Slobs for Jesus
Johnstown, PA- The ranks of open air evangelism have always been filled with an assortment of entertaining personalities, that aside from their associational standing in close proximity to “able ministers of the New Testament” (2 Corinthians 3:6) that preach “everywhere” (Mark 16:20), “many there be” (Matthew 7:13) that really never rise to or meet the standards of the Bible for a God called preacher in the open air. The news media, local police and governments, as well as most nominally observant people, whether lost or saved can see this clearly, when this wide assortment of religious devotees with an attitude to match, bother them, get in their way, and verbally accost them in the open markets, sidewalks and public events of this modern day ‘world-in-transit-to-hell’ society in which we live.
Amongst this assortment of falsely so called whatevers-for-God, are the religious activists, religious protesters, pro-lifers for jesus, the Ten Commandments Everywhere for jesus, We Have Our Rights for jesus, Missionaries-Preachers & Teachers to the Preborn for jesus, thugs for jesus, dancers for jesus, strippers for jesus, bikers, brawlers and broads for jesus!!! All of this nonsense and Holywood Comedy Sin-tral, is just one brush stroke after another in Satan’s artistic portrait make-over in the Devil’s desire that the lost world view every street preacher and open air evangelists as just a bunch of wackos and freaks, just one step above or below the sidewalk beggar with a tin cup in his hand. It is one Biblical thing to be to the world “fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Corinthians 4:10), and another Biblical thing to ”be a fugutive and a vagabond” (Genesis 4:14). But without exception, God Almighty, the Bible and the SPF are in agreement on this one thing, that all of the above demonstrators of religious “Tom-Foolery” all fit one basic characterization common to all of them. And that is apparent at the very sight of them, that they are without exception, Slobs for jesus; who for whatever mental deficiency each may have, it never actually dawned upon them, that “Christ…leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps” (1 Peter 2:21) applies to open air preachers as well.
Having said such, it is utterly impossible to picture Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God wading into a crowd, bellowing out verses of scripture, 100 pounds over weight, dressed in his underwear with religious saying painted all over his under shirt and boxers, wearing a carpenter’s nail bag with ragged gospel tracts hanging out of the pockets; his beard untrimmed and his hair shagged and dirty, wearing muddy black tennis shoes with the laces untied. Additionally difficult, would be to imagine Christ with His twelve disciples parading down the street with twelve high flying banners, with James, John, Peter and Bartholomew all belching out the gospel through megaphones at one time while standing 15 feet from one another, with Judas and Luke the beloved physician holding giant posters of mutilated fetuses from some harlot’s abortion, screaming to the children in the crowd, ‘They are murdering God’s children!” At a local parade just recently, the Director was standing in the open street passing out gospel tracts while a young Spirit filled preacher from Michigan was preaching the gospel to a very attentive crowd. The young street preacher was doing a very good job, and had the crowd captivated and listening to every word he said, because you could see the seriousness and sincerity on his countenance, and he was earnestly pleading and reasoning with the listeners. The crowd could clearly see that the young man was not at all dressed like the typical young American youth, but was clearly “fashioned as a man” (Philippians 2:8) and not some teenage beach bum or high school socker player. In our small group of ministers, we had a single banner raised, and one preacher was holding a small scripture sign for people to read as the young evangelists preached, with three other ministers quietly standing by passing out gospel tracts to those who would receive them. Then suddenly, there came down the middle of the same road, five other “street preachers” carrying three banners; three having brightly colored religious sayings painted on their underwear, one about 150 pounds over weight, with his Fruit of the Loom under shirt too short to completely cover his pot belly, with two Slobs simultaneously bellowing out death and destruction on everyone, assumingly upon their fellow preachers as well since they made no attempt to stop and preach in any particular direction to any particular people. This circus act of religious vehemency, completely voiced over and drowned out their fellow preacher, as they crashed the young man’s sermon. One bearded preacher yelled at the SPF Director, “Isn’t anyone out ahead of us rebuking these wicked bunch of idolaters?” Answered the SPF Director, “well we were trying to preach here, and Brother Ickes is one block ahead of us, but I guess you guys are the only ones doing anything!” And some dare to find fault in our calling them Slobs????? And should we make proselytes to this stupidity?
“Some indeed preach Christ even of
envy and strife.”
-Philippians 1:15
And though the Apostle Paul likewise endured these that “preach Christ of contention, not sincerely”, and testified that “whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached”, therein he did “rejoice” (vs. 18), our rejoicing in these slobs for jesus is more oft a controlled sneer, one step above a disgusted laugh. Though the open air evangelist must do what his localized, pastoral counterpart is too afraid to do, must it be a requirement for being a street preacher that we look and behave like we actually live and sleep in the streets as well as preach in them? Who taught these slobs to ”let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40) except open air preaching?
Not one time in the New Testament, in all the many incidences of open air preaching in both the gospels and the Book of Acts, not one time do you find any of God’s ministers behaving that way, looking that way, preaching that way or dressed that way. Not one time!!! Being “made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) is not license or Biblical authority to act like a slob, dress like a slob, look like a slob and behave like one because some of the people in the streets are that way! In 2005 the SPF encountered a similar problem in Salt Lake City where the repeated question raised by the news media, countless nominal Christian churches, Mormons and even the liberal ACLU was a very logical and reasonable inquiry about why many of the street preachers looked like vagabonds and beggars, while the “sinful Mormon heretics” the street preachers were rebuking looked liked saints! This scourge of lazy, sloppy and beggarly elements within the ranks of open air ministries has so increased, that at the present time, regardless of the event, the SPF is continually amazed at how much better the sober crowds behave, act and look than the so called street preachers condemning them to hell. One must position himself solely in the midst of the absolute depraved and drunken crowds at Mardi Gras, the night before any Super Bowl, or Georgetown Road the night before the Indy 500 race, before you will find the crowd behaving and looking worse than some falsely so-called street preachers. And as the Director of the largest, single most ministerial fellowship of open air preachers in the world, this author is embarrassed to admit such in a public format open to public comments. Howbeit, the SPF intends to countenance such and tolerate such no further.
In continually searching for the reason and cause of such an expanding rank and file of obvious lazy, arrogant and stupendously ignorant slobs representing themselves by deed and appearance as anything but a God called preacher, there are three, common problems that all these circus hawking religious bull horns have in common. First, without exception each of these failures in the ministry fail in the one area where the ministry begins, and that is habitually failing or refusing to attend church regularly, or be an active member in regular attendance to any church. And because of such, they refuse to allow any oversight of their ministerial activities, nor will they subject themselves to any Biblical standards of conduct for their personal or ministerial lives. In abandoning all Biblical over sight or duty to work within the oversight of a church, they never sit still long enough to learn how to minister to anyone, care about anyone, or work with anyone “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:20). That is why the police so many times view their activities by appearance as ‘disorderly conduct’. And because of such, these slobs quickly become authorities in dodging all responsibility for their conduct, since they run a hit and miss ministerial schedule reminiscent of some vaudeville carnival troupe that comes to town in the night and leaves in the night, and they never have to worry about the back lash and sorry, slobbish testimony they leave behind for the local churches to deal with when the slobs for jesus are gone. They use the excuse of being full time travelling preachers to justify staying out of church, when in reality, the majority of them (not all), are just lazy men that could never hold down a job, or a pulpit more than 60 days, who habitually sleep in every day until after 9 a.m. and enjoy a slobbish, hand to mouth existence while claiming to be living by faith. To this bunch is a collective assortment of astoundingly lazy, young men, who absolutely refuse to work like a man to support their families, who gravitate to this lying, false pretense of being “in the ministry full time” so they can be a Christian beggar to the local churches to support; churches that they themselves would not join or subject themselves to. These lazy young slobs, lay around their travel trailers at every rest stop or truck station, or back of some local church parking lot waiting for the next “big event”. They could not mow a lawn, paint a house, or work 40 hours a week if their characterless life or wife depended upon it. They stop at local churches only to get financial support, but have no intentions of remaining very long [most times only long enough to get an offering and escape the congregations scrutiny about all the above]. They have no intentions of living according to the Bible, minister according to the Bible, dress or work in according to the Bible. Therefore, they cannot join, be an active member of, or remain too long in any church.
Secondly, these falsely so called evangelists in transit, to a man all have at least one extremely major sin in their secret life (some more than one), to which they cannot get the victory, and the guilt of their conscience drives them to an over emphasis of spirituality to cover a major collapse in their spirituality that they think no one sees or knows about. And because of such, open air preaching draws this flock of flesh pots like a magnet, because it affords these slobs an avenue to balance by appearance the giant failure in their Christian life, by “seeming to be pillars” (see Galatians 2:6-9) and giants of the faith, when in private they have great sins that they cannot beat (see vs. 10-11). Nominal church going Christianity doesn’t help over throw such a guilty conscience. It takes an overly public pretense of religion to overthrow the conscience about secret sins. By way of example, this preacher has over the last five years dealt with countless young, overly zealous evangelists, that are always completely over bearing and rude in their continual lashing out at sodomites, whores and drug addicts; the fervency of such rebukes never matches the spiritual countenance of the young preacher’s face as if it really did bother him that much, or was that offensive to him. And time and time again, those overly zealous young men are constantly attracted to the crowds that have the same problems they themselves fail in daily. They just preach against the secret sins in their own life. The ranks of open air preaching are full of young porno heads, pretending to be a Christian, whose conscience drives them to such guilt and despair, that their hearts stay in a continual ”excuse or accuse” mode (see Romans 2:15), where they either ”excuse” their own sin in a certain area, by openly rebuking “THE SIN…THEIR SIN” in someone else’s life, or they “accuse” others of the sin in their own lives under the superficial pretense of “rebuking” them. There is a difference between openly rebuking someone, and openly accusing someone, and these young ministers show off their seared consciences by accusing other young men of what they themselves are guilty of, unable to see that the countenance on the face of the accused is most often better than the countenance of the accuser. That is not open rebuke! In the same circus act, fell the preacher who though publicly made great shows of being the gallant street preacher standing in the byways to rebuke that other religion in town, he continually looked like he lived as a drunk in some alley way. His eyes were always puffy and blood shot, his face swollen and his speech slurred on many occasions, and his outward dress and appearance was always slobbish and unkempt. His wife had the typical hard countenance, with the coarse, brittle wasted hair of an alcoholic and the deep baritone voice of a smoker. Then came the day when the preacher’s wife was arrested for shop lifting liquor from the local ‘Do-Drop-In’, where she had stuffed the bottle in her ‘Christian Blue Jeans for Jesus’, and the jig was up. Their oldest daughter finally had enough. The preacher’s daughter had to put up with ‘mom and dad always drinking behind the scenes’, and mom always fallen down drunk at home, so that the daughter could never enjoy being a young Christian girl because she was always playing mom to her siblings when their mother was passed out drunk in the bed. Watching her mother stopped and pulled from the car by the police and arrested for stealing liquor was more than the young girl could endure without telling someone. So she told her closest friend and confident, who happened to be the SPF Director’s son. When the expected and immediate reaction of the SPF Director occurred, and “the street preacher” was confronted with the revelations, did the slob repent and clean up??? Nope, he threw his daughter out of the house for telling on him, and she retaliated by marrying into the religion he spent all his time preaching against! The drinking continued and the preacher eventually was found flat on his back in the hospital with suspected Epedimology [medical term for multiple blood clots in the brain caused by excessive drinking that softens the heart, producing numerous blood clots that lodge in the brain, leading to multiple strokes]. Such mysterious illnesses may fool the “physicians of no value” who would never suspect or at least would never state publicly a suspicion that the preacher was a drunk, but it waves a red flag to open air preachers who deal with drunks all their lives. Is there any wonder the SPF would call them slobs?
Thirdly, without exception these ministerial slobs have always failed to sit still long enough to be taught the Bible by anyone, which is a pre-requisite for being an “elder” (Titus 1:5-9), to whom the Bible assigns the over sight of the church and the ministry at large. This third attribute of the more slobbish side of open air activists and protesters and general thugs for jesus (the SPF dares not call them preachers any longer), is why so many such irresponsible transients flock to street preaching ministries, because it affords them a place to hide their ignorance of the Bible as it applies to themselves personally, while enabling them to escape a continual inspection by observant Christians. Even the very new Christians can quickly observe that these slobs apply very little of what the Bible says to themselves personally, while dumping it all over everyone else on the street. The failure to sit still and be taught the Bible, leaves these transient individuals as the sole authority in their own lives, which they can only maintain by moving on whenever their errors are called into question. Subsequently, each of these three deficiencies builds upon and feeds the other two, so that these poor, self guided fools’ fraudulent entrance into the ranks of open air preaching becomes a spiritually lethal snare to them, from which there really is no escape until their laziness, ignorance and secret sins catch up to them, to expose them as the fraudulent slob they really were. Truly the time has come, during the greatest revival of open air preaching in over two hundred years, that the truly God called street preachers must expose and remove such from our ranks, and “note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed” (2 Thessalonians 3:14-15).
“From such turn away.”
Visitors’ Comments