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Summary

The conversation explores the intersection of evangelism and technology, focusing on how social media platforms like TikTok can be utilized for outreach, particularly to those struggling with addiction and homelessness. It delves into biblical teachings, specifically the parable of the Prodigal Son, to illustrate the importance of grace and understanding in evangelism. The panel discusses practical strategies for churches to engage with their communities and the evolving landscape of social media in spreading the gospel.

Chapters

00:00 Discussion on Evangelism and Social Media
09:36 Addressing Addiction and Homelessness
19:34 Utilizing Social Media for Outreach
24:57 Convincing Others for Baptism
27:46 Unique Baptism Stories
30:39 Engaging with the Audience
36:34 The Power of One-on-One Conversations
40:50 The Evolution of Social Media and Evangelism
47:52 Closing Thoughts and Future Directions

Transcript *This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.*

Forum Panel (00:00)
As we have been discussing all week as we introduce this session, we’re here like a Bible study. This is not a session to, you know, set brotherhood precedent or anything like that. But we are here to talk about the lessons that we just had, and we just had one on evangelizing people with addictions, meeting people where they are, and using social media for evangelism. And if you heard the lesson, he said tick…

or, TikTok is the best and forget the rest, or something like that, okay? But anyway, that’s…but he’ll take questions on other social medias as well as some of these others. And so what we’re doing is, you know, people asking questions have to do with these lessons and really any of the lessons that were done today. We had ones earlier on using technology in evangelism, Aquila’s evangelistic role in working with Priscilla.

and then ⁓ training evangelists, but he had a lesson from Luke 15. And Chris had to leave also due to the weather. He did give his lesson, but he flew back. And so there is a few questions about Luke 15. And so any of the speakers, of course, can address those questions as well. All right, and so let’s just start out with a couple of these questions from… ⁓

Luke 15 here, here’s a couple of them. Was the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son in a lost state according to Luke 15.3? Or did the grace of God cover him like 1 John 1.7? And so let’s go over here and read Luke 15. I’m gonna get my Bible over here, Luke 15.

In verse 30.

And that reads, and this, of course, is after the celebration when the prodigal came back, the celebration with the prodigal. And then verse 29, I’ll start up there, so He answered him, actually verse 28, but he, the elder brother, was angry and would not go in. And therefore his father came out and pleaded with him, verse 29, so He answered and said to his father, Lo, these many years I have been serving you. I never transgressed your commandment at any time.

And yet you never gave me the young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.” Verse 31, and he said to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.

And so we have that. And of course, I would say right here, whether he was saved or lost, number one, he was definitely in, I would say in the very minimum, a dangerous state because he was angry, verse 28, he was angry, which kind of shows his heart. But one thing I want to say, and some others can come up as well, is just because he said he was with harlots,

doesn’t mean he was with harlots. Just because he said, these years I haven’t, know, lo these many years I have been serving you, just because he said that, doesn’t mean it’s true. I never transgress your commandment at any time. Just because he said that doesn’t mean it’s true. And yet you never gave me a young goat. Well, we don’t have record of that, but I mean, again, just because he said it’s not true that I might make merry with my friends.

But as soon as this son of yours, know, our, not, there seems to be no family there, but son of yours, ⁓ who devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him. And so just because, just because a person says that doesn’t mean it’s true. And so he was definitely in a state, I would say, of being angry at your brother without a cause for sure, if you fill in Matthew, Matthew five in there.

But if someone else would like to comment on that and hire a mailman, any of you guys too, but also, you

And I’ve left the question right there.

First with a parable, we always want to be careful not to go too deep. This is a parable, we want to identify those parts that are identifiable. In this case, the older brother is who? The Pharisees. And in their current condition, the Pharisees were in a situation they needed to reevaluate. ⁓

we should necessarily identify whether the older brother in this is lost or saved, but from Jesus’ perspective in telling the parable, he’s trying to awaken them to the fact of the way they’re treating the lost, the way that the older brother was treating the younger brother. Like you mentioned, he wasn’t even his brother. It was your son.

And so the way he was seeing him, I think ⁓ that ⁓ we just need to be careful not to go too deep with it. That’s just my ⁓ thoughts on this.

I appreciate the brother pointing out that when you have a parable you have to be careful about Because the parable is an analogy so it’s a Physical story that has elements to it and those elements correspond to a spiritual lesson But not every element in a parable corresponds to the spiritual lesson intended, right? Otherwise, what do you do with the unjust judge who represents the father?

God. So I appreciate that. On the other hand, look at, this is Luke 15, 30 to 31, but as soon as this son of yours came with his, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him, and he said him, look at that, look at 31. And he said that would be the father of the older son and the younger son.

prodigal son, he said to him, you are always with me.

Well, and all that I have is yours. Well, what’s it’s, he doesn’t say in the original, says, ⁓ son, you are always with me, that are there. And he said to him, you always with me are, present tense. So the time he’s saying this, I should say the Lord included present tense here.

You are with me. That sounds like he’s saved. So it is conceivable to understand this therefore, to refer to the fact that even though the son was hurt, nonetheless there is grace in Christ. And if that’s what he’s saying, then it looks to me like the grace of God in the sense of 1 John chapter one, verse seven, Colossians chapter one, 21 to 23, 23 especially.

that it’s covered by the blood of Christ.

All right, then here’s another one that’s kind of similar to it. I guess I should have it together, but was it really necessary for the father in Luke 15, 32 to be glad? Was it necessary to be glad? It was right that we should make merry and be glad for your brother was dead and is alive and was lost and is found. So I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, but glad.

He was glad, but was it necessary? Anyway. Okay, we had one here about reaching, evangelizing the ones under addiction. But I don’t know what I did with it, so I think I left it back in there. But ⁓ it had to do with, yes. ⁓

Is there any kind of special, like for a church to have an evangelism team, know, we have an evangelism, like what would be the most effective in a church with deacons or whatever, what would be the most effective way to intentionally reach out to the addicted? And with that would be the homeless population. Yeah, and maybe that’s a separate issue, actually, the homeless. But I know a lot of homeless are addicted.

But what are some things that a congregation can do specifically to help reach the addicted? And I’m always going to write on the back of here, but I guess you understand that question.

First, a lot of people a lot smarter than me should need to sit down around a table and brainstorm. do they need? Not what do they want. What do they need? They need sustenance, they need clothes, they need toothbrushes, they need things like this, and those are some things that we can keep at the building. We have people come to our building all the time. Now, of course, we want to be working on ways we can…

go out into the community and reach these people. But word gets around, if you’re a church that has a goody bag for people that come by, then that’s something that’s gonna get around and people will show up for it. Now, that won’t stop them from asking you for 25, $30 or cigarettes. I had somebody ask me for cigarettes last week. And I said, well, no, but I’ve got these.

I’ve got these ⁓ tuna meals that have the crackers and things that we keep together and bottles of water and soaps and things for the homeless because we do have some homeless that stop by on a regular basis actually. And it’s difficult because at some stage, depending on the amount of drug use, it’s so difficult to reason with someone who has that much brain damage.

because of the drug use. But there’s always hope and we have to do the best we can. I want to suggest a couple of resources. So if your congregation is wanting to start something, I think this would probably be where you would want to start your research. I recently was talking, after I wrote three sermons,

preached three sermons to write the manuscript for this book. And then I realized, I’ll have 30 minutes. I’ve got to condense this all back down again and preach it. But when I did that at our congregation, I had some people come up to me that I’d never heard a sermon on addiction like this before. helped me. My brother is in an addiction recovery place that is connected to the Church of Christ. And I thought, I’ve never heard of a place.

that was actually members of the church that had an addiction recovery place. So I looked it up and I did a little bit of research into it. from what they post their curriculum on their site and everything, it looked sound what I read. The website is projectrescue.org, projectrescue.org, and it is in Decatur, Alabama.

They have all their contact information on it there. Sometimes we can provide the Bible study part and at least the outreach, but we’re not equipped to do the recovery portion of it. All right, yes, they need Jesus and that’s where it’s gonna start and I think we can start with that, but it may be that we need to refer out for some professionals in that situation. Also,

A great place to start is for ⁓ congregations to compile a list of local resources, whether it is your local ⁓ hotline for ⁓ suicide, for ⁓ your ER, for local Christian counselors, just having a document in the office where we know who to call.

when those situations come up can help us feel more empowered to do so. Also, all I talked about today was substance abuse really, but we all know ⁓ one of the most ⁓ detrimental things in the lives of Christians today is not substance abuse, it’s pornography. And pornography is so invasive in our culture today.

I do have a resource for that. know a brother that has an online Discord group. He is a counselor and he has about 12 to 18 ⁓ brothers in Christ who meet weekly ⁓ to work on that together. They hold one another accountable, all of these things. If you need that resource, I could give you his number as well.

and you can pass that on. That’s a great number to have on that resource list. I think that’s where it starts though.

Here’s the question here, how do we evaluate whether we are enabling or helping a homeless person? And I guess the question, you because a lot of times you get the same people coming, and it’s like, how do you, are we just, you know, just enabling them to stay homeless or what? And I guess it was about less than a year ago, I was listening to the radio and that old beat up truck of mine that only gets AM stations and.

⁓ There’s an outfit around here called Peace River and they deal with mental health things and all that and they had one of the counselors on there, one of the psychiatrists or ⁓ psychologists on there talking about, and they were talking about homelessness and the guy made a statement that was kind of, you know, a light bulb went off, said, no, okay, that makes sense. But he was saying, and he had all these degrees by his name and all that, but he was saying anyone who’s homeless,

for anything over a week or two has got mental illness. And I mean, don’t know, have you found that to be? I don’t know if there anything about that. Well, don’t tell me now, but come up to the mic. But if anyone else can shed light on this, how do we evaluate whether we are enabling or helping a homeless person? Now, I know food is something people need no matter what. But like I said, if they keep coming back, coming back.

They won’t do a Bible study or anything like that. mean, and any of us preachers, if you have anything to say about that, please come on.

We keep, ⁓ we’ve found that Walmart will give us a gift card that can only be used for food. ⁓ It can’t be used for purchasing alcohol, tobacco, or anything like that, but only used for food. So we keep some of those. ⁓ But we also, if somebody does come, ⁓ tell them, we’ll talk to them after Bible class or after worship services on Sunday or Wednesday. So we encourage them to come.

so that we can sort of force the moment where it’s about evangelism. We want them in that situation. Brothers, you may be able to add to some of this too. ⁓

Mental health is a large part of the homelessness population, the homeless population. I forgot part of the question here. How do we evaluate whether we’re enabling or helping? I had someone share with me recently something that they were doing, and that was whenever they were sharing money, they had a brief moment where

They said, I don’t know what you’re going to do with this money. You may go out and abuse this money by purchasing something that you shouldn’t. I’m going to trust you to not do that. And now it’s between you and God. Can we pray about it? And he prayed with them. And he said he actually had some people give him the money back.

And because it just pricked their conscience so much that they, at that point, brethren, we’re doing what we can. But sometimes a large portion of the time we will be deceived. But we shouldn’t let that keep us from helping others.

comment was made as better an err on the side of helping somebody than not helping somebody who needs it and that kind of thing. And we do have the blessing bags. I don’t see any here, but we have bags we encourage everybody to take and give out, the toothpaste and all that kind of stuff in it. anyway, OK. And I don’t know. Well, we’re going to get into the social media stuff now. And ⁓ here’s a question for Paul.

We won’t go live right now, I guess, but unless you want to put that… Okay. Anyway, so here’s a question that regarding TikTok, and he did mention this just real briefly, but he’s going go into more detail. How do you find someone in the world to do the baptizing in a church where they can worship? And he mentioned Matt Wallen, and of course, most of us that are familiar with house to house, heart to heart know Matt Wallen. And he is, by the way, his family is connected to the Wallens here in this area.

He just dropped the G. This line over here did not. But they all go back to Cross Hill, Tennessee. anyway. But he is with House to House, Heart to Heart. And I mentioned in the book, he’s another one. He just gave me an outline. And I used BI to create the chapter, Brian Intelligence, you know. But I sent it to him. He said it was all right. But anyway, so he, you know, with that, and I mentioned in there that I think House to House, Heart to Heart has the best database.

going right now of what faithful congregations are where and what preachers are where and If you don’t if you’re not aware of that I’m sure there’s a QR code somewhere where you can get a hold of that and I’ve known I’ve gotten text before I’ve seen it on Facebook You know we have someone in Orlando that wants to be baptized or someone over here someone over there And if there’s someone in Lakeland would jump all over it And I think we have before I though I can’t remember but there there are There’s a network with house to house heart to heart

And if you’re in a congregation that doesn’t use house to house, heart to heart, at least see about getting on their database or whatever. the social media thing is really expanding. A lot more people are using it. There’s a lot more people who are having remote Bible studies with people. But when they’re ready to be baptized, know the old saying, got to strike while the iron’s hot. And I think you said it took five days or something one time? ⁓ Yeah. But yeah.

But even before all this, I remember we had a guest speaker one time from the Middle East and they said it took him two years because nobody would baptize him over there because they were afraid to get, you know, whatever. But two years later, he finally got baptized. so, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. It should not be that way here. But get on the network and be part of that. And there’s also a Facebook page, too, by the way, ⁓ something like Sound Church of Christ Finders or something like that.

Yeah, okay, Church of Christ Sound Congregation Finder, and I use that a lot. And go on your Facebook. If you’re listening right now and you’re not familiar with that, go on your Facebook right now and request to be a friend or follow that. They’ll need to approve it and all that, but that’s another good source because that’ll come up all the time in your feed, you know, looking for a congregation. Sometimes they’ll be looking for someone to baptize somebody in such and such a city.

And so try to take advantage of those and use those. And we’ll invite Paul back up here. And he may need some help to, I don’t know, reconnect.

Well, I tried my phone just to… Oh, it is. All right. So this is, I just wanted to show you how this works. You’ve got the go live button there and then in the center, that little thing that I just touched. Then you go to hit the plus and then you go, I have an album for TikTok. I have a couple of different albums for TikTok. And then I would grab that.

These are albums that are in my photo, my camera roll. Okay, so those are like the signs you have Yep, I made these signs in an app called Fonto. And so right now what I would do ⁓ is I would just, at this point I would just hit go live and then I would go about my life and do normal things like I would like, yeah, yeah, I split, I don’t know how much I split the other day, doing it live like this and then I would preach Christ at the same time.

you how that works and you can do this with it you can move it around you can make it smaller sometimes I’ve ridden a bike before but you have to go really slow because it’ll block you. do actually believe it or not so like if I’m on a bike it’s like that’s the angle whatever and so I might do it smaller there but usually I have it up here and you can you can change them ⁓ yeah on the fly I’ll ⁓

I say that and it’ll be how long will it take me to get there. I’ve got a lot of images. ⁓ On the fly, somebody’s talking about…

I’m dealing with the Baptist and I’ll just put this up there. There are two different processes to become a Baptist than it is to become a Christian. I’ll just put it up there while we’re talking about it. Just show them that’s how you become a Christian on the right side, on the left. If you wanna be a Baptist, that’s what you’ll do. It’s a fundamentally different process. So I’ll put it out there like that. I just try to be ready. ⁓

Was that question about Matt, just making sure we get somebody to bad size somebody? So we.

Matt gives me a contact. Sometimes he’ll give me two or three. I start at the top, call the first one. If I get them, I try to convince them that this is the Lord’s work and this is your responsibility. I try to, you know, are you ready to be a servant is one of the things I say. And I really try to get them convicted. And sometimes, I’m gonna say nine times out of 10, it’s a positive reaction with a little bit of confusion.

but I can pretty much convince them. And then eventually they’re like, you gotta tell me more about this. I’m like, yeah, that’s what I wanted to hear. And then the really exciting ones are the ones that are like, yeah, I’ll come right now. Where is he? Ooh, one good one was, there was a brother, well, he is a brother now. There was a man on TikTok that I convinced that he needed to be baptized for salvation. And he was in a ⁓ tractor trailer at a rest area at a… ⁓

not even at a rest area, just at an exit. He was parked there. The church came to him at his tractor trailer. He was driving a blue International, I think. He had a big blue tractor trailer. He was in it and the church came to him. Two brothers came, picked him up there, took him to the church building and baptized him. ⁓ One brother who was watching on Facebook just now, ⁓

he and his wife baptized each other on their front porch in ⁓ jacuzzi. So they were able to do that. There’s a lot of ways to, I’ve tried to convince somebody who he didn’t have any other options. I was like, just have your kid do it. Like a child, know, doesn’t matter. You know, there’s no requirements on a baptizer, but.

Two lost people baptized each other, you know? That’s how that works. The very first person who was baptized was baptized by one who was not a Christian. That’s just a fact. There was a time when there were no Christians. First person was baptized to become a Christian. They were baptized by somebody who was not a Christian. So there’s no requirements on that. But you just call ⁓ until you get somebody who understands.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I try to make sure that they understand. Well, as a matter of fact, this one was particularly beautiful. The brother of Kevin that he and his wife baptized each other, I got to go down there. He wanted me to, you have got to teach my Presbyterian pastor this. I like, I would be happy to. Well, that pastor said that…

I told him I was willing to come study with him. And then he wanted to have a meeting with just Kevin. And then Kevin was like, no, I’ve got this guy that showed me. I want him to show you. And then that pastor accused him of not being willing to meet. Yeah. But what happened was I got to go down there and preach at that local congregation. And it was Jerry Harris is a preacher down there in Clinton, South Carolina. He’s blind and the man is.

amazing. He would go around the room and name everybody. He knew where people were sitting. He’d say, okay, you read the next verse. All right, you read the next verse. He’d go around the room and do that. He had a whole PowerPoint and he would

He had a whole PowerPoint that his wife would make and he would just have everything, the whole sermon, all the scriptures, everything up in his mind. He’s an amazing brother, but I got to go down there and preach and kind of put them together. Now that was a, and I can’t do that for every one of them, but that was nice to do. But I do try to make sure that the congregation, I mean, I dig into the congregation, try to make sure there’s sound. mean, there’s easy things you can check when you check their website. Just scroll around, look, oh, there’s a woman preaching, not them. That’s not the Lord’s church. Oh, there’s instruments up there.

that’s not the Lord’s church. And you can rule them out with a couple of little layers like that. You’ve seen on some signs ⁓ the Church of Christ meets here. That’s a good indicator. I found that to be a really good indicator. But you dig in, you grill them, you check them out, and then ⁓ you do the best you can. there are some times when, I mean, people are just in a wasteland of, you know,

The Lord’s Church is just not everywhere. It needs to be, but it’s just not. So you do what you can. I did reach a dead end in Colorado on one guy one time. Just a straight up dead end. I never could get him with anybody. Nobody was within a couple hours, I don’t think.

Thank you for asking, I should have clarified that. So what happens is I’m chopping wood and I’m just riffing, just preaching Christ crucified, comments are coming by. If I don’t have a person in a conversation, I’ll keep going back to the comments and I’ll deal with comments and I’ll invite people up. Once I get a person, then it’s a one-on-one conversation. And then I’m completely focused on that person. We’re just talking back and forth. They say, what about the thief on the cross? I say, please read Hebrews 9, 15 through

through 17 and then we go from there. ⁓

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Yes, his voice is coming, both my voice and his voice are coming over. Now a lot of people, you can have multiple guests. I only have one ⁓ subject at a time. I do have other Christians come up, but ⁓ I’ve seen a lot of people there, they have like eight people up at a time and it’s just confusing to me and it’s not fruitful. I have, my favorite is when I have one person who is lost who thinks they’re saved and we go through the evidence and we get them to the water and faith. That’s what I really want.

want. ⁓ Sometimes ⁓ if you have a Christian up, what will happen is you’ll start visiting and laughing and

And then you lose the energy. is a, I hate to say it, but there’s a Jerry Springer aspect to people disagreeing, you know? And so if you have two people that are disagreeing, other people are like, oh, I gotta see that. They’ll stop and listen in. So it can be a negative thing for you to have another Christian or two, three Christians up with you because then you’re just visiting, it’s not interesting, and people just scroll by.

is one person, I preach Christ, just riff, preaching Christ, going over the same information every few minutes, know, 20, 30 minutes of evidence, and then somebody says something and I keep going back to the comments and then I’d be like, hey Bob, you want to come up? Love to have you. I click invite.

And then if they accept, a little icon pops up. A little icon with them pops up about right here. It has their name on it. And it has either their user, like this is my user picture, whatever it’s called, profile picture. It’ll have that picture. It’ll have a microphone icon.

and then they’re just straight talking. I can hear them, they can hear me, and everybody in the broadcast, and you’re both of us. It works well like that. ⁓

Oh yeah. Stop. What I do is I stop.

Chopping wood, I stop ⁓ reasoning with them. I say, okay, I’m gonna take care of this now. I leave the broadcast going and then I ⁓ use another phone or an iPad to text back and forth with Matt and Chad, Matt and Chad. The reason I say Matt and Chad is because Chad is doing this too and we are both constantly wearing Matt out.

Wearing him out just constantly, And sometimes people are coming to me. Sometimes people, one brother Aaron ⁓ Sides is in Texas and he has picked up my terminology and it’s working and he’s picked up my technique and all of it and it’s working. So he’s coming to me and then I go to Matt with the city and state that he’s pulled up. So I mean we wear Matt out. We wear him out.

Dude, he is the hardest worker. You know that thing you find somebody busy? Give them the thing. That’s Matt. He is a hard working servant.

I do the contacting. I do the contacting. The moderators will be ⁓ fielding the comments. They’ll be having Bible studies in the comment section. And then the moderators, the Christians who have made moderators are stopping awful people from being awful in it. And then I just pause it and just I mute it. And then I have a conversation on the phone with a baptizer. And then ⁓

And then I come back and say, I got so and so, he’s ready, he can meet you here, or sometimes it’s the person doesn’t have a car and they’ve had to be picked up at their place and taken to the church building. And ⁓ sometimes we drive like, ⁓ there’s a ⁓ man and his mom, a lady and her son.

and they got it from another Christian who had been working with them on TikTok. They called me in ⁓ to corroborate and I kind of put the icing on the cake and convinced them and they ended up being an hour and 38 minutes from me and my personal cutoff is two hours. I’ll drive two hours. I think that’s good. Other than that, it’s faster for me to just hand it off to somebody closer. have a, had, they both had health issues. Both of them had diabetes.

lost one leg below the knee. She was in a wheelchair.

I have a horse-watering trough that is people-sized. is two feet deep, two feet wide, six feet long. And I have a ⁓ water heater built into the back door of my camper van. And so I loaded it up, drove to their house, carried it into the ⁓ kitchen, into the kitchen, and filled it up. And we had a nice hour-long Bible study while it filled up and then with hot water. And she loved that it was all warm and cozy. That was kind of a fun twist to it. And I baptized both of them.

that day and then they have both since died. He was only, this is only like eight months ago and she died like three months ago and he died like two months ago. He was only like 38. They both had health issues but it works. If you’re willing to jump up and do the work, be ready to go. And it’s really fun when it’s my turn.

Because I get these people, they’re ready, and then I have to hand it off to somebody else. And I don’t get to enjoy that moment of joy. So it’s fun ⁓ when it’s my turn, I get to go do that baptizing. That’s joyful, too. You really have to think outside the box. The one brother, Aaron, in Texas, he drove, I want to say it was an hour and a half to baptize a girl that I convinced that she needed to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

and he ended up meeting her at a congregation where she could then worship. That one fell away. She had ⁓ shallow roots. She fell away immediately. don’t know, it was almost like it was a show for her. She was on the broadcast. It was almost like it was a show. So that’s part of it, you know. It’s part of the whole thing.

Yes.

It’s because you’re having one-on-one conversations and because there are billions of people on it and you have a constant influx because of the way it works of people coming into the broadcast. It’s the one-on-one. On Facebook, for years, I just copy a whole comment. I paste the comment, put a quote mark at the beginning of it, go until I see an error that I need to correct, put an end quote, enter, put the scripture that corrects it, hit enter, and then I do that. And Joey’s seen me do it eight billion hours of my life.

And it just, 15 people in 15 years have been converted that way. And it’s just like, you know, when you compare one a year to a hundred in a year and a half, that’s it. That’s enough for me to just be like, focus, do the TikTok because it works. It’s because you’re having one-on-one conversations. That’s what it is. That’s why it works. Just like in real life.

It’s real life. You were talking to me about not having some success, inviting personal Bible studies in a public setting like a coffee shop or something. There is a comfort zone when you’re on a phone. Because I’m on their device that is in their hand every day all day, and it’s just this guy that’s on their device. So it’s their device in their hand communicating with them. So that’s a comfort, a level of comfort. And then there’s this level of comfort that they

go see you later at any point and so that encourages them to keep going that’s just a theory of mine now that’s just what I think you people you know they’re willing to engage because there’s a safety net

It’s all over the map. Definitely teenagers and they have to be 18 to be able to join your broadcast. You can get shut down if you have somebody under 18 on your broadcast. So I always forget to ask that, but other brothers when they’re going live, they’ll are you 18? They’ll just ask them. I forget to. But up into this, I think into the seventies, the oldest guy that I can remember dealing with was in his seventies. So teens to seventies is who I have in there.

Absolutely, yes. It seems like if I really think about it, if somebody nailed me down and said, me a number, I’m gonna say, it really seems like most people are around 40, you know? That’s what it seems like to me. But it also may be because they see this face and younger people will see a face like this and scroll away, because it’s up here rather than some geezer swinging an axe.

geezer power. Alright, we appreciate it. Now we’re go live, just kidding.

I just wanted to follow up on a couple of things. If you were here for the lesson this morning and we talked about some of the platforms that I’ve been involved with, I’ve been, Aaron and I talked yesterday about it little bit. I got my first computer in 1982, okay? Taught myself basic programming. Some of y’all don’t even know what that is, all right? And that’s okay.

I my first website, I think it was 1993. Anybody remember the old rainbow colored hit counters on the bottoms? Okay. I found that old website on Wayback Machine a while back and I was just so embarrassed. mean, luckily it was for a family member’s business and they don’t use it anymore, thankfully. With that being said, also during time I…

was able to work with different programs. Some of you may remember an IRL chat, okay, against a relay chat. There was a program called the Excite Chat that I was one of their chat hosts for the first time ever in 1998, I believe it was. And because I was like the people I talked about this morning, 18 hours a day on a computer, ⁓ programming, doing websites, doing whatever it may have been, I became a chat host trainer. They actually paid me to teach people how to

⁓

how to chat, okay? Here’s the difference. 1998, you told zero people who you were. You hid behind an icon. You did not dare tell anybody where you lived, okay? Now we’re talking, you know, what is that, 27, 28 years ago. Look at how things have changed. Now I say that to say this.

Paul has a talent. He and I have talked about that. ⁓ And he mentioned just a minute ago that it’s not, you know, everybody doesn’t fit the same thing. I will say this about social media, you know, me being over all the Gospel of Christ social media platforms, and we’re over, we’re on 10 different ones, I believe.

We also see dozens of baptisms every year on all the platforms. We’ve had Twitter, X, whatever it’s called these days. You used to tweet on Twitter. Now do you crisscross? Is that what you do on X? I don’t know. But ⁓ we’re on, the only one we’ve not seen any.

anything come directly from is blue sky, and I’m not even real sure why we’re on that one. I mean, I don’t even know what it is or anything, but it’s there, and people read our comments. When Paul first started having a lot of success, I said, you know what, I gotta get on board, okay? But I can’t put the time in that he can, and I’m glad he can. Some of you can as well. We would put little shorts and Bible verses.

The first day I put a Bible verse on there and you had to kind of cheat to do it. You had to put two pictures and make it look like a video. ⁓ Over 1,500 people and I only had one follower. So I don’t know how people were seeing it. It works. TikTok works.

I mentioned this morning 3.1 billion people are on Facebook, 2.1 billion people log in every day on Facebook. With that said, in 2024, I think the numbers I looked at on TikTok were like in the low 1 million to today in 2026, it’s over 2 million ⁓ registered users constantly using it. If you’ve got a platform that works, use it. Don’t be afraid to try something new.

Also keep in mind though, and I think I heard some chatter earlier today, I mentioned this morning, technology changes. It changes in an instant sometimes. ⁓ Paul, I’m not going to put you on the spot, but I remember last year you were scared to death because what happened?

TikTok got shut down. Now it’s only temporary, okay? I mentioned this morning Facebook shut off live videos and now a bunch of churches have dead Facebook pages because there’s nothing there. There’s no posts, there’s no Bible verses, there’s nothing. They were counting on those videos to keep processing their Facebook page. And guess what happens? Unfollow, slow, lack, nothing. The internet will change again tomorrow. ⁓

Some new platform will be out, some platform will go away.

I got a note yesterday, I believe it was, that one of the platforms that we work with is no longer going to be available to be used through the automation process that we use. So in my opinion, that means it’s probably going by the wayside because it’s lost so many people. And so we have to realize that things will change. talked about websites this morning. Again, going back to that first one I built in 1993, 94, whatever it may have been, it was such a joke, but it served its purpose.

Okay, if your church needs a website, it does not have a website, you are missing souls. And ⁓ the same thing with social media, all right? You may hate it.

Churches don’t always, everybody in the church does not belong on social media, but the church needs a presence on social media, okay? Whether it’s just cross-posting Paul’s material, the gospel of Christ, the Florida School of Preaching, whoever’s material it may be, the church needs to be putting something out there to let people know, hey, we’re alive. I kinda got tickled about the church building down the road.

used to be a church building, I guess. There’s now a pain management center. I stopped in front of that last night. I was laughing. Christie was like, what are you laughing about? I’m like, well, that just doesn’t jive. mean, it’s kind of, you know, but that’s what we look like sometimes on our social media and website platforms. Okay, we’ve got this big picture of the church on the social media page and there’s nothing there. Okay, that’s all I got to say. Thank you.

And I’ll just ⁓ add to the TikTok thing, it’s like, it’s a way to reach people. And if you apply it, it’s gonna work. And it’ll never work if you never apply it. And so, and that might not be your talent, and that might not be what you wanna do, and that’s okay. But that might be something you’re really good at.

And so it’s all about souls and so explore that and try that. And so we appreciate Paul, we appreciate the Lord and allowing him to be here through his providence. Appreciate all the ones that spoke today and all the ones that will speak tonight. And so, well, I always hate to see the lectureship come to an end, but all good things this side of must come to an end. so, we do have two more speakers tonight, so we look forward to that. Hiram Kemp at 7 p.m. and that’s seven o’clock.

hour throughout the whole week has been, and of course, when B.C. Carr first set up the lectureship back in 1975 or 76, I’m not good at math, but 51 years ago was when he started it, this is 51st lectureship. And so he wanted to make sure that at 7 p.m. was a graduate of the school, because he would say, just like he did with student days, you know, we can tell you all about the school of preaching, but we want to show you about it with these speakers. And so these guys are graduates, and this week we’ve been looking at

each

of the plan of salvation. know, believe, repent, confess, and then today it’s the new birth, being baptized into Christ. And so Hiram will deal with that at 7 p.m. And then, I don’t know, was it 2008, Melvin, that you started closing out the lectureship? 2009, 2010, somewhere around there. I know Tom Holland did do it, and then he had to step down because of health issues and such.

And so Melvin, he has for, well, weather permitting, as he has for however many years that is, will close us out tonight to kind of wrap it all up, the Macedonian call, the Macedonian call. And so we look forward to hearing him speak, but we don’t look forward to the lectures, at least I don’t, the lecture should be an over, but such is life. But we look forward to the lessons. And so please plan on that tonight. We will have the 630 singing as we have each night. And so we’ll have the young fellows start us off.

But if you’re a faithful male member of the church, just sit on the front pews and we’ll sing, have congregational singing right up until seven o’clock. And then this is the night that Ted will give us just a very brief kind of state of the school as we do the last night of each lectureship. So you want to be there for that. And so we look forward to all that. yeah. So tonight for dinner, if you don’t have dinner plans, the Phoebe group is a group of ladies that raises money for the students. And so they have, well,

They don’t call it a spirit night, but it’s kind of like there’s a Jason’s Deli down here, which does have pretty good food, sandwiches, soup. They have a really great salad bar. And they do have free ice, ice cream comes with every meal, I think, or something like that. But anyway, so they’ve arranged where a certain percentage of the proceeds the Phoebe group has will go to them that will ultimately help out students. So if you don’t have any lunch plans, you’d like to do that, then that’s available. Or there are all kinds of restaurants up and down here.

And there may even be some leftover chili. In fact, I’m pretty sure there’s leftover chili back there if you’d like to eat free, which preachers like to eat free. anyway, but anyway, a lot of options available. But the important thing is we want to see you back here tonight, 630 for singing, 7 p.m. as the preaching starts. Also in the fellowship room, we do have the books that are available. This year’s book is available right now only in the electronic version. And with that, you get all the books in one thumb drive.

And then the hardcover books will be in due time. But we do have previous years’ lectureship books. We have study notes and several other things, resources to study and to help us. But again, none of this stuff does a bit of good unless it gets outside these walls and into the world as we present the gospel. All right. And also, I guess we have a few minutes here, but if you have not had an opportunity to help us defray the expenses of the lectureship, we have the opportunity to do that.

And I think the latest text I have is that we’re about 10 grand, up to 10 grand now. So we are probably about just a little less than halfway of what we need. And again, we don’t make any money off of this. We just want to break even. But it’s just, you know, it’s just only right to pay the expenses, the travel expenses of our speakers and to give them little something for their labors. Yes, more than just standing up here speaking. They have written lectureship manuscripts. They have

put a lot of thought into it and they put a lot of work into it. ⁓ you know, we preach and teach as the Bible does that a labor is worthy of its hire. And so we want to try to practice that and by helping these guys out. All right, so lots of good things coming up and we’re thankful that you’re here. We’re gonna have a word of prayer and we’ll be back here at 630 for singing and then 7 p.m. for the lesson to start. Let’s pray.

Gracious God and loving Father, we’re so thankful for this day, so thankful for the blessings that you have given us in the time we’ve had to discuss these things and to be better evangelists. Father, we thank you for answering our prayers for the sick, and we pray that you be with those that are continuing to suffer, be with families that have lost loved ones, such as the Egel family and others, and pray that you will help us to be an encouragement to one another that we may build each other up.

and not bring each other down. Continue, Father, to watch over us. Help us to be more and more like your Son Jesus, and forgive us when we fall short of that. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray and give these thanks. Amen.