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.

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