PUTTING AN END TO WORSHIP WARS - Elmer Towns

young people from my church were converted in this little church. The singing was loud and
from the heart. I liked that. Young girls sang solos passionately from the heart, I liked that. The
two Bible college students preached evangelistically, which means they preached with passion,
enthusiasm, and feeling. I liked that. Every night people went to the altar and knelt to be saved.
I liked that.
The type of preaching where I was saved, is the type of preaching I developed in Bible
college. I preached my first sermon on the street corners of Columbia, South Carolina. It was a
passionate sermon with lots of fire, but little substance beyond the elementary contents of the
plan of salvation.
When I was nineteen years old and a second year student at Columbia Bible College, I
became pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, Savannah, Georgia on the weekends.
Part of my job expectation, and in return for a small salary of $5.00 per week, I had to type out
the church bulletin and mimeograph it each week. The church bought a mimeograph machine
and for awhile I kept it in my father's garage. The church service that I conducted in my naivete,
was an oxymoron in reality. The first half of the worship service included the traditional
Presbyterian liturgy. In the second half I preached like a revivalist at camp meeting. Since I had
been converted in an atmospheric revival, I felt that you had to preach enthusiastically, with
emotions, driving home my message. I always ended my sermon with an invitation, also entitled
an altar call for people to come forward and kneel, where we would lead them to Christ. In terms
of worship expressions, my first pastorate was a Liturgical Church for the first half of the service,
and a combination of the Renewal Church and Evangelistic Church in the second half.
I remember one of the teenagers at the Presbyterian Church asking, "Why do we do all
that junk in the beginning?" I knew what he meant. We stood for Responsive Reading, the
Apostle's Creed, the Gloria Patri and all other expressions of liturgy. This teenager went on to
say,
"I just like it when you rear back and preach."
In my first church I was so young, the people couldn't call me Pastor, Minister and since I
was not ordained; they couldn't call me Reverend. Because I love to preach with passion, and
motivate them to make a decision at the altar; everyone in the community called me, "Preacher."
I moved to Dallas, Texas, to attend Dallas Theological Seminary. My wife and I attended
two or three Presbyterian churches looking for a church home. Since I had already been a student
pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, I was looking for a place of service, also an
evangelistic Presbyterian church in which I would feel comfortable.
About the fourth week in Dallas, my wife and I attended First Baptist Church, where Dr.
W. A. Criswell was pastor. That Sunday night my wife woke up with excruciating pain, was
taken to the Baylor Hospital for an emergency surgery to save her life. When the nurse was
filling out the admittance papers, she asked for our church home.
"We don't have one," I replied.