I write this post and the next in a bit of a different mode; consider it “table talk” over a cup of coffee as an old preacher, not far from glory’s shore, shares some candid thoughts.
I’ve given considerable thought of late to “fundamentalism.” It is, after all, a movement with which I have identified all of my life as a student, then as a pastor, and now as a “retired” pastor who lives every day with an incurable disease. I have, then, no axe to grind and nothing to prove, but merely some observations to share.
I was saved as a youngster, not yet 10 years of age, under the preaching of Pastor Harold Day, who labored over the flock of God that met weekly on North Court street in Ottumwa, Iowa, known as the North Court Baptist Church. It was affiliated with the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. Pastor Day was an unashamed fundamentalist, warning his flock of the apostacy which he saw then, in the mid-1950s, gaining ground through such organs as the National Council of Churches. He was a dispensationalist, and about the only Bible college that I remember him speaking of was the Omaha Baptist Bible Baptist Institute (today known as Faith Baptist Bible College in Ankeny, Iowa).
When I was a teenager, my parents joined a church on Ottumwa’s south side, pastored by Rev. Keith Knauss, a good Bible teacher/pastor who pastored the Calvary Baptist Church, then affiliated with the Conservative Baptist Association of Churches. Pastor Keith channeled all the young people he could to Pillsbury Baptist Bible College in Owatonna, Minnesota, a fundamental Bible college then led by Evangelist Monroe Parker.
Also on the south side of our city was the Ottumwa Baptist Temple, a church that lined up with the Bible Baptist Fellowship. The pastor, A.D. Pringle, favored the then newly formed Baptist Bible College of Springfield, Missouri, where my oldest sister attended as a classmate of a student from Virginia who would become quite well-known, Jerry Falwell.
So, my background, when I enrolled at Bob Jones University in 1962 was in Bible-preaching, fundamental, dispensational churches. Upon completion of my training for ministry, I accepted a call to pastor Gideon Baptist Church of Wichita, Kansas, an independent church with a history of lining up with the Bible Baptist Fellowship, as several other churches in the greater Wichita area did at that time. In 1979, I accepted a call to pastor the Thompson Road Baptist Church to succeed Pastor Fred Moritz, a former seminary classmate of mine who resigned the Indianapolis church to go into full-time evangelism. He later became assistant director, under the leadership of Dr. Monroe Parker, of Baptist World Mission—and would eventually become its executive director, a job he so ably discharged for more than two decades.
When I settled into the pastorate of Thompson Road Baptist Church (TRBC) in the fall of 1979, I soon learned of the Indiana Fundamental Baptist Fellowship of Churches (IFBF) and would be a member of this strong state body of independent Baptists for the duration of my ministry as a senior pastor. So, from the time I became a believer through faith in Christ, through the years of my training and then pastoring, I have always been in the fundamentalist camp, specifically in the Independent Baptist branch of fundamentalism. I have encouraged young people to attend a Christian college that believed the fundamentals of the faith; and I have recommended to the churches that I have pastored missionaries sent out by churches of like faith, serving under the auspices of mission boards that were known as conservative, independent, and fundamental. I always have been, therefore—and am to this day—a fundamentalist without apology. So, looking at the landscape of the movement I have been identified with for more than half a century in ministry, what do I see?
Schools/Colleges. Many of the colleges that I could recommend to young people early in my ministry are no longer in existence. Some that are struggle to maintain open doors. The mood of many of today’s youth is career focused, and the colleges that once trained hundreds of preachers have shrunken ministerial classes that are dwarfed in size compared to the classes of yesteryear. Schools that once trained missionaries that had hearts burning to reach lost souls and cities in fields far and near no longer specialize in the training of vocational missionaries. Some few schools still major in missions and ministry, but most are not large schools, though one can and should be thankful that there are some who are “staying by the stuff” in this lukewarm spiritual climate.
Fellowships/Associations. Many of the fellowships and associations of churches that were once ablaze in banding together for revival, missions, and church planting are no longer true to their original mission. Compromise on the basics, sectarianism, isolationism, and other trends have gutted their once hard-core militant stand on the fundamentals of the faith, so that they are today a shell of their original founding body.
(to be continued)
YOU and GOD 