by Eddie Lyons
President of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International
The story related in Mark 16, the story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and its implications, is the story that changed all of human history. The story is of a God so holy that no corruption can come into His presence. The story is of human beings who are sinful and dying. And so how can a holy God and sinful people ever be reconciled. All the righteous works of mankind are as “filthy rags” in the economy of this holy God. God is so holy he could not just wink at sin, sweep it under the rug, ignore it, or forget about it. His nature would not allow this.
And so what does He do? What is the plan? The holiness of God and the mercy of this God of great compassion come together on the cross where God Himself dies in all of his holiness to reconcile mankind. Jesus dies, and then three days later he rose again. And the story of the resurrection was not easy to believe. Even his disciples were early skeptics, some even after he appeared to them.
Their story was that they met a man named Jesus who forever changed their story. He taught truth, had incredible insight and wisdom, could feed the multitude, heal the sick, and even raise the dead. But he had been violently crucified and laid in a tomb, and now he was dead, and they were confused and did not know what to do.
Their hopes that He was the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world, had been crushed when he breathed his last breath and died, and now stunned, confused, and lost, they wept. And on Sunday these witnesses started coming and telling them absurd and impossible accounts of seeing Jesus and they could not believe. And then Jesus Himself appeared. Seeing the risen Christ they knew this story was THE STORY. God had come to save them. God had not left them alone. And then Jesus told them to go tell the Story.
Mark 15:15 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.
THIS IS OUR FELLOWSHIP’S STORY
The BBFI exists because of this Story. We are here today because we heard this story of a God who is here, a God who gave His Son to die for us, and we have to keep this story going.
This Fellowship itself is not an ecclesiastical organization as much as it is a collection of stories.
Stories like this one. There was a church in Tyler, TX, whose pastor was not content to just preach the Gospel in his town. He had a passion for people to hear about Jesus Christ. He left Tyler and began a tent revival in nearby Center, TX, with the intention of starting a church. The pastor’s name was John Rawlings, and during the revival meeting the Hughes family was saved. The mother of this family had a son serving in the U.S. Air Force in the Philippines. She asked Mr. Rawlings if they had any missionaries in the Philippines. He gave her the names of Frank Hooge, Elmer Gullion, Joe Vella, and others. She wrote to her son Bob and told him to go visit these missionaries. And so Bob Hughes traveled to Manila from the airbase and met these missionaries. He began making the trip often and attended the church of Frank Hooge, and there he heard the story of Jesus. One night he made his way to the base chapel and prayed and accepted Christ. The story of Jesus became his story.
His military service ended, and he went to Baptist Bible College where he met and married his wife Helen. The couple made plans to return to the Philippines as missionaries with their baby, who later became my wife Cindy.
How does this happen, that a man from Texas and other ordinary people are able to do this? They could never have gone as missionaries by themselves. They needed a church with people who cared enough for the mission to send them, a Fellowship to approve them, and many churches to support them. Church planting and missions is not a one-man show. It is the collective efforts of many unified in heart and purpose to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. It is the idea that people who hear about this great God in heaven Who sent His son because He wants to save them if they will call upon Him is the most important message on the planet and it must be shared.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LOCAL CHURCH AND THE STORY
People ask what is the BBFI? How do you join the BBFI? We are a unique group. We are not structured for control but for cooperation. One pastor described the BBFI like this:
The BBF is the only no-strings-attached network in existence for church planters. Every other group for church planters requires that they give between six to ten percent of their offerings back in perpetuity. All we ask is that you pay it forward to somebody else in the network.
Our movement is designed for entrepreneurs. Our missionaries don’t have managers telling them what to do or where to plant churches. Our church planters don’t have babysitters who can fire them. Sink or swim, it’s up to them. But in this network there are people around who are willing to help you along.
It pretty much comes down to this. If you love the Gospel and are compelled to get this story out to the people around the block and around the world and desire to do more than you could ever do alone, we think we have a pretty good plan to make that happen. And at the center of that plan is the local church
The local church is the plan of Jesus to reach this world. Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Now, I don’t have to convince this group that the local church is the centerpiece of evangelism and discipleship.
It is the local church that keeps the story of Jesus being told. Week after week, year after year, we tell the Story. This is the Story the world needs to hear.
If a cure for cancer was developed in some lab somewhere, it would be of little value if it did not find its way into the local doctor’s office and was delivered at the local level. Jesus planned for local. It is the ordinary, constant, year-after-year story sharing of ordinary people in our local churches that change the world.
The power of this Fellowship is in the local church. Our churches are different. Some are in rural areas, and others are in cities. Some are big, and some are small, but each one is a place where the conversations about the Gospel take place week after week. I sat with a lady this week who told me she made a profession of faith when she married her husband, but over the next ten years, as she attended church, she began to realize she really had not accepted Christ. Finally, after sitting uncomfortably through hundreds of services, she made it real. Why? Because, the local church is powerful.
A couple weeks ago, my wife prayed with a teenage girl who responded to the invitation. She lived in a girls’ home, and so many bad things had happened to her, but she told my wife, “I’m just afraid I can’t be good enough to be saved, and I don’t know why God let so many bad things happen to me.” The conversation started, and that morning my wife led her to accept Christ. This just doesn’t get old. In this Fellowship we are committed to the local church.
But to get my missionaries to the field, I need you. This idea of world evangelism is bigger than just one church. That is why our founders pulled together and created this Fellowship. There was a desire on the part of local church pastors to be part of something bigger. We all want that, for the Great Commission is bigger than any one of us can do alone.
So, now I have been elected the president of this Fellowship, and I will be working for that principle of local church cooperation to obey the Great Commission, and by doing this our Fellowship will strengthen the grassroots, protect the unity, and create a culture of encouragement and inspiration.
The founders of our Fellowship, all local church pastors, held in common a love of the Gospel, and the love for the local church, and a heart for missions, and a short list of defined critical doctrines. Those doctrines are found in the document we often refer to as the 20 Articles of Faith. It is here that we have agreement. These articles provide a boundary and definition to who we are. Based on this common ground we can voluntarily become organizationally and relationally connected.
What happens, though, when the connections break down? Historically, keeping the unity in this group is one difficult endeavor, but it is critical because when we don’t keep the unity we fragment and splinter.
Local churches unified under a Fellowship increase their ability to evangelize the world, plant churches, and train leaders. The reason for our existence is missionary. It is this unity of purpose while allowing for the autonomy of the local church that is our DNA. One of the things we must guard against is the disunity that could fracture us and weaken our collective efforts to spread the Gospel. We are perhaps the only network of churches that provides a vehicle for cooperation while protecting our freedom. There are no demands outside of agreeing with the 20 Articles of Faith and a heart for world evangelism by freely affiliating organizationally and relationally with other leaders with the same passion. There has always been tension because of differences in local church preferences and practices but our heart for souls to come to Christ has united us. No one is obligated to support any entity or any missionary they do not choose to support.
In 1959 there was a challenge to the unity of the Fellowship. Let me give you the “Cliff Notes” of what happened.
Wendell Zimmerman, who was one of the key founders of the Fellowship, was a natural to become the next president of the Fellowship. His candidacy became a “hot potato” because he and his church accepted non-Baptist baptism under certain conditions. A move was made in 1959 to add to the BBFI constitution wording that would have excluded any candidate who held Zimmerman’s position from being a candidate for national office. The measure was in fact voted on and passed before lunch, only to have the men return after lunch to reverse their decision and commission a 12-month study among the pastors regarding this idea of expanding qualifications for officers.
When they returned the next year the list of proposed reasons for exclusion of a pastor from leadership was lengthy and included more than the proposed alien immersion requirement. Some pastors had called for a statement against “Baptist Bride teaching, saying most of our pastors don’t believe it.” Others had proposed a rule against use of wine in communion. Still others wished to exclude anyone who was a lodge member, to exclude anyone who was divorced and remarried, and even to exclude anyone who allowed mixed swimming at camps, and more.
In the end, Fellowship leaders, after much prayer and seeking the Lord, decided against adding these additional requirements, saying that these additions infringed on the local church autonomy and would serve to weaken the spread of the Gospel through the collective efforts of the Fellowship because they would potentially be wedges that separate. In the end, the passion for the mission to reach the world with the Gospel of Jesus was preeminent.
There has always been this tension. It is the duty of the leaders of this Fellowship to protect both the autonomy of the local church and the unity of the Fellowship.
Once again, today, we as your leaders choose to not impose our personal preferences on you, but to protect the freedom within the 20 Articles of Faith and the unity of purpose to accomplish the Great Commission.
And so today we go back to the values that have been handed down by our predecessors. I would like to suggest a framework for us to understand how to keep the unity in the Fellowship so we can accomplish more.
The definition of working with others in a fellowship implies that there is a difference between the local church and the Fellowship. No one can demand that everyone in the Fellowship do everything or see everything the way they do at the local church level. This is important. When we gather at our meetings we are not a local church — we are a Fellowship. Within the local church there can be an expansion in thought and practice outside the 20 Articles, but those expansions cannot be applied to other churches.
As pastors we have to make decisions. We can’t lead functioning churches without deciding who we are and what we are going to do. We pastors have to decide what Bible version to use in our church. We have to decide what we will name our church. We have to decide what strategy and programs we are going to use to accomplish the mission. You actually can’t choose everything. You have to choose something. We have to decide what worship and music styles our services will have. All of these choices have got to be made, and then we have to lead our people, and tell them why we have made these choices. We often do so with great conviction.
Now the problem is when we bring those local church decisions into the Fellowship discussions and allow these decisions to divide us and steal our love for one another. This kind of thing drives people away, fragments us, and weakens our potential.
The truth about our Fellowship is that our churches are not identical with one another. That is actually the design of God. He likes diversity. He made each one of us different. I used to get frustrated that God did not make us all franchises with a franchise manual like McDonald’s. And then it dawned on me that God is too smart to do that. He gives us the Gospel and allows us to plant local churches that fit our location, churches that reflect who we are, our personalities, strengths, and talents. God likes different. As a missionary raising support I quickly found out how different churches are within our Fellowship.
Here is a news flash. We all pastor different churches that have made different choices and do things differently, but we all are about the Gospel. The 20 Articles provide a great summary of what we believe while allowing for the flexibility to make us both the same and different.
When we insist on uniformity we destroy God’s genius of the local church. So here is the deal. Let us recommit ourselves to not allow local church decisions to become the discussion flashpoints in the Fellowship.
We do not all use the same Bible version. That is a reality. Our founders resisted declaring a Fellowship version. Our current documents provide freedom in this area. So when we come together there will be freedom. We live in a world that is not reading the Bible. We need to celebrate that our brothers are teaching the Bible. We must not allow our personal preferences to weaken the unity that will make us a powerful force for the Gospel.
Everyone in this Fellowship appreciates the historic Baptist position that has formed our doctrinal statement. We do not all express our appreciation for our Baptist roots the same way. We see this in the naming of our churches. We are all Baptists, and, by the way, there are not a lot of people clamoring to be a part of us. Let’s end this discussion about the names we choose. We should not presume our brother lacks appreciation for our history and roots because of the name on the sign. By the way, I talk to men who have made these naming choices because they are looking for the most effective way to overcome barriers to reach their communities with the Gospel. This is a local church decision. We should not be hurting each other. We should believe the best about each other and lift each other up.
Musical styles and programming choices do affect who you can and won’t reach. We need churches with all kinds of styles so we can reach all kinds of people. This is a local church decision. When we attend a Fellowship meeting we are not going to our church. We should expect things to be different and new to us. That could mean more traditional at times, and at times it could mean a newer style. We must not allow these local church preferences to destroy our unity and fellowship.
I’d like to appeal to all that we focus on the mission and graciously contribute to the unity.
There are many Gospel-centered groups, conferences, colleges, bookstores, and curriculum. I love going to the conferences. I think we should be going to the Catalyst, Seeds, Purpose Driven, Gospel Coalition, and Willow Creek Leadership conferences. We should listen to podcasts of men outside our movement. We know they have less in common with us than those in our Fellowship. There will be things we don’t agree with, but there are things we can learn.
There are times when we will lend our voices to a cause with people with a different theology. We certainly could not do church with these people, but when the Catholics or Mormons or other groups speak in favor of a pro-life culture our voices will be with them. When there is discussion about the composition of marriage and a need to protect our religious freedoms we will speak in agreement with these people.
We are called to love the drunkard on the street, the lost and confused, and we have an easy time with that most of the time. Interestingly enough we sometimes are more friendly and charitable toward the drunk on the street than the pastor beside us in the pew who does things differently than we do. This affects the culture of our meetings and diminishes our unity and potential.
AN APPEAL FOR OUR STORY
There was a time when I made some choices at High Street, and things at the time were not going so well. I had sought the Lord, tried to understand our people, where we were then and where we needed to be 20 years from then, to keep the church alive and effective. Change is hard, and there were a few years when I didn’t know how things would go. I had heard criticism from within and some whispers from outside. I didn’t much want to go to Fellowship meetings. I felt like they might say, “Here is the guy that destroyed one of our churches.” But there were times in our Fellowship meetings when guys came up to me with words of encouragement that made a huge difference and kept me going.
Some guys would never have made the choices I did, and I knew it, but they were kind and encouraging. There were others who maybe saw the look in my eye and told me not to quit, not to give up, and that gave me something to hold on to. We are supposed to be a band of brothers. We are different in our choices, our styles, our preferences, and practice, but we love the Gospel, love the local church, and love each other. Now that kind of culture is what we need in this Fellowship.
I can’t do everything you can do. You can’t do what I do. Every church, every town, every one of us is different. But I can hold on to you and encourage you, especially when things are not going as well as you hoped.
We need to celebrate our differences. We should be a diverse Fellowship. We need to be around leaders who do things differently. We need different kinds of churches. We need churches for white people, black people, Hispanics, Asians, rednecks, white-collar workers, blue-collar workers, hipsters, and traditionalists. Our meetings should have pastors young and old who come even if they don’t look like each other. We need to celebrate and cultivate this kind of diversity. No matter what school you come from, no matter what your style, no matter who you are called to reach, if you love the Gospel and agree with our 20 Articles of Faith you are welcome here. We believe we can do more together and so come and be a part.
Excerpted from a message Eddie Lyons preached at the BBFI National Meeting, Beacon Baptist Church, Taylor, MI, September 24, 2014.