Conference attendees encouraged to be bold and act with urgency for lost
By Lonnie Wilkey & David Dawson
Baptist and Reflector
Roc Collins, director of strategic objectives for the TBMB, speaks to the crowd at the state evangelism conference. The theme for the conference was “Snatching them from the fire” from Jude 23.
MURFREESBORO — After an absence of more than a decade, the State Evangelism Conference was “relaunched” this year. The two-day event, presented by the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board and hosted at New Vision Church in Murfreesboro on Jan. 30-31, featured a total of four worship sessions and a series of breakout sessions.
The New Vision worship team led the praise music, and the lineup of featured speakers included (in order of appearance):
• Grant Gaines, pastor of Belle Aire Baptist Church, Murfreesboro;
• Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church, Memphis, and father of Grant Gaines;
• Roc Collins, director of strategic objectives for the TBMB;
• Don Wilton, pastor of First Baptist Church, Spartanburg, S.C., and a former professor at New Orleans (La.) Baptist Theological Seminary;
• Brady Cooper, pastor of New Vision Baptist Church in Murfreesboro which hosted the State Evangelism Conference;
• Clay Hallmark, pastor of First Baptist Church, Lexington, and president of the Tennessee Baptist Convention;
• Jonathan Evans, former NFL player who now serves as the chaplain for the Dallas Cowboys. He is the son of Tony Evans.
• Tony Evans, founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and founder and president of The Urban Alternative. He is also the author of over 100 books, booklets and Bible studies.
Below is a brief recap of the messages:
Grant Gaines
Preaching from Jonah 4, Gaines shared the “profile of an angry evangelist.” Gaines observed that enemies make hearts angry. Gaines compared Jonah’s anger with Ebenezer Scrooge, a fictitious character in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
“Angry, bitter ‘scrooges’ will never reach the world for Christ,” Gaines said.
Gaines also observed that angry evangelists are selfish, wanting God’s compassion for yourself but not for those you consider to be your enemies. “You can’t be a good evangelist if you can’t show the compassion of Christ to others,” Gaines stressed.
Angry evangelists are the opposite of what God wants and desires for His people, Gaines said. While Jonah considered the Ninevites his enemy, God grieved over them and had compassion, he noted. “Real compassion is when the sadness over someone’s condition makes us sad too.”
Gaines challenged those attending the conference to be more like Jesus than Jonah. “Jesus was a compassionate evangelist and Jonah was an angry evangelist. Let’s be Jesus evangelists and not Jonah evangelists.”
Steve Gaines
Father and son duo Steve and Grant Gaines preached during the opening session of the Win TN State Evangelism Conference.
The elder Gaines preached on “Facing the Storms of Life.”
Speaking from Mark 4:35-41, Gaines shared five truths from the passage.
(1) Jesus promised to bring you through your storms.
(2) Jesus does not promise to prevent your storms.
(3) Jesus modeled exercising faith during your storm.
(4) Jesus is able to calm any and every storm.
(5) Jesus expects you to trust Him in your storm.
Gaines encouraged conference attendees to remember that when they face storms that “God is with them and nothing else matters. … God will bring you through the storm.”
Roc Collins
Collins exhorted Tennessee Baptists to “snatch” lost people in the state “from the fire.”
Collins shared that of the nearly seven million people who live in Tennessee, 56 percent of them “are lost and headed to hell without Jesus.”
Preaching from Jude 1, the Scripture from which the theme of the conference, “Snatching Them from the Fire” was based, Collins shared three ways to win Tennessee for Christ.
First, we have to have a sure foundation, he stressed. “If we are going to win a lost world, we have to keep our focus on Jesus.”
Second, he continued, “we have to seek the lost.” Lostness is all around us, Collins said. “You can smell the smoke of hell on their garments.”
Third, Collins reminded conference participants that Jesus still saves today. “Let us be the ones who tell Tennesseans that Jesus still saves anyone who will call upon His name. …
“This is our time. This is our season. This is our opportunity. May it be said that God has helped us to see that nobody goes to hell from Tennessee. Let’s snatch them from the fire.”
Don Wilton
Wilton observed that the church is being decimated today and many pastors are discouraged by a variety of factors including the pandemic and politics. “Today, we stand in our pulpits and wonder, ‘What is the solution?’ ”
The only solution, Wilton said, is Jesus. Basing his message on Matthew 26, Wilton discussed Jesus’ meeting or “The Last Supper” with His disciples. Jesus reminded those disciples that He was and is the only solution to life’s problems.
“Jesus knew who He was — the Savior of the world,” Wilton said. “He also knew His disciples and He knows you and me. He knows what we are going through,” he continued. “Without the cross, there is no mediator. Jesus is the only solution.”
Brady Cooper
If Tennessee Baptists are going to reach the seven million lost people in the state for Jesus, it will be through the churches we lead,” said Cooper, pastor of New Vision Church in Murfreesboro that hosted the State Evangelism Conference.
Brady Cooper, left, pastor of New Vision Baptist Church, Murfreesboro, visits with Bill Gruenewald president of the Tennessee Baptist Foundation. The Foundation hosted the break during the State Evangelism Conference at New Vision.
Cooper encouraged Tennessee pastors and lay leaders to “lead the crossing,” taking his message from Joshua 3 which gives details of Joshua leading the children of Israel into the Promised Land.
Cooper noted the children of Israel had to overcome fears before crossing the Jordan River. Cooper added, however, that “there is nothing out in the world greater than the God in us.”
Just as it was for Joshua and the Israelites, crossings are for the courageous. “Satan’s strategy is to keep us preoccupied from what matters — evangelism.”
Cooper observed that “so many of our people think they are ill equipped to take the gospel into their communities. Our people have the ability to go out and make a difference. We have to release them” Cooper urged pastors.
Just as the Israelites had to “break camp” to cross over the Jordan, churches today need to “break camp” to reach the lost people in Tennessee, Cooper said.
“We are all different but we believe Jesus is the hope for our nation, our state and our world,” Cooper stressed. “Let’s focus on what we have in common. Let’s be done with criticism and competition. We must encourage one another.
“It’s time to break camp and do what God has called us to do,” Cooper challenged conference attendees.
Clay Hallmark
Preaching the afternoon session of the conference on Monday, Hallmark referenced Matthew 9:37: “The harvest is great but the workers are few.”
He told attendees that they had a decision to make: “We can loiter in God’s house or we can labor in God’s harvest.”
He said the choice should be clear: “We’ve done enough standing around,” he said. “My prayer is that we will leave this place with no more talk and (will be) all action.”
Hallmark challenged attendees to commit themselves “to the purpose of evangelism” and to ignore the lies that Satan likes to tell believers, such as, “Do you know how much work that will be?” if they attempt to start something new.
The session closed with a time of commitment and prayer, during which the majority of those in attendance came to the altar. Hallmark prayed that God would “put a fresh burden” on the hearts of those in the room.
Jonathan Evans
Referring to a sequence of events that he called a personal “pandemic in the Evans’ family,” Jonathan detailed the recent deaths of several family members. He also talked about his mother, Lois, who died of cancer in January of 2020.
Jonathan Evans, son of Tony Evans and the team chaplin for the Dallas Cowboys, addresses attendees at Monday night’s session of the State Evangelism Conference at New Vision Church in Murfreesboro. — Photo by Bart Busch
Evans recalled the overwhelming grief that he and the other family members felt on the day when his dad, Tony Evans, told them the news that Lois had cancer and likely only had a few months to live.
During that family meeting, his mother did not allow the family members to dwell in their sadness.
“All of us were crying, and she just looked at us and said, ‘Well, are you finished yet?” Jonathan said. He said his mom told them to dry their tears and get back to doing what they do — sharing the gospel.
Jonathan said he couldn’t believe his mom would be talking about ministry work on that day. But she was firm on the subject.
“This is the reason you exist,” Jonathan recalled her saying. “And don’t you ever forget it. … There is a dying world out there that needs Jesus. There are generations depending on you.” Jonathan said that was his message for those at the conference: “We are living in the window of God’s grace,” he said, “and we have a job to do. ”
Evans is a former NFL player who spent time with the Cowboys, Redskins (now called the Washington Football Team), and Titans. He said that he, and most of the other players, were motivated during games by the thought of having to watch themselves on film the day after the game.
He said believers should feel motivated in the same way. What we do today will be “on film” when we stand before the Lord, he said.
Tony Evans
Evans began his message by detailing the accounts of Hurricane Katrina that ripped through New Orleans in August of 2005. The storm caused more than $160 billion in damage, and reduced the population of New Orleans by 29 percent between the fall of 2005 and 2011.
Evans noted that a major part of the catastrophe happened after the storm — when the levees failed. He talked about the thousands of lives that could have been saved had the levees not been overwhelmed.
Tony Evans, founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, addresses the crowd during the final session at the 2022 State Evangelism Conference at New Vision Church in Murfreesboro.
Evans then made the correlation, “Throughout history, God has had a levee (for mankind) — it’s called the church. And when the church fails, a storm becomes a disaster.”
He went on to say that the church should serve as an “embassy” for heaven here on earth. It should be a place where Christians can seek shelter, in a sense, and where they can be “governed” by the rules of Heaven even while living in the “foreign” land of our earthly surroundings.
“Just like an embassy, the church should be a little bit of heaven for those a long way from home,” he said. “Right now, we are not legislating from heaven. We are going along with the program.”
Evans reminded attendees that now is the time for believers to be bold in their faith.
“This is the time for us to show how strong the church is,” he added, “because of how strong the storm has become.”
Evans noted that God wants the church to impact society, and not the other way around.
“God doesn’t skip the church house to fix the White House,” he said.
Evans went on to say that the Bible has only one subject — “the glory of God through the advancement of his Kingdom” — which is spoken in a variety of ways.
“The Good News is narrow in scope, but it is supposed to be broad in impact,” Evans said. B&R
