LET'S BUILD AN EVANGELISTIC CHURCH
by Pastor Jack Hyles (1926-2001)
(Loyal Pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana for over 42 years)
Table Of Contents
Introduction
Foreword
1. Let's Build a Visitation Program
2. Let's Find the Prospects
3. Let's Go Soul Winning
4. Let's Go Soul Winning in Public Places
5. Let's Go Soul Winning in the Hospital
6. Let's Visit an Absentee
7. Let's Have a Public Invitation
8. Let's Witness During the Invitation
9. Let's Win a Soul at the Altar
10. Let's Make a Schedule
11. Let's Include the Family
12. Let's Conserve the Results
Introduction
Do you know Jack Hyles? Do you know the man who is pastor of the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana and president of Baptist Bible College of Denver, Colorado? I believe that you will know him after you read this vital and interesting book.
I have just gone through the manuscript of Dr. Hyles' book, Let's Build an Evangelistic Church. A score of adjectives kept hashing through my mind as I read the pages-- "practical," "sympathetic," "humorous," "convicting," "understandable," etc. Such words will come before you as you read. Here is a book that touches many vital subjects in a minister's life: personal soul winning, visitation, church invitations, time schedules for busy pastors, the pastor and his family.
This is the book for the busy pastor. Here are ways to increase efficiency in use of time. Here is a book for the man who has had mediocre success in the ministry, but has the desire to do more for the glory of God. This is a book for the pastor who has failed. Failure brings discouragement, fears, despondency.
Let me suggest something to all pastors and Christian workers -- READ THIS BOOK! It will revitalize your ministry. It will bless your home. It will stir your church.
LEE ROBERSON, Pastor
Highland Park Baptist Church
Chattanooga Tennessee
May 21, 1962
Foreword
As a young preacher starting out many years ago, I read the Book of Acts over and over again. I went to my knees and asked God to let me have a ministry and build churches that would be akin to the Book of Acts. When this was settled before God, my little country church in East Texas became a hotbed of soul winning, even though we were ten miles out in the country. God gave us souls every week and a perennial revival spirit. The methods we used there were basically the methods presented in this book.
For seven years we labored in the Miller Road Baptist Church, Garland, Texas. Using these methods, the Lord led us and used our people to grow a church from 44 members to 4,128 members in six and a half years.
I am doing my best now as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, to lead our people to this kind of a Book of Acts ministry. "They that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word."
While in West Palm Beach, Florida, in a Bible Conference with Dr. John R. Rice approximately five years ago, my attention was called to the parable of the Great Supper in Luke 14: 16-23. I resolved to go home to my church and plan my church program according to the commandments in this parable. You will notice in this parable we are commanded to go into the streets, and the lanes, to bring in the lame, the poor, the halt, and the blind, and to go into the highways and hedges. We have organized our church literally according to this parable. For two weeks our people did exactly what the parable says.
The word "streets" seems to mean city streets. Forty of our men spent every hour they had off from work on the main streets of Dallas, Texas, witnessing, passing out tracts, spreading the Gospel. This was done day and night.
The word "lanes" seems to mean small streets. Four hundred and thirty-eight people went from house to house in the city of Garland telling everybody how to be saved. When we left Garland, Texas, in 1959, we had the assurance that our church had knocked on every door in the city of Garland. Perhaps some were missed, but we do not know of them. Our people literally went from house to house in the lanes of our city for two weeks.
Notice it says, "Bring in hither the poor," in the parable of the Great Supper. This we also did. We organized teams to go into poor sections of our town and visit house to house every poor family we could find. Many of these poor people were reached with the Gospel of Christ.
Also the parable says, "Bring in the maimed, the halt, and the blind." Ten of our ladies spent two weeks every day going into the hospitals of our city visiting the maimed, the halt, and the blind. Every sick person in every hospital in our town was visited by our membership
Again, the Lord commands us to go into the highways. We organized a team of forty men to witness on every highway leading out of our city. They stopped at every house, every business place, every service station, every tavern, between our town and the next towns and witnessed on the highways.
The last commandment is that we go to the hedges. We took this to mean the country roads and rural areas. Ten of our ladies volunteered to spend two weeks going out the country roads and visiting every farm home and every rural house between our town and the next town on every country road. Our young people also went out in the rural areas and conducted street services with loudspeakers.
On the opening Sunday of this two-week period, our church authorized me to baptize anyone at any time. This I did. We filled the baptistry and kept it filled for two weeks. People would call me in the middle of the night and say, "Preacher, I just won a soul. He wants to get baptized." I would get out of bed, go to the church, and baptize the convert. We baptized every day for two weeks.
When the two weeks ended, over five hundred people were scattered all over the town and area witnessing for Christ. Thirty-eight of our young people had spent practically day and night on the public square of our city passing out tracts and witnessing. Over sixty were won to Christ by the young people alone. Three hundred thirty-three people were saved in this two-week period. Over one hundred and twenty-five people won someone to Christ. One lady won seventeen to Christ. One man won seventeen to Christ. We had baptized scores of people. Our attendance increased, and the spirit of our church must have been the spirit of those in the Book of Acts who were scattered abroad everywhere preaching the Word.
From that beginning comes this book. We have made no attempt to be scholarly, but a definite attempt to be practical. The first work done on the book was done on a train between Dallas, Texas, and Washington, D. C. One chapter was outlined in the wee hours of the morning waiting for a plane at Stapleton Airport in Denver, Colorado. One chapter was outlined on a jet plane between Chicago and New York City. Work has been done in depots, airports, on trains, planes, at home at night, and other places, to make this a manual for those who want to be soul winners. May God use it in the building of churches who will "live in the Book of Acts."
JACK HYLES, Hammond, Indiana
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"I am an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion, that has warmed this cold world's heart for two thousand years." —Billy SUNDAY
