Lamar and the rest of John Jenkins’ fans continue to defend his actions, not by addressing the real issues but by looking at all the wonderful things he has done. Of course the question remains: Do nice things, done for the wrong reason, count with Jesus Christ at the judgment seat? Unfortunately, the answer is: No. (Matt 7:23 , And notice how Jesus refers to these people who have done all these nice things , “you who practice lawlessness”) In other sections, they are referred to as evil doers. Not because they sleep with women or curse, but because they did not know Christ.

Here is Lamar’s response to my postings located here.

what are you doing to encourage others to build (in any capacity) or are you too busy tearing down?I see you that you’ve visited fbcglenarden.org, how come you chose not to talk about youth day or evangelism night. Come on brother if you are going to tell it,tell it all. Your website is about certain persons misleading and misguiding or decieving from the pulpit with 1000’s listen in on, what about you misleading or misguiding on the the internet where millions have access.

Pastor John k. jenkins sr is really doing a wonderful job kingdom building and teaching others to the same. You said it yourself that you visited pastor Goddlock’s church and was impressed. Well we all know where he came from. A CORRUPT TREE CANNOT BEAR GOOD FRUIT matthew 7 verse 18

Left by Lamar on May 19th, 2005

Forgetting for a moment that Lamar completely misused the verse from Matthew (Jesus was talking about doctrine not disciples), I have to say he is right. I should comment on the other two activities at First Baptist Church of Glenarden , Evangelism Night and Youth Day. I’ll start with Evangelism night.

I waited too late to grab the graphic from the site but I think most of you remember it. I believe it was a picture of a tub of popcorn, a movie reel and some other entertainment related stuff.

Apparently the church sees bringing people in to watch a religious movie (maybe something from the “Left Behind” series) or watch a play (let’s say, the one about the fellow who went to hell , it was guaranteed to “scare the hell out of people who saw it”) as evangelism. And maybe they’re right. After all, Matthew 28:19 and 20 says:

Wait , That’s from the Rick Warren play book. Sorry.

Often, very little emphasis is placed on the personal responsibility to evangelize, that is, to go out and day to day share the gospel with others and to live in such a way that the sharing is credible. Worse, the congregations are generally ill-equipped to share the Gospel. A lot of them don’t even know what the Gospel is.

While FBCG still offers a class called “Continuing Witness Training” or CWT, the vast majority of the folks there have no clue with respect to presenting the Gospel even on a basic level. And if any of the contributors/defenders of John who contribute comments to this blog are any indication, a lot of them have no interest in gaining a clue.

One Sunday, before I escaped, I was feeling rather frustrated and when John and I were talking in the hallway, I expressed my concern about the congregation’s inability to present the Gospel. He, of course, pooh-poohed my concern and said people were growing and could do it. To prove his point, he picked some poor hapless soul meandering in the hallway and called him over. The conversation went something like this:

Jenkins: So how long have you been attending First Baptist?
Hapless Meanderer: About four years, Pastor.
Jenkins: If you wanted to share the gospel with someone about what would you say?
Hapless Meanderer: Bring them to church so they can hear you and accept Jesus Christ.
Jenkins: Do you participate in any of the ministries?
Hapless Meanderer: Not really.

Once Hapless Meanderer meandered away, John tried to explain that the fellow didn’t know anything (after four years) because he wasn’t involved.

But that doesn’t work. I was an instructor (I really don’t much like the word “facilitator”) for Brothers In Discipleship, cleverly referred to as BID.

At that time the basic purpose of BID was to take men who had already shown a commitment to Jesus Christ and give them some focused training; to disciple (as FBCG uses the term) the men. We used what I thought was a pretty good book from the Institute of Basic Youth Conflict , Bill Gothard. While I didn’t agree with everything the book presented (I thought he was somewhat legalistic in places), It did an excellent job of laying out the path a new Christian should take in growing spiritually. You know, those boring things like Scripture memorization, prayer, holy living, walking in faith.

To complete the class if you had me, the student had to memorize at least a verse a week. And that verse was in someway related to the lesson we covered that week. For instance, if we were talking about being conformed to the image of Christ, they would have to memorize Romans 12:1 and 2.

We also covered the Gospel and how to present it. As men graduated from the course, some of the more promising ones were asked to teach the class and old goats like me were asked to teach (ooohh!) Level 2. This class was a second step in the development of the men. At the outset of the class, I told the men (none of whom had been trained by me in the first class) that I am a Black Muslim who is tired of Muslimdom. I then asked them to tell me how to become a Christian. Of the twelve men around the table one fumbled badly but at least tried. The rest quickly confessed that they didn’t know how. The men, who were identified as those active in the church did no better than Hapless Meanderer.

Through out the next several weeks, as an additional part of the class, the men had to memorize the Romans Road and for 15 or twenty minutes each session we practiced a presentation or two.

I went through all of this to ask: What is Evangelism Night? Unless it’s a night in which the members of the church are taught how, and encouraged to present the Gospel to the unsaved and those hostile to the Gospel, it would seem to be pretty much a waste of church resources and people’s time. After all, the church building isn’t there to bring in the unsaved. It’s there to provide a place to edify the saints. The unsaved, at best, should come in because of what they see in a person who has accepted Jesus Christ and perhaps have decided to follow Jesus Christ. These people have it exactly backwards.

Youth Day , Rekindling the Fire 2005

I guess I’m missing the point here. Rekindling means to get a dying fire going again. It strongly implies the earlier presence of a fire. This brings up a series of questions, the least of which is: Why has the leadership apparently decided to make the church look just like the outside? Do they feel as though they have to try to attract people? Or are they calling a bunch of people coming in to be entertained a rekindling? None of this is particularly clear either from what I know of FBCG or from the e-flyer they are running on their site.

And when you consider that they are having a basketball and cheerleader camp, I really have to work to figure out their objectives.

While there is nothing wrong with basketball, why is the church leadership putting on a basketball camp? Certainly you want the youth to be healthy. But offering a basketball camp, and using the church orgamization’s resources to do it seem a little flaky.

And I won’t even talk about the cheerleading camp. Okay, I lied. I will talk about the cheerleading camp. As best I can tell, the most the camp will be able to do is teach the girls how to shake their behinds in a godly manner. But let’s face it. These girls are going to be “performing” in front of the hormone soaked boys participating in the basketball camp. Talk about pouring gasoline on fire.

Posted by Melvin Jones on Sunday, May 22nd, 2005 at 12:19 am.