SPRINGFIELD – Change of methods may be coming to the Fellowship of Missouri Baptist Evangelists plans, as two Great Commission Conference leaders praised evangelists for their influence.
While the change was hinted at a meeting during the conference, details will be announced later.
Dr. John Yeats, Executive Director of MBC, shared several accounts through the years were “my life has been radically impacted by evangelists.”
In one example, Yeats told of taking a difficult youth to camp in Arkansas when Yeats pas-tored in Texas. The evangelist immediately offered an invitation less than five minutes into a talk, and the youth Yeats brought made a beeline to the evangelist.
“He got radically saved,” Yeats said.
He also mentioned evangelist Michael Gott who took Yeats son on an Eastern European mission trip. Yet another evangelist, who worked puppets, “poured his life into me as a pastor and young man. That’s what discipleship and mentoring is about.”
Matt Kearns also expressed appreciation for the work of evangelists,
“I’m a by-product of their influence,” he said adding he didn’t have full appreciation of that until an evangelist helped in his life.
Kearns also shared his sister gave her life to Christ at a revival Clyde Chiles and Jim McNeil led.
“I’m committed to evangelists,” Kearns said, hinting that some future direction might include evangelists reaching colleges and universities.
“We’re not entering something new, we’re getting back to what we were in 1956 when I got into evangelism,” said Chiles. “We’re getting back to what we used to be – personal evangelism to all groups.
The body of people can’t have evangelism with out personal evangelism,” Chiles said.
Organization president James Ogan told the group that in the changes, “we’re not to put us in the platform first, but we’re to put Jesus first.”