Well, I just got back from a couple of days in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for a GIBF meeting, a Global Independent Baptist Fellowship meeting, and I wanted to give a little report on the trip and explain why I am thankful to be involved in a group like that. I am so blessed to be part of such a godly group of pastors and Christian workers. And by the way, church, this is the meeting we are going to host here at Calvary Baptist Church in 2029. If you are new here, I am Pastor Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. So in a few years, all these men are coming out to Temecula. I talked with my wife on the phone while I was in Sioux Falls, and I told her that everyone says hi. Basically every conversation started the same way: “Oh, is Jamie here?” And I would say, “No, it is just me.” And they would say, “Oh, okay.” So I just started leading with that: “No, it is just me. Hi, how are you doing?” It was a great week, a really encouraging couple of days.
The Host Church and the Business
East Side Baptist Church did an incredible job. I preached their youth rally last year, so it was nice to go back and see some of the same members again. Pastor Jason Jett, a good friend of ours, did an amazing job with the meeting. He preached our summer camp this year and was able to stay over the weekend and preach at our church the next Sunday, and he did a great job organizing the meeting. There is a lot happening with the GIBF right now. The Baptist Times magazine has closed, and because I have some books out there and have done some publishing, men kept nodding and winking at me and asking about what might come next. I kept telling them I do not think it comes back as a magazine. The pastor in El Paso, Pastor Joe Dickinson, will probably coordinate some emails, and that is a much simpler way than producing a big magazine. I told them Brother Joe has got this, and I told Brother Joe, “You have got this.” If the goal is simply to communicate what is going on in the GIBF, we can do that a variety of ways other than a magazine right now. We do not necessarily need to build some huge organization and raise a lot of money every year just to keep it going, and as it turns out, I think some of that was a bit excessive. If we ever did get involved with something like that, I would want it to be a service to the broader group of churches, and I would not want to take a salary from it. That was a point of discussion last week, but the focus was the preaching.
The Preaching
The preaching was the real highlight. It is a preaching fellowship meeting, and it was such a great encouragement. Brother Sam Davison preached Monday night from 1 Samuel 16, the passage where Saul had failed as king but God was not done with Israel. God had a man, He had a plan, and God can. That sermon set the tone for the whole meeting: we have just got to depend on God as pastors.
“And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Beth-lehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.”
Tuesday morning my good friend Brother Preston Hoyth from Crookston, Minnesota, preached an incredible message from the passage where Moses struck the rock. He pointed out something I had not noticed in quite that way. This was the next generation of Israelites. The murmuring generation had died in the wilderness, and here was the next generation, and they were thirsty. Moses had been dealing with complaining people for years, so it was as if he brought that generational frustration into this new situation and assumed these people were just like their parents. In his frustration he disobeyed God and struck the rock. Moses was acting almost as if God needed to punish these people, and instead God punished Moses and was gracious to the next generation despite their jaded leader. One of the big encouragements I took from that message was simply this: do not get jaded. Not everyone is a rebel. They might just be thirsty. That message was so good and so encouraging.
“And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also. And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.”
The next sermon was from Brother Billy Ingram, who always has a strong emphasis on being led by the Holy Spirit. This time he preached from Mark and focused on the fact that the disciples wanted to be with Christ, and they were with Christ. He talked about the storms of life, how the storms expose what we actually believe about Christ and teach us to depend on Christ and pray to Christ, and how on the other side of the storm is incredible blessing. The demoniac was saved, and now he wanted to be with Christ. All of it was beautiful, Christ-centered preaching and a good, challenging sermon. I was thankful for Brother Ingram as he closed out his four years as moderator.
“And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach.”
“And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him.”
That evening Brother Jonathan Pyle preached. He preached our camp last year, and his message was very simple: we have got to live holy lives. The theme of the meeting was “Stand Firm,” and he made the point that you cannot stand for Christ without standing on Christ. So again, another sermon on depending on Christ, and very helpful. Wednesday morning Pastor Tim Shellenberger of Washington preached a great sermon. His wife Christy was there too; she was my sister’s roommate in college. Pastor Shellenberger recently wrote a little book on Ephesians 1 called Beyond Calvinism, and he said that for a while he had really struggled with understanding that passage. I had already read and reviewed the book, so when he started his introduction making it sound like he disagreed with everybody in the room, I knew where he was coming from, and he did a great job handling the text. It was a great doctrinal sermon.
Then Brother Joe Dickinson preached about Jesus confronting the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who had everything right on the outside while being a mess on the inside. He brought that directly to us as pastors. We can show up and do all the right things, say the right things, preach, wear the right things, and look good outwardly, but inside there can be grave sins that nobody sees, and we have got to deal with our hearts before the Lord. That was an excellent, excellent challenge.
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”
Finally, on Wednesday night Brother Dean Herring preached a sermon I believe I heard in college called “The Shallows,” and here it is twenty years later, helpful again: if you mess around in the shallows, it will drag you out into the deep before you know it. He is going to preach our summer camp this summer, and I cannot wait for our teens to hear him. He will not be able to stay over at our church for the weekend as Brother Jason Jett did last summer, but I am thankful our teens at least get the opportunity to hear him. I am just thankful for straight preaching.
Why Fellowship Meetings Matter
That is what fellowship meetings are good for: preaching, but also fellowship. It is in the name. People probably think these meetings are about relaxing, a nice vacation. It is not exactly relaxing, but it is refreshing. It is late nights, early mornings, and long conversations. You are talking shop as pastors the whole time, bearing and sharing each other’s burdens, meeting people and hearing what is happening in their churches. I met several people on the trip, including one pastor from nearby who simply enjoyed meeting a group of pastors who believed as he does. It is very easy to feel isolated, as if you are flying solo out there, and fellowship meetings show you that there are hundreds of other men from all over the United States who share the same ministry convictions you do. I am very thankful for opportunities like that to help our movement in that sense.
There are also practical benefits. Relationships are formed at meetings like that, and that helps people like missionaries. Brother Garwin Ching, who preached here recently and is one of our newest missionaries, was at the meeting, and Brother Bradley Allen, who was just with us last week, was able to be there. Brother Garwin was already approved and was able to present at the meeting. With dozens of pastors there from all over the United States, instead of driving around the country and cold-calling all those pastors to meet them individually, a missionary can meet them all in one place. That can save thousands of miles and potentially months of deputation, and that is a big reason we are involved with meetings like this.
Brother Joe Dickinson, the current moderator, helped me with this. He told me he used to be fairly isolationist, just out in El Paso doing his thing. But then he wanted to plant a church and realized, “I do not know anybody. If I want a church planter to have any chance of success, I have got to get to know some men.” So he started getting more involved. That helped me, because if God ever wants our church to start another church, I want to be in a position to help that church planter the best we can. Who knows how long that will be for our church; I do not know. But I would love someday to get a church-planting intern in here, maybe even Brother Alex one day. He has expressed interest in planting a church, though he just got here and is not thinking of leaving; that is far in the future. I would love to get a man in here, train him, and send him out. Maybe nobody else knows him yet, but if pastors know his pastor and the church where he was trained, they have a good idea of his background and can get behind where he is going. So those relationships really matter, and that is another benefit of being involved in a fellowship like this, attending meetings like this, and even hosting one as we are going to do at our church.
Giving Back
I realize some people might hear that and think, “How does that affect me personally? How does that help our church directly?” Maybe it does not affect our church in an immediate way, but our church has been helped by groups of churches. We are here because churches banded together, got us started, and kept us encouraged over these forty years. So I want to use our church to give back to our movement. I believe churches like ours are needed in cities all over this world. A couple of weeks ago, Brother Bradley Allen was talking to Eli from our church on Sunday night and telling him his testimony. Brother Bradley had just gotten out of jail and had just barely gotten saved and given his life to Christ. He did not know anything about Christianity, but he tried all these different churches, still smoking and barely knowing anything. Then he walked into a Baptist church and realized, “This is it. This is what I need.” I think there is something worthwhile about being part of helping that grow. That was my past couple of days, and I am thankful for the chance to be involved in a meeting like that. Thank you, church, for allowing me to go. If you want to watch the sermons for yourself, or if my descriptions piqued your interest, you can find them at gibf.org or look them up on YouTube. I hope today’s video is a help. God bless you, and we will see you in the next video.
