The Hufhand Report: Friday’s Focus on Fundamentalism
A recent article
written by Dr. Kevin Bauder, has come to my attention, and with it, he has
opened up a can of worms, in regard to the strategy of Bible colleges and
Christian Universities in their approach to getting students.
This article appears to be an
about face for Dr. Bauder, who has consistently downgraded fundamentalism every
chance he got, over the last 10 years. Actually, there is much in the
article, with which I would agree, and have written about. Please forgive
this feeble attempt to understand how we got into this mess.
The answer to this
dilemma is a return to old time Biblical fundamentalism, but few people are
interested in doing that. Reflecting on the past, there was a time when
many young men went off to college, simply to major in some particular course
of study, such as History, Engineering, Literature, Political Science,
etc. In the course of time, they began to seek God’s will for their life,
aided by the influence of godly pastors. As a result, some of them gave
themselves to the ministry, at which time; they would choose a seminary where
they would focus on studies pertaining to the ministry, such as languages,
Bible, apologetics, and theology. Generally, their choice of seminary came
through their denominational preference.
All of this changed when the
denominational Seminaries started to become liberal in their theology.
The advent of such schools as Moody Bible Institute, Biola, Detroit Bible
Institute, Temple University, and Bob Jones University, etc., became the answer
to this onslaught of liberalism. The products of these Christian schools
produced thousands of young men and women who had no place to serve, hence, the
church planting movement of the 1920’s through the 1970’s. Now here we
are, back where we started from in the beginning. Someone has stated,
“What goes around, comes around.” This is what has happened.
As a result of the former
strategy, every community in America had a denominational church of one kind or
another, to which young men could attend. The pastors of those churches
were always on the lookout for young men who would make good ministers and he
would take them under his wing and steer them into the ministry. The
number of men going into the ministry adequately supplied the church or
churches in each community with a pastor.
However, the strategy that
began with the advent of the Bible colleges was different. The church planting
movement came about as a result of thousands of young men surrendering to the
ministry, with no place to serve upon graduation from college. Most of
the pastors and missionaries presently serving, or have recently retired, are
products of those fundamental churches, as well as fundamental schools.
On the other hand, some of us, like me, are products of churches that were in
liberal denominations. My pastor didn’t really care where I went to
college, as long as I went to their particular denominational seminary.
If I did that, my pastor assured me of a nice comfortable pastorate
somewhere in the country. I didn’t take him up on it.
Once the fundamentalist
movement got started in earnest, back in the 1920’s, fueled by several
aggressive church planting associations, such as the CBA of A, the GARBC, the
BBF, and the IFCA, it wasn’t long until churches began to dot every little town
and village in America. The Bible schools were pumping out preacher boys
by the hundreds and soon there was a “glut” of preachers with few places to
serve, except in communities where there were already at least one or two well
attended Gospel preaching churches. New churches were started in these
towns, and soon there were three or four in it, and to make matters worse,
churches began to split and splinter, and soon, there were hundreds of small
struggling churches scattered all across the landscape of our country, which is
the case today, with no pastors to fill them, as the number of pastors
continues to decline. To make matters worse, hundreds of pastors are
walking away from the ministry every month.
With the advent of Christian
day schools starting up in the 1970’s, it altered the focus of most
pastors. Where they were once aggressively growing their Sunday Schools
and Churches, through soul winning programs and evangelistic preaching, they
began concentrating on building their Christian schools. And although the
Christian school has been a blessing and did alleviate the glut of preacher
boys coming out of college, because now many of them became involved in the
Christian school, it did nothing to head off what would tragically follow.
What we have to understand is
that the choices we make are often fraught with unintended consequences and one
of the consequences is the product of our Christian schools. Instead of
training our young people for the battlefield through the ministry of the local
church, we educated them in the Christian school to ignore where the battle
was. We actually took them out of the battlefield, which was the public
school system. What we really accomplished in our Christian schools was
to develop a callousness toward the things of God. The Bible became a
textbook, instead of love letter and a manual for Christian living.
Instead of causing their hearts to be tender toward the ministry, we actually
turned their hearts away from it. Let me tell you a story and I’m done
with this.
This goes back to the days
when Bob Jones III was still President of BJU. He wrote a letter to all
of the BJ pastoral graduates in regard to something that literally broke his
heart. Even as I write, I hesitate to mention it; for fear that it might
return the grief to his heart. He told of inviting many of the Christian
schools that had a basketball team, along with their cheerleaders, to a week of
competition and comradery at the University. Thousands of young men and
women gathered together. As they gathered in the Auditorium, to hear the
75cent pitch about the school, they were then told about the different courses
of study that were positioned through-out the building, naming each one, and
then dismissing them to go where their interest was.
DR. Bob Jones, III
In writing his letter to
us, and I still have the letter, he asked this question: “Do you know how many of those
thousands of students came to the School of Religion?” To his
grief and sorrow, he said, “Just
one.” That was 20 years ago. Imagine what it is
today! No wonder there is such a dearth of ministerial students.
The fire has gone out in our churches, as well as our Bible colleges and
Universities. And I’m sorry to have to say, much of it must be laid at
the door of our Christian schools and pastors who lost their focus. Let’s face
it, with a few exceptions, most of our once thriving fundamental churches are
dead or dying. There is little to no life in them. Although the
Christian school endeavor, along with the Bus ministry, has declined greatly,
the problem of young men entering into the ministry still exists, and is
getting worse. What fundamentalism needs today is a champion; i.e. someone like
Billy Sunday, Bob Jones Sr., W.B. Riley, a Bob Ketchum, a John R. Rice, a Lee
Roberson, or a Tom Malone, who will step up to the plate and lead the
way. God help us, and if it doesn’t happen, we can write our own
obituary.
Dr. Lawrence Hufhand
The Hufhand Report:
Friday
Focus (May, 29, 2020)
Reprinted
by Permission.
