Why Study Baptist Church History?

My mother attended the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in and around her teen years and early twenties as a second or third generation member (before that she confesses to having worshipped Satan). For a few years my mother stopped attending and began so to speak to be, "running with the wrong crowd." Eventually my mother met my father (who brought her out of moral decline), and both my parents went back to this same church after four years of marriage when they gave birth to me. I thus went to this same church for nearly twenty years, and my father (who has attended now for close to thirty years) is now a deacon of the church (this was after the communion cup passed him by for two decades because the church would not recognize baptisms other than its own).

The church that my family thus attended was perhaps one of the very worst churches that ever existed, and I felt like I was forced to attend every Sunday for twenty years. The church taught that salvation was through works and that judgment by God would occur by God measuring accomplishment against a person's ability. Many in the church taught that the Bible was not relevant in any way because it was not written to us and that it was so full of errors that it could not be trusted (the church would elect a prophet by popular majority vote to handle this problem as he would generate new scripture). Many of the clergy in the church firmly promoted the doctrine that if a person ever sinned after baptism that they would be dammed for eternity and would no longer have their salvation. Not only that but also Jesus was taught to be just a man and not God in the flesh; moreover, saying that Jesus was God was like committing blasphemy against the Father. Overall, the history of the local church was that it was formed out of a baseball team with church membership being necessary for team membership, and today only about two or three members attend that are not ordained (everyone else is priesthood).

When I was a child, just the mention of the name of the church that I attended would cause Christians in the community to become irate and vicious and thus the subject of religion would turn into something like a spiritual attack. In this case the gospel message was never portrayed, and both myself and all the people at my church (including priesthood) never heard the gospel because of the way that the insiders of the church and the outsiders had been enraged at one another in a huge fight for who was correct. The reason why the outsiders had been so mad is because they thought that the church was the Mormon church when in fact it had far more than a hundred years of separation to the Mormon church and did not originate from the Mormon church in anyway, shape, or form, and the Mormon church was far more biblically based and conservative.

In the small church that I attended angels, demons, ghosts, miraculous healing, visitations of Jesus, and entertaining angels that looked and acted human was all considered common place occurrences that all members could and according to report did have exposure to. In fact such things had been considered just as common place as the clerical priesthood positions offered by the church such as high priest, apostle, seventy, elder, deacon, regional president, and a few other business titles. The worst part about the church that I attended is that its primary focus was to cause world peace, and its clergy had been such high members of the community (often having high positions and owning a few houses) that they influenced the minds, hearts, and ways of most all the other churches in the aria that had not been classified as containing poor people. In fact the husband and wife that became Pastor of the church got nominated for the Nobel Peace prize one year, and they housed foreign dignitaries and ran a international peace organization headed in Washington DC out of their half million dollar home that had a attached apartment (my father could have recently gotten this home on foreclosure for $1,500 after the pastor's family had lived in it for thirty years as they even hoped that he would gain the house but he did not care to receive it, and I could have easily afforded it so that I would not have to still live in a 10 foot by 10 foot room in my parent's house). The point is that some things that people believe are even worse than illegal drug abuse, and it is very sad when churches are found to be the culprit of unnecessary misery.

I went to this wicked evil church for decades, and I did not realize that other options had been available for worshipping God. Since the church taught salvation by works and the teaching that people are damned if having ever sinned after baptism, the result was that members would justify all of their wickedness as if it was righteousness (no one could or would ever apologize for anything - this would be an admission that they are damned if it ever happened). Because of this teaching everyone in the church believed that they had been saintly, and they even sang hymns about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and how saintly that their group was. This is something that could highly offend any true Christian.

In my youth my mother was so very depressed (as a result of many of these things - I believe) that she slept almost constantly for over a decade and would only wake to make one meal a day when my father would come home from work. She now confesses that she thought about killing herself in the church restroom (this was before she got about two decades of mental help). Overall, my experiences as a youth had been so extreme that I did not believe that anyone or anything existed except for me, and I even became an atheist for most of the years that I attended my parent's church every Sunday.

Despite all of these problems, the church was open to the gospel because many believed that everyone's god was the same God (this included Jews, Muslims, and Hindus to name a few). Thus when I attended college despite dyslexia and tremendous learning difficulties I was able to be evangelized by one of my college instructors for six sold years, and he discipled me such that I was able to disciple a few of the clergy at my church. Overall, this college instructor taught Sunday school in a church of over a thousand at a Baptist church, he almost got his Doctorate from a highly reputable school in a mathematics related filed (if someone had not published their work just prior to this man completing his dissertation he would have gotten is Doctorate), and he had an extremely high IQ with extensive self study in philosophy and theology (eventually he started his masters in philosophy as a second masters degree).

This college instructor was so devout that he would read the bible when in his office, when driving, and he prayed over his students every day at the secular school that he taught at in a super secular community. I was so very blessed by this powerful Christian leader, and I entered under his personal study as I tried to learn everything that he knew. This man was so inclined to teach that he taught me everything that he possible could, he taught his eight children in home school, and he taught about double a full time college instructor's work load all at the same time. Overall, this man was such a powerful intellectual that he would somehow be able to read a book that I would give him in just a few hours and he would give me a oral book summery back in return, and he would thus help me significantly since I could hardly read or write because of my learning disability.

Through the course of many years of being personally mentored by this man, I was thus developed into a rather powerful Christian leader for a person in their early twenties. The local church that I attended became revolutionized because I would fix the computer of the Pastor's family after school and I would teach the gospel to the husband sometimes until the sun come up the next day. We had been so excited about what we had been learning together from the scripture that it was almost impossible for me to leave in the early morning hours after having constantly studied the scripture. Many of the false beliefs that the pastor's family had began to disappear, but they remained faithful somewhat to the church prophets and their scripture that I could not comment about in any positive ways.

Eventually, I got my mother to buy a 52 inch big screen TV for the church, and then the church had a gospel movie night provided by a huge duffel bag full of DVD New Testament reenactments, dramatized reenactments of scripture, and other such films. Soon the entire local church became vastly changed as it is vastly changed for the better to this very day for the most part. Overall, I got so much condemnation, flack, and bitterness put on me from so many different Christian groups because of the church that I was going to that I eventually stopped attending all together despite the fact that such a good work was being accomplished through me at this church.

After a while, I started to work with a man that identified himself as a Bishop that came away from the Roman Catholic Church whom I had met with a cross walker that was in town. I dealt with this man for many years as he was both aged and disabled, and he was perhaps the most ungodly person that I have ever dealt with that believed in Christ (my family took care of him and his wife extensively for years, and after this man died his widowed wife became my parent's neighbor across the street). Overall, this experience developed much of my theological understanding of poverty, the role of the church, and the dangers that can cripple the work of the church from being fruitful.

Eventually, I began attending a large university six hours away from home, and within four years, I developed very large networks of Christians that serve through teaching. During this time, I became personally mentored by a second Bishop that represented a group that came away from the Episcopal church (this was a much different group). This man worked with me personally for a few years, and he helped educate me in his non accredited seminary cathedral school. Overall, I learned much about the Reformed faith from having dealt with the second Bishop when I went away for school.

Eventually I developed a very large news group that linked together various professors, graduate students, pastors, evangelists, and teachers of many different denominations. We argued theology for many years as the membership got up to nearly four hundred, and the discussion posts got up to nearly six thousand over a five year span. Overall, during the end of this time, I entered Liberty University to attempt my Mater of Divinity degree, but I did not continue to manage my news group because of my two part time jobs, caring for my disabled mother, extensive training for a full time job, and other responsibilities (other people manage it in my place that have been core members for years).

I have come to the conclusion that I would be best not to have ministry goals because I do not know what God will do with my life. Anything that I would do to have goals and move forward almost always would be like working against God's plan because his plan is so much greater than what I could ever conceive of. This is in fact one of the many lessons that I have learned from dealing with many different people of many different denominations that would all try to shape people in their own image of a perfect Christian. The point is that God's idea of what a perfect Christian looks like for each individual is much greater than what anyone could conceive of in a universal pattern. Overall, I have learned that God acts like a potter, and he shapes people anyway that he likes and this is all up to him what he does in people's lives; moreover, having goals and having a vision for the future often gets in the way of God's work and craftsmanship.

Regarding my immediate plans however and what I envision that God wants in my life, I am thinking that God wants me to address the so called spiritual deficit that exists in Christianity today. I think that I am being called to perhaps get my MBA and my doctorate in economics so that I may make a impact on the subject of spiritual and physical fruitfulness. Overall, what I am beginning to see with my future ministry is that the institution of the church should not just be a group of individuals gathered together for their individual salvation, but instead it should be a lot more about a community of fruitfulness that transforms others on the outside to be fruitful as well (sort of like a creation center that transforms everything else).

What I am for example seeing is that churches even in my local community teach the people that we should give a coat to the poor if we have two coats and that we should be giving and generous with all people. The result often is that the poor never do any meaningful service because no one cares to teach them, the rich would never care to be a friend to the poor, the poor waste the resources of the church, and the poor look damned because they act like weeds while the rich look damned because they do not transform the poor with the gospel of Christ. My hope in ministry is that somehow I would be able to fully understand how to solve such problems as those that divide the body of Christ or even cause hardship and eternal consequences between people.

The institution of the church should be like the potters house with God as the potter in the very center as he works to mold creation in redemption by the victory of the cross. All good things should come form this place, and this should be what transforms people into realizing their place in community and the purpose of their lives. Overall, this is the type of institution that would do away with spiritual and physical poverty as God transforms people to fulfill the purpose that he has created them for, and I think that this is the type of ministry that God is calling me to eventually be moderating.

What do I hope to gain from the Study of Baptist Church History?

Although I do not particularly like the idea of a free church movement, because I cannot tolerate perversion of the church by self lead people that think themselves righteous and their work to be righteous when really they are blind and nearsighted. A church forming out of a baseball team is not necessary a bad idea nor is a church forming out of a house of prostitution a bad idea (these people need saved more than anyone), but without correct doctrine these are both vary bad ideas that would be a very shameful reflection of the free church movement. On the other hand a perverted king or governing body that runs the church is an utter abomination in my thinking as well. Overall, I am inclined to believe that the heads of the church should become the heads of the government as well (note John Calvin's Geneva as an example) but this should not happen the other way around.

I want to understand more about Baptist church history because I think that the free church movement has a lot of good things to offer that are either misunderstood or neglected in other denominations to their spiritual demise. I for example have seen the rooting out of heresy done to such an extreme under one Bishop that hardly any teaching had been done, and even many of the members could not say a word about who Christ was when asked (they either did not know or had been afraid to say for fear of error). On the other hand the free church movement can give the most unqualified people a strong platform for ministry, and this can be like going to the spiritual hospital without realizing that the spiritual surgeon is blind and dropped out of spiritual elementary school to became the manager of all medical operations.

Overall, I hope that the study of Baptist Church History will really gives me a greater insight and appreciation for understanding how to avoid bad ministry practices and heresy while grasping the principles needed for fruitfulness and productivity in ministry. Even if every man, woman, and child in the world decided that they would not submit to any authority except for their very own authority, I would hope that the free church movement would still be fruitful in the good things that it does such that people do not become blind to righteousness and broken from the body of Christ without the ability to work with others in the same body. Overall, I think that the most powerful lessons to be learned in the subject of Baptist church history are hopefully humility and servant-hood in light of the proud and dominating voices of those that have only self confidence to offer rather than true salvation.