior, speech, and underlying theology of these men are awful and the student, faculty, and police response was approximately equally bad. The astute observer is thus left dismayed at how the main victims of the day were truth and righteousness.

First and foremost, any cursory review of my social media presence will reflect that I do frequently engage in street preaching and other community agitation. I stress here that I refuse any and all brotherhood or fellowship with men such as these, and I have done so for a long time (see here for a collection of links and videos substantiating such, notably this video), even to the point of experiencing challenges in mutual friendships I hold with other men whose discernment I would call dangerously immature. I have come into conflict with Larry Street, the preacher wearing a cap and sunglasses, while I was preaching and he was preaching at an Oklahoma City Black Mass. I first met "Brother Jim" Gilles around 1997 when he was preaching in front of OU's Dale Hall and I was a student at OU. As his preaching then is about the same as it is now, I rebutted him in public, especially on his claims that he no longer sins, that he is sinlessly perfect. My arguments were not wrong back then as far as I remember, but I have learned how better to combat ideas such as his in the 19 intervening years.

I have no part with these men and believe them to be dangerous false teachers. Their main message amounts to "stop sinning, sinner", which is far from the content of the main message of the Bible. As if his public proclamations weren't sufficient, Street's Facebook profile is even facebook.com/StopSinning. Gilles for his part denies numerous fundamental biblical doctrines, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. He affirms that works of man (such as water baptism) (in the name of Jesus only, by the way) are necessary pre-requisites for justification, the new birth, the forgiveness of sins, thus perverting the Gospel; in short, he is a Oneness Pentecostal, a heretic. In addition, as mentioned previously, he exalts himself as a sinlessly perfect man, rather than exalting the cross of Christ, thus setting himself up over all the holy men and women recorded in the Scripture (the best of whom, apart from Jesus Christ, are said to be righteous/blameless, which is not equivalent to sinless perfection) and violating numerous Scriptures, not least 2 Corinthians 4:5 and Galatians 6:14.

In keeping with their strategy of self-exaltation, these men consider that attracting a large crowd is an end that justifies whatever means required to achieve it. This is why Jim wears t-shirts declaring "Allah is Satan" with red dashes oozing drops of blood near the neckline, saying "cut along dotted line". This is why they print up needlessly offensive signs such as "BLM are racist thugs" and take them out in public. Their main interest is not to glorify Jesus Christ by saying the things Jesus did and acting the ways He acted. Neither Jesus nor the apostles nor the prophets are ever recorded taking a relatively minor societal movement and making it the centerpiece of social agitation. Rather, they generally focused on major, enormous sins that were common to most or all of society, such as child sacrifice, and often proclaimed the biblical response to that evil, the cross of Christ, repentance of sin toward God, the resurrection of Christ, and taking up one's cross to follow Him, leaving behind worldly ways.

Clearly their main desire is to puff themselves up and make people angry rather than to exalt Christ. That is one reason why they took cynical advantage of the shallow idiocy of the majority of our modern culture, leveraging the foolish Black Lives Matter movement and the mass of emotion surrounding it, to criticise the few leaders of that movement. This is not an objectively persuasive argument; while the message on the sign is true in the main, it is irrelevant to the justice of the BLM cause. Far better to demonstrate the hypocrisy inherent in the BLM ideology vis-a-vis its behavior, such as how BLM demonstrators usually take the most action after an incident of supposed police brutality while ignoring the fact that 1/3 of all black babies are aborted in the USA every day. No, they chose to restrict their offense to that which they calculated would maximise the emotional overload. They even calculate the way they talk and the things they say (such as "I don't let women tell me what to do") to enrage and trigger brittle, immature people.

Note also the (unsurprising) inability of liberals to respond in any substantive way. University president and former US Senator and governor of Oklahoma David Boren felt the incident important enough to address the mob in person, which is interesting in and of itself. Boren's speech is full of inane lib-speak. Consider these paraphrased nuggets:


"OU is a family."

A family which one pays to be part of. A family in which sexual assault and immorality are rampant. Hazing, drunkenness, hatred, opposing factions, totally opposite worldviews... apparently families exist where someone merely proclaims they exist.

"These preachers have no right to be here."

Yet the university is public, supported by Oklahoma taxpayers like Larry Street, and its outside spaces are a traditional public forum for free expression of ideas. On what basis does Boren remove that right?

"They preach division."

Jesus did too. Boren conveniently ignores those passages of Scripture so that he can put forward his own ideas of the foundations of unity and what unity is supposed to look like.

"I request as a human being - leave."

Apparently it is "human" and good to plaster over divisions and perpetuate ideas of false peace.

"Diversity is our strength."

The amazing irony is evidently lost on Boren as he preaches diversity while removing dissenters from the grounds of the public university by threat of force. This is the oft-observed tolerance of the intolerant. Diversity for me, not for thee.

Of course, it should surprise no one whose eyes are open that liberals have no good, grown-up answers to problems like police brutality or racism; nor can they countenance enormous problems like the abortion genocide against black people. Yet the saddest part of this entire episode is the response of "Christians" to these preachers of wickedness. It is no surprise that a church culture that itself won't even try to offer real answers to systematic child sacrifice has prepared none of its 20 year old students to deal biblically with men and situations such as these, but it is heartbreaking. That the church people see fit to stand with the liberals and say the things they are saying tells us all we need to know about the health of the churches.

At some point an apparently professing student-athlete and church person by the name of Najee Bissoon stood up to take the megaphone. His message? "There's only one thing that can conquer hate, and that's f*cking love."

As that sinks in, consider that he apparently went on to lead a post-mob prayer circle in which they repeated the same liberal nonsense that Boren had affirmed, frosted lightly with christianoid verbiage. Very little in the way of biblical response is in evidence. Bissoon himself barely even blushed to offer his obscene reply to the preachers' words, yet put himself forward and allowed his to be seen as the Christian and commonsense response. Whether dropping an F-bomb in public in the name of Jesus is as bad as preaching what Larry and Jim preached is beside the point. Bissoon showed what is in his heart (Luke 6:45). When under pressure, it wasn't Holy Spirit that was squeezed out; it was wicked, foul language. I hope someone has gone to Bissoon to call him to repentance, as the profanity came out of him smoothly, by all appearances after much practice. I wonder why no Christian stood up to oppose these men and preach a message of true fidelity to Jesus' Gospel, neither partaking in the lies of the culture as encapsulated by President Boren nor the lies of self-righteous religion as demonstrated by Larry and Jim.

As one who ministers fairly regularly in roughly the same spot as these men used, I wonder now how this incident will affect other preachers like me going forward. Usually agitation at Dale Hall goes without opposition from campus police. Apart from that question, how will the student population be pre-disposed to judge anyone who stands in public and raises his voice and says stuff like "sin" and "Jesus"? As a crazy, racist, self-righteous moron, right? But I am none of those things, by God's grace, while Larry and Jim are. Yet Larry and Jim make themselves more visible by their disgraceful behavior.

Humanly speaking, therefore, true Gospel preachers will be viewed with unmerited suspicion by these people who have been exposed to Larry and Jim. In a sense the throngs reveal their hearts in that when righteous agitation exposing things like the sin leading all to Hell and the child sacrifice Holocaust comes their way, they largely ignore it, but when unrighteous agitation on a relatively minor topic crosses their path, they flock to interact, persecute, and be near. Ironically, this is a fulfillment of prophecies from the Apostle Paul -

1 Tim 4:1-2 - But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.

2 Tim 4:3-4 - For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

Usually those passages are cited to make sense of the huge followings of the likes of Joel Osteen and TD Jakes. The likes of Larry and Jim make a mockery of the Gospel just as JoelO and Jakes do, just in a different way, and people flock to them for similar reasons - to flee from the truth, embrace delusion, and feel justified in doing so.

2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 - those... perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.

It is actually a manifestation of the wrath of God that crowds flock to surround men like Jim and largely ignore righteous Gospel preaching. They can't even be bothered to actively hate the message; they just flit from one entertaining attraction to the next, indifferent, apathetic, and complacent. Wickedness comes in many forms. May God bring Larry and Jim to repentance, and may He deliver us all from all wickedness in all its shapes.

Debate with Randy Hartinger

At the 2nd so-called Black Mass in OKC, street preachers who tend toward the Pelagian and the abusive (those who I've been told sometimes call themselves the "Pervert Patrol", though that information might be flawed) were present from Tulsa. Brother Toby and I engaged them and asked them to speak with persuasiveness and grace with people, beseeching and pleading with them rather than berating them and calling names. They did not respond well.

I later encountered them outside the Joel Osteen "Night of Hope" event in Tulsa in April 2015. Abolitionists were agitating and proclaiming the Law and Gospel of God there, and these other preachers were also present, again repeating their abusive and mean-spirited behavior that we had previously observed in OKC. I took the opportunity to rebuke them publicly to their face in an interaction behind which I stand 100% as justified and indeed necessary and helpful, given who these men are and how they act.

A few months later I believe I commented on one of their videos either on that channel or on compatriot Chris Hale's channel (now defunct), and they responded, leading to a conversation of some length, (probably on this video, which has been taken down for some reason) during which the interlocutor (Peter Schultz) challenged me to a face-to-face debate, again including childish abusive language like "kiddo" and "we'll give you 30 minutes on Sunday to phone in and teach the church whatever you want to. Game? Doubt it, big boy" and "Had a real good laugh over the hypocrisy you displayed as you yelled 'sinner, sinner, sinner' in that whiney voice of yours".

I of course was more than happy to engage in such a debate. It turns out they didn't mean I'd debate one of them, though. I was put in touch via email with one Randy Hartinger, and figured he was a resident of Tulsa, so we made our plans, exchanged some emails about each other's positions for preparation sake, and then set the time and date.

I arrived at Schultz's house on 04Oct15, to find that I was to debate Hartinger, yes, but in fact via Skype, since he lives in Virginia and "acts as one church" with Schultz's house church via video conferencing. The video had been going for at least three hours when I arrived, so I guess those two churches "act as one" every Sunday or something via teleconference. Oookkaaaayyyy.

At any rate, we proceeded with the debate, and here it is:


To clarify a few things about Schultz's slanted "introduction":
--During the phone call mentioned at the 2:30 minute mark, I'm not at all confident that "he wanted to drop the call like a hot lava rock" is accurate. I was looking for teammates in street evangelism, and when I realised who he was and what he believes and how he acts, I understood it would be bad to continue wasting his time and mine. He makes it sound like I abruptly hung up. Typical.
--At the 3:10 mark, during our Facebook PM conversation, it's true that he said he couldn't meet on a Sunday and I was fine with that. I never offered again because at that point it was becoming clear that he was more than just some lost soul that could possibly be reached with a private conversation. Rather, he is a false teacher and a wolf to be opposed and exposed publicly.
--3:50 mark - I was at JoelO to preach the Gospel. The debate mentioned was part of the reason I was in Tulsa that weekend, but far from the only reason.

Also, for some reason around the 20:30 mark, I said that I did not attend the debate mentioned. I did actually attend most of it, but there was another presentation the night before that I did not attend, and due to my nervousness I experienced a brain fart and confused the two.

During the debate I certainly could have improved here and there but overall I believe it was a good use of time, for the record. Since I definitely do think that men like these give Gospel preachers a bad name, it is good that I can point to my interactions with men like them to show any honest inquirer that we are not on the same team.

Gospel preaching, New Year's Eve 2015/2016 in Oklahoma City

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Bonus points if you catch where any of the following words escape my lips:
--predestination
--election
--Calvin
--irresistible
--free will

15 defenses of open air preaching

One Daniel Courney wrote the following on Facebook. I heartily endorse almost all of this defense of that which needs no defense and so reproduce it here.
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Though there are many more reasons, here are 15 defenses of street/open-air preaching I wrote out this morning in response to a brother's request:

1. Street preaching is the foremost method God has used throughout the Bible to communicate His Word (our Lord and all the apostles and prophets were street/OA preachers; probably all five of our Lord's sermons recorded in Matthew were in the open-air (at very least the Sermon on the Mount in 5-7, the Sermon on the Parables of the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven in 13, and the Sermon on the Mount of Olives, 23-25, which are explicitly said to have occurred in the open air), most of the recorded sermons of the prophets and apostles were open-air sermons.

2. Street preaching turns the world upside down; it makes the church's presence felt by the world and demands a response. It is the most controversial form of evangelism and thus cannot be simply ignored by the world. It is, by its very nature, a publicity stunt.

3. Street preaching is one of the greatest antidotes to lukewarmness; it challenges our faith like no other spiritual exercise.

4. Street preaching is the form of evangelism most consistent with the definitions of the Hebrew and Greek words for "preach" (קרא; κηρύσσω), "evangelize" (בּשׂר; εὐαγγελίζω) and "boldness" (παῤῥησία) in the Bible.

5. Street preaching, because it is the bravest, boldest, and most intrepid form of glorifying the Lord and spreading His Word, is thus the greatest antidote to being ashamed of the Gospel or confessing His Name before men. It literally glorifies the Name of the Lord the most, in the most rigid sense of this concept -- God's glories and Name being trumpeted on the rooftops.

6. Street preaching invites the opportunity for faith-refining persecution like no other form of ministry.

7. Street preaching is the most aggressive, most militant, and fastest method of world evangelism and thus hastens the return of our Lord; whereas preaching in a church house can reach a 100 in a year, street preaching travels a 100 souls per hour.

I will add to this that, biblically speaking, when you are talking inside a "church house" (or a house church), that's not preaching, no matter how loud you talk or how much "authority" you project. Preaching is, biblically speaking, what is done out in the culture to lost people. So I would edit Point #7 to "whereas teaching in a church house" or "whereas lecturing", as well as fleshing out the very real differences between "reaching" someone with a lecture among Christians vs reaching someone with the Gospel in an open air preaching context.

8. Street preaching is more authoritative than one-on-one evangelism; its sermonic and rhetorical nature ensures that those who refuse to listen the gospel in a dialogue must hear it from the monologue of street preacher.

This is not a great point, as it trades on a dubious definition of the word "authoritative". Take that way, though, and it's a good point.

9. Street preaching is the form of evangelism most complementary to the doctrines of grace; only a true Calvinist with a high view of God recognizes the win-win scenario of God being glorified in the salvation of the elect and in the hardening of the reprobate to the vindication of His justice.

10. Street preaching makes the presence and power of the church known in the community like no other form of outreach, as it is most literally fulfilling the commands to set our light upon a lampstand, being a city set on a hill, and proclaiming from the rooftops what He has whispered in our ear.

11. Street preaching is the most inspirational form of evangelism; it is a double-edged sword in that it not only saves the elect outside the fold but greatly motivates and inflames the esprit de corps and morale of the army of God, the church. Many a lukewarm Laodicean Christian has been motivated to commit themselves to Christ, personal holiness, and world evangelism more seriously due to a street sermon more directly intended for the lost.

12. Street preaching is the most superabundantly fruitful form of evangelism. Ask any veteran field preacher.

13. Street preaching is the most manly form of evangelism; it takes most literally the command to "take dominion". Western culture has been emasculated, and sadly it seems as if the church has not been spared the effects of this neutering it seems. Now is the time for men of God to arise and to fulfill the command "Stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong" (1 Corinthians 16:13).

14. Street preaching is the most angelic form of evangelism (the root word of evangelism being aggelos or angel); see Rev. 14:6.

15. Street preaching is safeguard against the erosion of freedom of speech; the day may soon come when America becomes a totalitarian state when the luxury of the constitutional right of freedom of speech is overturned by the SCOTUS. While you have the freedom to preach openly without the possibility of criminal prosecution or any life-threatening violent persecution may you seize the initiative!

Amen!

The negligible danger of making evangelism one's mistress

UPDATE: Tony Miano is on a downward slide into a very dangerous spiritual position and is leading his family down that path as well. As I said in my review of his book, "I sometimes honestly fear for him at the time when (not if) the elder(s) of his church fail him."
Well, now I fear for him even more. See here and then more importantly here. Lord have mercy. He who has presumed to lecture so many, block them on social media, and sow division between them and other believers on the basis of ecclesiology, "pastoral authority", "the authority of the local church", and whether one has been "sent" to do evangelism has shown himself to be an immature nomad, tossed about by winds and waves of doctrine.
Psalm 9:15 - The nations have sunk down in the pit which they have made; In the net which they hid, their own foot has been caught.
Proverbs 29:6 - By transgression an evil man is ensnared, But the righteous sings and rejoices.

And yet...
Proverbs 24:17-18 - Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles; or the LORD will see it and be displeased, and turn His anger away from him.

Pray for the man. Pray he will repent of all his bombastic rhetoric and realise the massive piles of hypocrisy in which he has engaged the last few years.
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Certain street preachers of some popularity take every opportunity they can, it seems, to warn their readers/listeners against making evangelism and open-air preaching a "mistress" (here for example) and thus neglecting family, marriage, and the more "mundane" (as it were) aspects of church membership.
Yes, that happens, here and there. Yes, nobody should neglect their family or other responsibilities while they do other good things. Yes, it is a warning well taken. Yes, it should be stated here and there.
But is that a relevant warning to the vast, vast majority of professing Christians in America? Are we in the middle of a huge movement of men spending forty hours per week at work and then another forty out on the street or at the abortion mill preaching and evangelising while their families languish at home? No.
So, forget a "huge movement" - are we witnessing even a significant minority of the professing Christians of America doing so or anything close to it? No.
As conceded above, of course to do such a thing would be bad and sinful. But there's something else that is bad and sinful, which *is* in fact a vice shared by the vast, vast majority of professing Christians in America - a profound and vast complacency vis-à-vis the fact that people, BY THE THOUSANDS, are dying and going to Hell and murdering their babies, every single day, and that same vast, vast majority is doing nothing about it while they pursue their leisure, vacations, book studies, sports and fantasy sports, and potlucks.
These men are like doctors who during your annual checkup make a big deal out of your chronically stuffy nose while not even mentioning the fact that your aorta is 99% blocked and that your blood pressure and cholesterol are way too high. Upon coming to one's senses and a full realisation of the actual situation and its dangers, one would abandon that physician and warn others about his neglect and/or incompetence.

Preaching the Gospel at Joel Osteen's "Night of Hope"

I guess if people want to say I don't preach the Gospel, or I only preach about abortion, or I sit behind my keyboard all the time...
I guess, just let 'em say what they want to say.

"Preaching in Tragedy: Ye Shall All Likewise Perish..." by JD Hall

I was thinking about saying it. JD Hall said it better.

Preaching repentance at the Murrah Bombing 20th Anniversary

So Slick Willy Clinton, Mary Fallin, and Michael W Smith showed up to participate in the external trappings of false American churchianity on Sunday, April 19, 2015, the 20th anniversary of the OKC Murrah Building bombing.

At least a couple of people were moved by the Spirit of God to proclaim the message that really needed to be heard:

Project Frontlines, Norman High School, 21 April 2015

And people ask me why I homeschool...
And people ask me, "What about socialisation for your children?"

The "Herald" Society

I keep hearing people use the word "herald". And they apply it to someone who goes to a building every single Sunday and lectures the same people over and over again about things that in many ways they should already know and be learning themselves (and teaching others [Heb 5:12]).

That's not what a herald is, folks. A herald goes forth from the King, bearing the King's message, and he gives it to ALL the King's subjects. He doesn't put out a sign, "Come hear the King's message. Once a week, for 30 minutes. Only inside this building. You know, if you want to," and then wait for the King's rebellious subjects to come to him.

There's a name for someone who lectures to a small subset of the King's subjects over and over again at a set time and place, but it's not a "herald".

I must admit that it is hard to see friends and acquaintances post and repost notifications about "Herald" Society get-togethers as if these were beneficial to the kingdom of God. I truly believe that there is a lot more bad than good about such things. Most of the reason why I think this centers around the hypocrisy that is more than evident in so many of the dealings of these men.

Take the "H"S meeting currently underway in Milton, FL as an example. As part of the buildup leading to this event, Tony Miano among others have put out some material encouraging people to attend. As this remains a topic of interest to me, I have followed some of that material, partly to see whether the "H"S has learned from previous errors which I have personally documented. To be more specific, the errors center around such things as

• forming a parachurch ministry, all the while decrying parachurch ministries.
• using the word "Herald" in the title of the society, all the while intentionally not doing the things that heralds do.
• using the word "Herald" in the title of the society and saying stuff like "No king but Christ", all the while putting obstacles in the way of those who desire to obey the Great Commission (like women for example) and doing all they can to force potential actual heralds to get permission from someone who acts like a king in demanding that people submit to his own rule before the herald obeys the actual King.
• teaching the sufficiency of Scripture, all the while imposing extrabiblical traditions on others, such as "the call to preach", requiring that men "be called" before they are permitted to engage in open-air preaching (OAP). 
• trumpeting the importance of the local church, all the while actually negating its importance (see more on that below).
• calling people to waste time and money that could have been put to use in their own localities, and in exchange giving them something (a series of lectures) that could easily have been communicated by an iTunes podcast.
• teaching Calvinist (and frequently cessationist) doctrine, all the while pushing a view of sanctification that I can only describe as charismatic Wesleyan, in that the "call to preach" maps quite well onto the "second blessing" that in other circles might be thought of as the "baptism of the Holy Spirit".

All of this is hypocrisy, but let's focus on that last item for a moment. The funny thing about it is that in charismatic theology, this "second blessing", this "baptism in the Holy Spirit", is usually pretty objectively verifiable - does the allegedly secondly-blessed person speak in tongues? If yes, they figure that the person has been baptised in the Holy Spirit.
And even leaving aside the fact that such a thing as the "call to preach" is not Scriptural, like at all, how do you figure out whether someone has received that particular second blessing? I keep asking the question. The most common answer would seem to be something like "the elders of your church tell you".

Which leads me to a video hyping the "H"S that Tony Miano put out, in which he reiterates some of the things he and Jeff Rose discussed in a recent podcast and in which he expresses more of this typical "H"S hypocrisy. Note that:

• attendees will listen to lectures for 20 hours, in 3 days. That's almost 7 hours of lecture per day, all in the name of "equipping". (As if anyone can remember a significant % of that amount of lecturing.)
• we should not expect a "caste system". And yet:
  --speakers speak from an elevated stage, from a thing called a "pulpit".
  --the centerpiece of the event is listening to these exalted figures.
  --the main attraction is the names they were able to attract to speak - James White, Earl Blackburn, etc.
  --there will be those who are "called to OAP" and those who aren't.
  --anyone can listen to lectures but only the "called" few get to put it into practice in the primary way that Jesus, the prophets, and the apostles did.
• Miano says that "speakers will speak of their love for the church, love for the bride of Christ, and love for reaching the lost with the Gospel". And I guess they'll demonstrate that by not modeling how the bride of Christ ought to be living, by implying very strongly that the mission of the church is to sit down, shaddup, and listen to Great Men talk, and by not even trying to reach the lost with the Gospel, because...
• there won't be any organised outreach to the lost during the entire duration of the "H"S meeting.
  Miano says, "don't expect a pep rally for OAP. Don't expect a lot of time on the streets. We want to focus on teaching, prayer, worship, the edification of pastors and their churches, and encouraging the bride of Christ to lift up the Gospel."
  So they're going to do that by not spending time on the streets, and by not proclaiming the Gospel, and by staying behind the walls of a church building, in a different city, just like most everyone does when they're at their own church. By not heralding.
  And then when, at the 6-minute mark of the video, Miano exhorts his listeners that "it is time for Christians to get out of the Christian bubble", the irony is intolerable.
• the excuse given for not modeling or training in OAP is because "that's the responsibility of the local church."
  --But teaching theology isn't?
  --People can't sit in pews at their own churches?
  --Wouldn't it be better to spend the time that attendees spent traveling and pew-sitting at the "H"S in deepening relationships at the attendees' own local churches?
  Wouldn't it also be better to put the traveling and lodging money the attendees used for the "H"S event to use at their own local church? Isn't the "H"S actually working opposite to its stated desires?
  --It's not the responsibility of each local church to teach about the Bible and talk about love for the church, bride of Christ, and reaching the lost with the Gospel?
  --It never occurs to the "H"S organisers that most pastors wouldn't have any idea how to train anyone in evangelism, let alone OAP?
  --Or that saying "only called people should OAP" gives a convenient out to anyone who has ulterior motives in not challenging fear or incurring the anger, slander, and scorn of worldly people?

All these things considered, it is entirely unclear why anyone thinks that putting together a "H"S event is a good idea. It is even less clear why anyone would want to attend, apart from the proffered opportunity to, I'm sorry to say it like this but I believe it is largely true, listen to heroes, Great Men, talk from an elevated position so they can consume more information. Because many think to at least some extent that their closeness to God is necessarily directly proportional to how much theology they know.


It seems like a far better name for the Herald Society would be the Pew-Sitter Society. They model during their meetings what they actually want Christians to be when they go back to their own communities and churches - pew-sitters until someone in a more elevated ecclesiastical position gives them permission to go love their neighbor and obey the King.

Millstones

A fellow abolitionist is struggling a bit with the implications of following Jesus and preferring His kingdom over the kingdoms of men, and what it might look like if "elders" in their church should come out in opposition to activities that glorify Jesus in this dark society. Part of the controversy centers around the extrabiblical idea, based solely in traditions of men and therefore falling under the category of millstones tied around necks (Luke 17:2), or heavy burdens tied on shoulders (Matthew 23:4), traditions that make void the Word of God (Mark 7:1-13), that a local church must "send out" or "authorise" the Christian to go obey Jesus.

One excuse they give is expressed this way:
They don't like the idea of a guy who's a lone ranger type out yelling heresy on a street corner.

I have a few reactions to the sentiment they are expressing:

1) Being "sent" or part of a local church doesn't fix that problem. It might help, maybe. Just depends on a case by case basis. But you know what else might help maybe on a case by case basis? One on one taking the corner screamer to the Word of God. If his heart is humble and pliable before God, he'll submit to what the Scripture says. If it's not, the whole church and all the elders in the world won't change his mind and conduct.

2) Would that there were more people willing to stand on a corner and preach, not fewer. Many "elders" want a kabal in which they are some of the few members who get to "preach" (when in fact preaching, biblically speaking, is not what they do. Rather, it's what WE do when we are out in the culture.)


3) I don't see a whole lot of "elders" putting hard and serious thought into what they did and/or are doing to make their church an uncomfortable haven for someone who at the moment is a lone ranger. It may be that this lone ranger preacher holds to heresy and/or is in personal sin. Or it may be that he can't find a church that is being faithful to the Word of God.
It's easy for an "elder" to blame the evangelist guy. It's easy to hate on such a man anyway. He's a radical. He upsets people. He causes bad press to come to the conservative churches of his area.

4) If they're so concerned about that situation, the answer is not to stop people from going out. One possible good answer is to go out with them and help them, guide them. Mr. Elder, if your experience and biblical knowledge and wisdom are so vast, put them to use in something worthwhile (for a change) and help hone and sharpen this person whose zeal will help hone and sharpen you in a way that you need to be honed and sharpened.

At the abortion mill today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSCbJC01vv0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVPEYZJs1V0
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LertbuIVfOE

Where are you, church of God?

The Nature of Preaching and Some Implications Thereof

There is no exhortation to pay close attention to the sermons or other 'preaching' within the context of the assembled group. This is an argument from silence to be sure, but it is worth noting nevertheless that there is no mention of preaching pastors and listening congregations. In summary of the evidence of the apostolic fathers it can be said that such concepts as 'preacher' and 'preaching' are only in contexts of Gospel proclamation to unbelievers. When it comes to the activity within the church, however, fellowship, teaching, admonition and social care are emphasized. Nowhere do we find a discussion of the pastor preaching to the congregation on a regular basis. From this we should not conclude that it never happened (for on special occasions it was required, as noted above) but that it was simply not the customary practice. Rather than one man preaching to an audience the church of the apostolic fathers experienced active involvement of the membership. This is a proper reflection of the picture we have in the New Testament itself... The common practice today of the clergyman preaching a sermon to a passive audience seems to have its origin in tradition (and/or expedience) rather than in a Scriptural pattern ("'Preacher' and 'Preaching': Some Lexical Observations," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society [December – 1981, Vol.24/No.4] pp.320-321).

Below you can find the results of an exhaustive concordance search through the New Testament for words related to preaching and proclaiming, to find their referents. I found that the Greek words kerusso (κηρύσσω) and euagelizzo (εὐαγγελίζω) were by far the most common words that communicate the idea of preaching or proclamation.

Normally in a modern American institutional church context, we think of "preaching" as that which the pastor does from the pulpit during the Sunday morning gathering, which forms the backbone of the teaching and theological education and confession of believers in the church. We can see in the NT, however, that there is no unequivocal reference to “preaching” in connection to what is done during the assembly of the church, while there are tons of references to preaching being an activity by which Christians reach out to unbelievers. (It would seem that “teaching”, didasko [διδάσκω] and the like, would be more along the lines of what the NT authors thought ought to be done by believers with other believers, but that’s another analysis.)

In which my tweet about the Herald Society is vindicated

On my "to listen to occasionally" list of podcasts is Tony Miano's "Cross Encounters". I can't remember which episode it was, but some time before the November 2014 Herald Society conference, he spent some time hyping the conference and encouraging listeners to attend. My interest was piqued when he specifically stated that this year's HS conference would not feature very much street evangelism or open air preaching (OAP), but would rather focus on sermons wherein the conference attendees would sit and listen to someone talk from the stage.

This struck me as a bizarre waste of time and energy - could not sermons like these be recorded beforehand, or preached lectured at one's own church or something in some sort of collaborative effort, and later made available for download to whoever wanted them? The whole point of calling your conference the Herald Society would seem to be to get heralds together. You get however many dozens of people interested in OAP, doesn't it make a ton of sense to actually go out and herald the Gospel all over the place?

If an OAPreacher is a candle illuminating darkness within our culture, what happens when you get 50 of those candles together in one place? That much more brightness and illumination, right? So when we read things like Matthew 5...

14“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; 15nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

...wouldn't it be a good idea to go ahead and shine that bright light to those who are in darkness? How is it a good idea to take that light, all those OAPreachers, and hide them behind the walls of a building, using all their time to preach around 20 (probably pretty lengthy) sermons in 2 1/2 days?

Preaching at the University of Memphis

At the University of Memphis five days ago.
130 abolitionists converged on the campus to expose the evil of abortion and call students to repent and believe the Gospel and obey the law of Jesus Christ. In the afternoon the conversations continued, and a good opportunity to preach presented itself.

Some Bad Advice From Tony Miano

UPDATE: Tony Miano is on a downward slide into a very dangerous spiritual position and is leading his family down that path as well. As I said in my review of his book, "I sometimes honestly fear for him at the time when (not if) the elder(s) of his church fail him."
Well, now I fear for him even more. See here and then more importantly here. Lord have mercy. He who has presumed to lecture so many, block them on social media, and sow division between them and other believers on the basis of ecclesiology, "pastoral authority", "the authority of the local church", and whether one has been "sent" to do evangelism has shown himself to be an immature nomad, tossed about by winds and waves of doctrine.
Psalm 9:15 - The nations have sunk down in the pit which they have made; In the net which they hid, their own foot has been caught.
Proverbs 29:6 - By transgression an evil man is ensnared, But the righteous sings and rejoices.

And yet...
Proverbs 24:17-18 - Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles; or the LORD will see it and be displeased, and turn His anger away from him.

Pray for the man. Pray he will repent of all his bombastic rhetoric and realise the massive piles of hypocrisy in which he has engaged the last few years.

============================================

Tony Miano, well-known street preacher, had this to say on Facebook recently:

Can't find a solid church that supports open-air preaching?
Then go to a solid church that doesn't support open-air preaching, and submit to the authority of the pastors/elders of the church. It is more important that you are a serving member of a local church than it is for you to open-air preach.
Christian Brother: God has certainly called you to be a hand, or foot, or arm, or leg in His Body. But He may NOT have called you to open-air preach. The fact that you want to open-air preach doesn't mean God has called you to open-air preach. You may not be finding a church that supports open-air preaching because that may not be the role the Lord has for you in His body.
So, get plugged into a local church; live in submission to the elders and in love with the rest of the congregation. Be willing to work the nursery, or scrub a toilet, or teach a Sunday school class (if you're qualified). Be willing to serve for no other reason than it is a fulfillment of the two greatest commandments--to love God and to love people.
The Lord may yet call you to open-air preach (if you are a man), and you will know that because your pastors/elders will affirm your call to preach the gospel in the open-air. And they will likely affirm that call once they see you are willing to submit to authority, serve the Body, can rightly handle the Scriptures, and once they see that the gospel of Jesus Christ is more important to you than hearing your own voice preaching it.
Give it some thought.

I gave it some thought, and I'd like to share a few.

Notice that Miano didn't frame the issue in terms of whether the church thinks the individual reader ought to open-air preach (OAP). It is plausible a church might not want a particular individual to OAP. For example, if the aspiring preacher is not very good at explaining the Gospel, or he hasn't mastered his temper yet and easily gets mad and challenges people to fistfights. But Miano is talking about OAP in general.

On the other hand, Miano seems to be referring to a situation where an aspiring OA preacher is not a member of a church because he can't find one that supports OAP. It is a pitifully sad commentary on the state of Reformedigelical churches in the West that this is a plausible scenario. I would at least agree with Miano on this - if you're not a member of a church, there had better be a really really good reason. Ie, you live in a location where despite faithful searching you have not been able to connect with anybody who actually loves Jesus.

On the other other hand (which I guess gets us back to the original hand), one might decide that until the Lord provides something better, he should probably just join the best church he can find and try to influence it toward following the Scripture. This may in some cases result in conflict between the person wanting to be faithful to Jesus and the leadership and/or the rest of the congregation who are all too happy doing their own thing, following their own autonomous desires and preferences, and ignoring major portions of the Scripture in so doing. What then?

Before we get into that, I'd like to ask this: What makes Miano so sure that a church that doesn't support open-air preaching is indeed solid? Evangelism and the Great Commission are kind of a big deal when it comes to properly obeying Jesus and fulfilling the two greatest commandments, and if a church is not interested in obeying Jesus, that's not a solid church. It doesn't matter what they confess, what they say with their lips. The Scripture is full of rebukes of false professors who say one thing and do another. Like the Pharisees. Like the Jerusalemites who said "the temple of YHWH! The temple of YHWH! The temple of YHWH!" Like the false prophets who said "peace, peace" when there was no peace.

Perhaps the church thinks open-air preaching is mean and nasty in and of itself. I would suggest in that case the OA preacher invite people from the church to come out with him, to show them how it's done and to demonstrate that, while of course someone can be mean and nasty in virtually any situation, OAP can be done in a way that is loving, kind, and understanding.

What if no one from the church is willing to go watch, and yet they continue to insist that OAP, a ministry that Jesus and Paul and Peter did a whole lot, is not good? Well, then, those people need to be called to repentance. Or I suppose you could leave and be a "nomad", but then that would leave the people in the church in unchallenged deception, which is not good for the church he leaves behind. It is actually the opposite of love for those people.

On the other hand, what if a few people go out with the OA preacher and everything goes well, and yet they continue to oppose OAP in and of itself? Would not the conversation then have to shift to their biblical reasons to justify their opposition? It may be that the leadership of the church would in that case lord it over the OA preacher, citing some imaginary "authority" to tell him that OAP is not OK, with no other reason than that they say so. Such person(s) would be deep in sin and rebellion against the role they're supposed to be playing in their local church. The OA preacher, being a part of that local church himself, would be obligated (not permitted, by the way, obligated) to get one or two other witnesses and rebuke that person, initiating church discipline for unrepentantly sinning against the OA preacher and against the rest of the congregation for refusing to teach the whole counsel of God.

1 Timothy 5:19-21 - Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses. Those who continue in sin, rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality.

Miano later says this:

The Lord may yet call you to open-air preach (if you are a man), and you will know that because your pastors/elders will affirm your call to preach the gospel in the open-air.

There's a reason why he didn't include any Bible citations along with this statement. Nothing in God's Word would lead us to believe this is true. It also exhibits a puzzling naïveté. Does Miano really think that the most common reason why a pastor might oppose OAP would be that the OA preacher in question has a history of "rebelling" against the pastor's "authority"? What does "pastoral authority" even mean, in a situation where the pastor is not following the Word of God?

Let's continue with another statement from Miano:

Christian Brother: God has certainly called you to be a hand, or foot, or arm, or leg in His Body. But He may NOT have called you to open-air preach. The fact that you want to open-air preach doesn't mean God has called you to open-air preach. You may not be finding a church that supports open-air preaching because that may not be the role the Lord has for you in His body.

Miano is equivocating on the uses of the word "calling" in this paragraph. The first occurrence is fine - it is indeed true that God has called every individual Christian to be some body part in His Body. Miano seems to be assuming that 1 Corinthians 12's discussion of body parts refers to a given local church, which I would dispute, but let's leave that aside for now. How do we know that God has called us to be a body part in the Body of Christ? The Scripture says so.

So how does Miano propose that an individual can know that he is "called" to do OAP? I have asked this question many times and never received an answer. It is a major weakness in his book "Should She Preach?", which I documented in my review thereof. Which Scripture passage leads us to expect that God would continually send individual people specific callings to specific tasks or ministries, going forward throughout the ages during which the church would subsist? I have argued that no such Scripture exists. This is where the equivocation comes in - the first time Miano says "calling", he is correctly referring to biblical command. The second and third times, he is trading on a mistaken tradition of man that is sadly common in Reformedigelicalism.

Miano is doubtless aware of the Modern-Day Downgrade at work in the Reformedigelical churches of the West. Part of the Downgrade is the trend toward that which is easy and adds to the comfort level of the partakers. As an experienced street preacher myself, I know well that OAP incurs a very high level of discomfort, and Miano of course knows this too. Since it is uncomfortable, people don't want to do it, and this leads to their making excuses, twisting the Scripture so they can justify their apathy toward the lost. This is a far more plausible explanation for why someone might not be able to find a church that supports OAP.

So, get plugged into a local church; live in submission to the elders and in love with the rest of the congregation. Be willing to work the nursery, or scrub a toilet, or teach a Sunday school class (if you're qualified). Be willing to serve for no other reason than it is a fulfillment of the two greatest commandments--to love God and to love people.

Of course, Christians should be members of a local church; I don't dispute that. I would take issue with verbiage like "live in submission to the elders", however. If the elders tell you not to do a biblical thing, or to do an unbiblical thing, it is no virtue to obey. It is actually sin to obey these lesser voices in that case. Sin because you ought to be doing the right thing, and also sin because you are acting in a cowardly way, following the "overlord"'s orders rather than standing against evil and exposing it (Jeremiah 7, Ephesians 5:11) out of love for the deceived elder(s) as well as love for the congregation.

You can't actually love your congregation if you are sinning by knowingly withholding from them that which they need, that of which you know you ought to help them take hold.

James 4:17 - Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

Taken in the context of the situation he is laying out, Miano is actually indirectly recommending a sinful course of action.

Also, because of the discomfort involved in OAP, there are precious few people willing to do it. Yet I challenge you to show me another ministry in which the Gospel can be spread so widely to so many people in such an efficient manner as OAP. I'm not criticising other methods of evangelism. I'm saying that OAP has its place, and Jesus chose it for a reason.

Mark 1:14-15 - Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Matthew 4:23 - Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.
Matthew 9:35 - Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.
Luke 20:1 - On one of the days while He was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders confronted Him...

If your church meets in a separate building, far be it from me to suggest you not scrub a toilet. If y'all meet in a house, scrub the toilet there. Go for it! Doing that sort of thing and OAP are hardly mutually exclusive. I mean, unless your nursery duties are late on Friday night or something, which is often a really good time of week to do OAP.

The problem here is not whether an OA preacher in a church should say, "OAP is all I do within my local church." That would be foolish and wrong. But Miano is not only acting like it is better to do something that most anyone can and is probably willing to do (since scrubbing toilets is, let's face it, not too hard) than to do something that is hard but that results in tons of people hearing the Gospel proclaimed with boldness and power, for no other reason than that the OA preacher's church is in sin and thinks that OAP is bad.

It would be far better to say this: Be willing to OAP for no other reason than it is a fulfillment of the two greatest commandments--to love God and to love people. And it is love not only to the lost who hear it, but also to the church members who probably have an unbiblical worldview undergirding their unbiblical objection to OAP; the OA preacher has the chance to set them free from these wrong views. This is pleasing to God.

Two more notes:

The Lord may yet call you to open-air preach (if you are a man)

Please, again, see my review of Miano's book on the issue of whether only men are biblically warranted to OAP.

once they see that the gospel of Jesus Christ is more important to you than hearing your own voice preaching it.

True, the OA preacher must guard against pride in his heart. But when fewer than thousands of Christians are doing OAP in one's area and there is opportunity, it should be done in a biblical manner, no matter whether the elders of your church are sinfully suppressing it.

Speaking for myself, it matters not whether it's my voice. I want many voices proclaiming the Good News of the risen Savior. And if there are none, I want at least one. If that's me, so be it.

Philippians 1:15-18 - Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will; the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice.

I do not permit a woman to speak louder than 60 dB