Ed Young Jr. is all about rhymes. And Alabama Baptists attending the 2010 State Evangelism Conference felt his hip-hop style up close and personal as he paced up and down the aisles driving his message home. Headlining the Monday night session of the conference, held at Vaughn Forest Baptist Church, Montgomery, Young had the congregation chanting: “The ring is the thing,” “hope is the rope” and “pull so the house will be full.”
It’s simple, it rhymes and people remember it, he said, showcasing a bright orange life preserver. “The thing” represents Jesus attached to the rope of hope, which is tethered to the Church, explained Young, senior pastor of the more than 20,000-member Fellowship Church, Grapevine, Texas. “The Church is a rescue society, and God has placed you and me strategically around people who are drowning … and they need to be rescued.
“Using poor flotation devices — possessions — doesn’t work,” he said. “They must let go of those poor flotation devices, confess their sin and grasp their life ring. Jesus came from the top to the bottom to bring us from the bottom to the top.”
Quoting Matthew 28:19, Luke 19:10 and 2 Timothy 4:5, Young challenged Alabama Baptists to focus on evangelism.
“It is much easier to have the deeper-life church or the navel-gazing church or the inward church,” he said. “The work of the evangelist is hard work. … Discipleship is easier than evangelism. Missions is easier than evangelism. Children’s ministry is easier than evangelism.
“Those other things are great, but it is not the thing,” Young said. “Every single person who is part of your church and mine should be a part of the pull (evangelizing, baptizing and bringing people into the church). … If they are not, then they are missing out on why they are here.
“We are saved by grace and through faith … but we are here to take as many people as possible with us, by God’s power, to heaven,” he said. But “all believers want to reach people until you start reaching people,” Young pointed out.
If Luke 19:10 says, “the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost, why do we have our churches on birth control pills?” he asked, noting the Bridegroom (Jesus Christ) and bride (the Church) are in intimate relationship. With that should come reproduction, Young said. “When God wants to birth a bunch of babies, He looks for the best incubator He can find.”
And noting that the original language for the Great Commission command that begins in Matthew 28:19 means “as you’re going,” Young told Alabama Baptists to “get your ‘as’ in gear!”
Share the gospel “as you are playing golf, as you are antiquing … as you go about your daily business.”
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