Great Soul-Winning Churches - Elmer Towns

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superintendent got the message and began making plans and making decisions. On a good day that superintendent, Mrs. Maxine Kelley, will now have more in her junior department than once attended in the entire Sunday School. Sunday School workers are not reluctant to make decisions for fear of making - a wrong move. Many times Pastor Hand has publicly defended teachers and superintendents and then privately helped them to plan the work in such a way that criticism could be avoided. 4. Positionizing the church. Several years previously, ten acres of ground on the other side of town had been given to the church. Before Pastor Hand came, there was disagreement in the church-some wanted to move; some didn’t. He knew that he had to positionize the church location in the minds of the community and stabilize his people. He believes that the location of the church is not the important factor in determining if God can use it to win souls. Dr. Hand led the church to borrow $60,000.00 to air condition the auditorium, rearrange the Sunday School classes and blacktop the parking lot. It was a way to state, “We are not going to move.” The financial outlay proved to the community he meant business. Before Dr. Hand had assumed the pastorate, the church had invited a church survey company to run a survey to determine the church’s future location. They recommended moving, stating that Emmanuel Baptist Church could never contain more than 1 percent of the city in that building (their estimation, 380 in church). An expert from the firm came by after Dr. Hand had been pastor about a year and opened his conversation by saying, “When are you going to move? Remember you can’t run over 1 % of your city here in these buildings.” Dr. Hand closed the conversation by saying, “That’s strange, we had over 2% of our city in Sunday School last Sunday.” Pastor Hand says his is not the traditional American church but a soul-winning institution. 5. Calling a full time music director. In January, 1971, Pastor Hand discussed with the deacons the possibility of calling his son, Mike Hand, as music director. Young Mr. Hand had graduated from Tennessee Temple Schools in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with a degree in music. The deacons voted to recommend that the church call him as music director. A few opponents of the new church program saw a way to rid themselves of the pastor and program. The night of the vote brought people who had not been in church in months and even people who were not members of the church came to try to cast ballots against the proposal. The proposal carried a majority of the votes cast but not the percentage the church Constitution specified to effect a call. There were mixed emotions that night as the congregation filed out of the building. Those opposing the new church program were sure Dr. Hand would leave. Those for the new program prayed he would not leave but wondered how he could stay. Pastor Hand wondered what Scripture he would preach from the next time he stood before his people. The vote had been a disappointment. For the following Sunday morning message, God gave him a message from Ezekiel 24:18,”At even my wife died and I did in the morning as I was commanded.” The title of the sermon was “What Should I Do if I Am Deprived of Something I Need to Do a Job for God.” The gist of the message was that the work would continue but people would lose a blessing. In this case he meant the church would lose graded choir programs, a great church choir, etc. That morning Dr. Hand won the hearts of his people. They realized their pastor came to win souls and to lead the flock. Discouragement or deprivation could not drive him away. Those who voted against Mike to retaliate against the pastor and his program had their pettiness revealed and they left the church. The following September the church, by unanimous vote, called the same Mike Hand as music director. The church choir at this writing averages between 50 and 60 which indicates the ability of young Mr. Hand and his esteem by the people.
Soul Winning at Emmanuel Pastor Hand believes that the best way to train a soul winner is to take him soul winning and constantly emphasize soul winning. The church baptizes each Sunday morning and Sunday evening and urges each convert to be baptized immediately after conversion. He states, “A man will learn more by knocking on three doors than in all the notes he can write in a class on evangelism.” Even though he feels this way, he periodically teaches soul winning on Wednesday night at the Midweek Service and at the teachers meeting. “The focus at our church is always soul winning.” Three assistants, Barry Radebaugh, Ron Douglas, and Dennis Griffith have no duties that conflict with their soul-winning visitation. When Dr. Hand sees a Christian who should be winning souls, he suggests a bus captain or a staff member invite that person to go soul winning with them. The church has Thursday morning visitation for ladies, Thursday night for young people, and Saturday morning for everyone. There was no organized visitation at Emmanuel Baptist Church prior to Pastor Hand’s assuming leadership. There perhaps were some personal soul winners but they were unknown to the new pastor. His two sons, Pat and Terry, at that time ages 15 and 13 respectively, were accomplished soul winners. They discovered another young man in the church, Philip Griffith, then 15, who also knew how to win souls. Pastor Hand helped these three young men to choose three girls and three driver-chaperones. The three teams went visiting teenage prospects each Thursday night for six weeks to teach the girls to be soul winners. At the end of six weeks the boys invited three other boys to go soul winning and the girls invited three of their girl friends in the church to go with them. Later these new teams also divided. The high school group grew from 13 to 90 in eight months and it is not unusual to have 50 teenagers go soul winning on Thursday evening. These teenagers have been the incentive and example for the other visitation programs in the church. Dr. Hand has an extremely good relationship with his teenagers. Bus loads go to camp at the Bill Rice Ranch in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Seven of the current graduating class are pre-enrolled in Tennessee Temple Schools and Baptist Bible College. Mr. David Goon, the chairman of the deacons, and his wife, Geraldine, are sponsors of the youth group. The Goon family practically live with the teenagers. It is their philosophy that teenagers need each other constantly and they strive to treat them as a family. Whereas most churches have the bus workers visiting on Saturday morning, those from Emmanuel Baptist Church are out calling on Saturday afternoon. When asked the reason, Dr. Hand states, “I want to be the last person to get to that person before he goes to bed on Saturday night.” Soul Winning in Emmanuel Mrs. Susan Garver was church secretary and had been a mainstay in the church. She saw regular church members that she knew professed to be saved were going to see the pastor and getting saved. Dr. Hand had preached, “Draw a circle around yourself and give the date of your salvation.” One day she said, “I am through lying. It is hard to admit. I am a Sunday School teacher and work in the church office, but pride is not worth going to Hell for.” On April 9, 1971, she walked three flights of stairs to the pastor’s office (it seemed like miles) and talked with the pastor. He explained salvation to her simply and completely and she accepted Christ as her Saviour. Mr. Garver was soon wonderfully saved, also.
Page 1 and 2:
Table of Contents Foreword Great So
Page 3 and 4: Churches, I tried to include deeper
Page 5 and 6: Sunday School was held in a room ou
Page 7 and 8: Monroe confessed that he floundered
Page 9 and 10: In addition to being large, the Sun
Page 11 and 12: iblical principles, not to institut
Page 13 and 14: hurt his ministry. But he did. Huts
Page 15 and 16: the furniture. There are four other
Page 17 and 18: The church was averaging 250-300 in
Page 19 and 20: Beach. Gray chuckled. “Our people
Page 21 and 22: planted grove of palmetto that says
Page 23 and 24: Pastor Ware feels the church has gr
Page 25 and 26: company in town tried to rent three
Page 27 and 28: Worth, where Pastor Fleming studied
Page 29 and 30: 12 buses, paying between $1295 and
Page 31 and 32: For a number of years, Cummons held
Page 33 and 34: churches and have used the Twelve D
Page 35 and 36: working of the Holy Spirit. Wallace
Page 37 and 38: The children are divided into Sunda
Page 39 and 40: Baptist Bible Church, Elkton, Maryl
Page 41 and 42: God dealt with him about his sin. H
Page 43 and 44: Last summer the camp registered 808
Page 45 and 46: ank. Evangelist Talbert Moore let t
Page 47 and 48: school was packed out, they moved t
Page 49 and 50: Gary Coleman grew up in Dallas, Tex
Page 51 and 52: automobile mechanic went forward du
Page 53: Sunday school superintendent, the s
Page 57 and 58: School and church organization. He
Page 59 and 60: After his conversion, when people h
Page 61 and 62: complete preparation for the second
Page 63 and 64: in the newspaper the number of visi
Page 65 and 66: Emmanuel Baptist Church is ministry
Page 67 and 68: forward, but after the impromptu me
Page 69 and 70: won to the Lord a number of hippies
Page 71 and 72: His persistence that has led to the
Page 73 and 74: Pennell had been praying about reac
Page 75 and 76: Another factor that changed Pennell
Page 77 and 78: When Powell wanted to build the chu
Page 79 and 80: “Yes, sir.” “You’ve been a
Page 81 and 82: First Ray met individually with the
Page 83 and 84: On Safari Sunday an elephant was br
Page 85 and 86: II. THE CONVERSION OF BOB KELLEY Bo
Page 87 and 88: When Kelley first came, he took the
Page 89 and 90: Great churches are built by great m
Page 91 and 92: that men are lost—yet the call to
Page 93 and 94: people going into the Lord’s serv
Page 95 and 96: The words of George Mueller are app
Page 97 and 98: delivered me from all my fears” (
Page 99 and 100: average husband. However, he should
Page 101 and 102:
done. They are leery of accepting a
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Great Soul-Winning Churches - Elmer Towns

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