Tony Evans and son issue challenge to ‘Kingdom men’

Tony Evans and son issue challenge to ‘Kingdom men’

Speaking to packed houses, pastor and author Tony Evans and his son, Jonathan, challenged men from throughout north Alabama to live up to their responsibilities as “Kingdom men.”

“We’re just challenging men to rise up to their biblical responsibility to be the men that God has called them to be,” Tony said. “We call them being ‘Kingdom men’ — men who represent God’s values in history.

“The culture has disintegrated and a lot of that is due to men not being what God has created them and ordained them to be,” he said, speaking to The Alabama Baptist/TAB Media before the event.

‘Specific challenge’

Tony spoke on back-to-back nights, hosted first by Limestone Baptist Association at Lindsay Lane Baptist Church, Athens, on March 5 and then by Union No. 3 Church at The Venue in Gadsden on March 6.

Speaking to men is always exciting, Tony said. “That gives us a specific challenge and specific focus in a needed area.”

And during the two hours each night, Tony and Jonathan Evans issued the challenge. Jonathan began his time by recalling an important lesson he learned while playing in the NFL.

“The coach had chosen those who were on the field,” Jonathan said. “We had been called to play the game, we had a playbook to follow and [the coach said] we were ‘called to greatness.’”

When his football career ended, God reminded him that he had been “called to nothing less than the greatness of God,” he said, a challenge he directed to the audience.

“He’s placed you here to play a specific position in the advancement of His Kingdom,” Jonathan said. “You’ve been called to greatness as long as you hold Him up as the greatest.”

To be a Kingdom man means to take God seriously, not to take Him casually, Tony said, taking the stage in the second hour of the event. “To fear God means He overrules you. It means you submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ because you have a boss in heaven. He has the final say so.”

Generations of children don’t have roots because they don’t have fathers living their God-given responsibility in the home, Tony said.

“You can’t have a society where the men have gone AWOL,” he said, comparing absent fathers to the abominable snowman — “their footprints are everywhere, but you just can’t find them. … God is looking for men willing to say, ‘as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’”

Watch a video of Tony Evans speaking at Lindsay Lane Baptist Church at vimeo.com/395943286. View photos from the Gadsden event at tabonline.org/TonyEvans.