RAIDER said:
Walt said:
Having said that, in my long experience of IFB churches, most missionaries were, frankly, awful.
They used the pulpit as a sales pitch -- the message consisted of "see what great things I'm going? Why aren't you doing as much as I am?" - some were more blatant and some were more subtle, but that is pretty much the theme of 99% of the missionary messages. When it comes to preaching, I don't want story-telling time; do that afterwards. Preaching should bring forth the truths of the Bible. The preacher should not manipulate the crowd, but allow the Holy Spirit to bring conviction.
I have not experienced the "sales pitch" missionary. As I stated in an earlier post, our pastor allows them to present their ministry through a video presentation and possibly a brief testimony. The problems I have encountered is with the "boring" preaching.
It is possibly I was unclear: the sales pitch is pretty subtle - it usually consists of (1) what a great job they are doing winning souls on deputation (2) How eager they are to get to the field (3) Misc items of how "on fire" they are -- in general, a resume of why they would be a good missionary family to support. These things tend to be sprinkled through whatever they are speaking about.
So, it's not a blatant sales pitch.
The other item that seems to be nearly constant is the beating the local church up about doing more for Jesus -- at a very high summary: "here's all the great things I am doing -- why aren't you doing as much?"
As I said earlier, I've only ever heard one missionary who didn't do either of these; as I recall, his message was an encouragement to dream big and expect God to do great things.
