Landmark Baptist

http://www.atstracts.org./

Why Tracts?
It has been said that nothing cost less, goes farther, lasts longer or says it better than a gospel tract. But what is a tract? We at the American Tract Society have been developing these tools for 180 years. In short, a tract is any tool that is to the point, relevant, arrests our attention, contains the gospel and takes us closer to Christ.

Tracts are indispensable. I want to encourage you to think about their strategic use as you go out into the world each day. When you make them part of your spiritual repertoire, God will give you many opportunities to share. A tract is so wonderfully crafted that it can go to work if even a child finds one on the floor. Regardless of your spiritual maturity or experience in sharing the gospel, a tract is an indispensable helper.

Here are my suggestions for developing an effective tract ministry.

1. Pray.
You cannot win anyone to Christ, neither can a tract. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.

2. Give appropriate tracts.
Always carry several different types of tracts with you—so you can match the message to the person. Let God do the rest

3. Engage your audience
This can be done by making eye contact, with a simple smile, asking questions and listening carefully to what is said.

4. Don’t force tracts on people.
I recommend distributing a tracts carefully, prayerfully, and judiciously over handing out a hundred indiscriminately.

5. Use top-quality tracts.
Invest in the best tracts available. You and your Lord will be judged by the equipment you use.

6. Keep your tracts in good condition.
Make sure your tracts are clean and fresh when you hand them out.

7. Use positive tracts.
Our job is not to put others down, but to lift Jesus up by presenting the positive truth of the gospel.

8. Find new ways to use tracts.
Be original. Never leave home without a tract.

9. Get organized.
Place tracts where they will be readily accessible for your use, like in your closet, car, backpack, or purse.

10. Give out a tract each day.
You will be amazed as you see the Lord bless your efforts. (May not see results until we arrive in heaven)

One technique we have begun to employ in Brownwood involves door-hangers. While door-hangers may not be the most courageous form of evangelism, I find that when we set out to canvass a neighborhood, you'll usually wind up having a good-solid conversation with one or two people. So far, no professions of faith using this approach, but we have seen some become regular attenders through this.

There is a great book by Mark Cahill called "One thing you can't do in heaven"! It's a must for anyone who wants to sharpen their soul winning skills and use of tracts! You'll enjoy it too

Here is a link which provides the other side of the story. Frankly, I can't find anything wrong with the arguments presented here.

http://www.pb.org/pbdocs/blakrock.html#Minutes

Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas

Hey Mark,
What do you suppose the popular schemes of the day were back in 1834. Wasn't that about the time that they started having invitations at the end of preaching? When did the organ and piano first get introduced into those churches? Was it around the same time? I know people had been writing religious pamphlets for many years at that point, even before the American Revolution. What do you suppose the popular schemes were? Apparently is was pretty important to have to major meetings over it even though they never actually said what it was?

I am surprised that someone who has called himself a missionary Baptist would be peddling the ideas of the anti-Missionary Baptists. Since when have we become enamored with the world view of the reformed?

Brother Smith,

You said,

Jon Smith wrote:What do you suppose the popular schemes of the day were back in 1834. Wasn't that about the time that they started having invitations at the end of preaching? When did the organ and piano first get introduced into those churches? Was it around the same time? I know people had been writing religious pamphlets for many years at that point, even before the American Revolution. What do you suppose the popular schemes were? Apparently is was pretty important to have to major meetings over it even though they never actually said what it was?

They did say what the popular schemes were - they were all of the then modern innovations among Baptists which are pointedly addressed in that document. Those who wrote the document were the progenitors of what became known as the Primitive or Hardshell Baptists.

So far as tracts go, their objection was not to tracts per se, but to the claim that tracts were a means ordained by God for the salvation of souls and to tract societies, such as the one mentioned in this thread.

Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas

Brother Chad,

Chad Whitely wrote:I am surprised that someone who has called himself a missionary Baptist would be peddling the ideas of the anti-Missionary Baptists. Since when have we become enamored with the world view of the reformed?

I am not enamored with the world view of the reformed. I repudiate Calvinism in its entirety.

If being a "missionary Baptist" means believing that we should preach the gospel to the lost and send men to preach the gospel to the lost and to establish churches, then I gladly accept the name. However, if being a "missionary Baptist" means accepting all of the man contrived schemes which have supplanted the work of the Holy Spirit, then I repudiate it as surely as I repudiate Calvinism.

The original issue in the anti-missions controversy was not Calvinism nor the propriety of the preaching the gospel to the lost. The issue was the propriety of the schemes of man which were designed to aid the Holy Spirit and to enrich those who administered them. So far as those issues go, the "antis" were right and the "missionaries" were wrong. How any God fearing Baptist man can look at the moral and spiritual corruption wrought by the so called "modern missionary movement" and conclude otherwise is beyond my ability to comprehend.

Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas

Bro. Mark,
Nicely said.
I agree.

I am not enamored with the world view of the reformed. I repudiate Calvinism in its entirety.

If being a "missionary Baptist" means believing that we should preach the gospel to the lost and send men to preach the gospel to the lost and to establish churches, then I gladly accept the name. However, if being a "missionary Baptist" means accepting all of the man contrived schemes which have supplanted the work of the Holy Spirit, then I repudiate it as surely as I repudiate Calvinism.

The original issue in the anti-missions controversy was not Calvinism nor the propriety of the preaching the gospel to the lost. The issue was the propriety of the schemes of man which were designed to aid the Holy Spirit and to enrich those who administered them. So far as those issues go, the "antis" were right and the "missionaries" were wrong. How any God fearing Baptist man can look at the moral and spiritual corruption wrought by the so called "modern missionary movement" and conclude otherwise is beyond my ability to comprehend.

Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas

The views you espouse come from the world view of the reformed (Hardshell) theologians. They simply do not sync with the imperative to reach the lost. I am not sure what spiritual and moral corruption can come from handing out a tract.

Let's review, though, for a second:

1) You are against handing out Bibles for the purpose of evangelism.
2) You are against handing out tracts.
3) You are against the missionary movement (which is the primary reason for Baptist asociations.)
4) You are against church camp.
5) You are against abstinence conferences.

I could go on, but what missionary activity exactly are you for? You seem to have a faith and practice that is defined by what you are against, so I keep getting confused as to why you call yourself a Missionary Baptist and not a Hardshell Baptist.

Bro. Chad,

Reformed theology and/or practitioner and Hardshell theology and/or practitioner are not necessarily the one and the same.

I obviously cannot speak for Bro. Mark, nor do I desire to do so.
As for myself, though, I do not consider church camp or abstinence conferences as missionary activities.
Handing out "tracts" (the sort of which the Black Rock meeting spoke)---well, why not just talk to the person and /or use one's own material?
Evangelism is not "soul winning" (as many define the term). Rather it is correctly announcing God's Word.
I am not sure what you mean by "the missionary movement." However, churches are to start other churches. If churches help each other in the correct manner, then good.

Reformed theology is Protestantism and so is hardshellism.

The way I see it.

I can not speak but one language and there are literally thousands. I am not sure what kind of thinking really thinks that a written sermon or a written devotional on a pamphlet being given to someone who is lost is trying to "aid" the Holy Spirit in a wrongful manner. Just because I can not speak the language of the Indian Hindu down my street does not mean that I have no responsibility to share the gospel with him in a written form he can understand.
This foolish thinking is akin to those that believe the Holy Spirit can only convict through a sermon preached from the King James Translation. Jesus said "My Words are Spirit".....He also said to his prophets to "write the message".....He also said "the Word of God is quick and powerful". Innumerable souls have been won by those who sowed the seeds of truth and proclaimed the Gospel through print and even internet which is the "new" print.
People have been wrong many times and this is one of the problems with referring to old associations and old meetings....just because they did it 300 years ago doesn't mean they were right. This is a lie from the devil....The Word is Right....not men and their little meetings and councils of yesteryear!

Jon Smith wrote:The Word is Right....not men and their little meetings and councils of yesteryear!

...Nor men and their little meetings and councils of this year.

Mark Osgatharp wrote:The original issue in the anti-missions controversy was not Calvinism nor the propriety of the preaching the gospel to the lost. The issue was the propriety of the schemes of man which were designed to aid the Holy Spirit and to enrich those who administered them. So far as those issues go, the "antis" were right and the "missionaries" were wrong.

Daniel Parker's A Public Address to the Baptist Society, and Friends of Religion in General, on the Principle and Practice of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions for the United States of America is a good example of this. To many, Parker's name is synonymous with "anti-missions". Though Parker advocated predestination and some strange ideas about the seed of woman and the seed of the serpent, one reading the above book will find he made ecclesiological arguments against the Foreign Mission Board and not soteriological ones. They are basically the same arguments of Graves, Bogard, et al. Interestingly, the names "anti-missionary" and "missionary" aside, Parker was one of the most active early preachers in Texas in traveling to preach the gospel and organizing churches.

Bro. Vaughn, you are correct....little meetings and councils of yester year or today do not change the truth that Gods Word is quick and powerful and that sharing a tract with someone in a language they can read and I can not is not wrongfully "aiding" the Holy Spirit....

those who wrongfully use tracts and enrich themselves by them is not the point of this thread! The point is that Mark gave the other side of the "Tract" issue. What he did is tie sin to tract handing out by highlighting a little meeting and council of men of an association we wouldn't even fellowship with, when in and of itself it is not sinful to hand out Gospel tracts! If Mark would like to start another thread on a list of things we shouldn't do because of all the evils that people can attach to doing Gods Work then thats fine.

The truth is that people enrich themselves by starting missions and churches but that does not make starting missions and churches wrong and something to be attacked? A Chinese person put poison in some medicine that killed a hundred people so therefore its wrong to take medicine....the logic is foolishness!

Bro. Vaughn your quickness to defend Mark never ceases to amaze me even though you say you disagree with him on so many issues, you often jump in for him even when the argument is totally undefendable. Are you sure that the two of you aren't related?

Yes. We are brothers in Christ.

I think you know what I mean

Brother Vaughn,

You said,

R.L. Vaughn wrote:They are basically the same arguments of Graves, Bogard, et al.

It seems to me what our people - I mean the Landmarkers - have been doing for he last 150+ years is trying to clean up Conventionism and all the other modern innovations which grew out of the so called "modern missions movement." I say its high time we acknowledged that the problem is progressivism itself and return to the unadultered preaching of God's gospel or, as brother Looney said, correctly announcing God's word.

Here is a link to John Taylor's thoughts on missions. It is said by some that he himself softened his opposition to missionary societies in later years. Personally, I can't find fault with

http://www.geocities.com/baptist_docume ... .miss.html

Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas

Brother Chad,

You said,

Chad Whitely wrote:The views you espouse come from the world view of the reformed (Hardshell) theologians. They simply do not sync with the imperative to reach the lost.

I think you need to go back and read the Black Rock Address again. There is not one word in it which in any way minimizes the imperative to reach the lost with the gospel - not one word. Your words are the same sort of empty rhetoric which was hurled against the original antis - some of whom preached the gospel in more places and to more people than you or I could ever hope to.

You asked,

Chad Whitely wrote:....but what missionary activity exactly are you for?

I am for the unadultered preaching of the gospel of the Son of God. You can make your list of additions to that as long as you wish and I'll be against every one of them and I won't give a second thought to the charge of being "anti" because I'm glad to be against anything not ordained by God Almighty.

Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas

I sure know that it helps people to stay focused on the message by having air conditioning in our assembly...do you see this as wrongfully aiding the Holy Spirit? It is progressive in that it is both a technological advance (electricity) a perceived need based on a changing culture (houses not built that conduct natural air flow).

Air Conditioning Makes It Condusive to Preach the Gospel....do you have any at your church building?

I sure know that it helps people to stay focused on the message to have a tract with the gospel in their own language......do you see this as wrongfully aiding the Holy Spirit? It is progressive in that it is both a technological advance (printing press) and a perceived need base on a changing culture (the browning of america).

Tracts in Foreign Languages Makes It Condusive to Preach the Gospel...do you have any at your church building?



Oh the Evil Scheme of it all....If it wasn't for these Missionary Societies everything would be so great! I mean if we could just do the work of an evangelist and not have to worry about keeping all these Convention guys straight and rebuking them all the time we could really be doing something. I mean if it wasn't for them the work of God would be so PURE

Brother Smith,

Do you believe the Holy Spirit is better equipped to convert men after the invention of the air conditioner and printing press than He was before?

Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas