UPDATES and COMMENTS ABOUT "FACEBOOK EVANGELISM"

     Just a note to let everyone know how things are going here at HMA headquarters.  We have been very busy lately traveling, preaching, running the homeless programs, working on new drug programs and preparing to help everyone that we can with the big holiday rush coming. 
     I was in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Tenesee and Arkansas the last two weeks.  I preached for Pastor Scott Loper in Gilbertown, AL (very sorry that I didn't get to be with our friends at Brother Jaimie Norman's church while I was there), Pastor Phillip Deane in Cantonement, FL and Pastor Helen Stewart in Frog Hollar, AL last week.  I was also very priveledged to be in a community worship service with Pastor Cox and many others in Bay Minette, AL. 
     I have been back at headquarters in Sapulpa, OK for the past few days and I am getting ready to go to Washington DC, Virginia and Marylad for two weeks starting this friday.
     Since being home we have had plenty of things to deal with.  The Saving Place, our furniture thrift store that is owned by the mission group has picked up some lately.  We have several volunteers from the homeless program working there now.  We have gotten jobs, housing, medical benefits, ID's and schooling for several lately that we have been working with.  We are actually working this week and next on a video of some of the workings of the mission group and it will have some clips I think of some of the people that have been helped lately.  The video will be posted and or linked on our website at www.holinessmissionstoamerica.com. Ozark Bible Institute sent a mission team to do a church service for our local homeless group and they ministered to about 75 homeless people and did a great job.  Some of the men from Revival Tabernacle in Richmond, KY came out last weekend and recieved a school bus that we had donated to them, and last but not least, our ministry had two fifteen passenger vans and a sixty passenger bus go down on us last week.  So far,as best I know, one of the vans is all the way fixed and the bus is partially fixed.
     I have struggled a lot lately with our new facebook presence.  We are basically using my page as a way to gain lots of friends and shower them with access to my blog, our flipzu sermons, random thoughts and activities we have and our website.  We also have HMA social page, which is an interactive page used for sharing thoughts, ideas, questions and answers about Christian outreach.  The problem I am having is that there are quite a few "facebook evangelists", as I call them, that could use one of my outreach ministry classes before they continue.  It is almost like deja vu.  Let me explain...
     When I first came to the Tulsa area many years ago, almost every ministry that had a presence on the streets of down town Tulsa did pretty much the same thing.  They stood on street corners and picked out people that "looked like" they were sinners and reminded them that they are sinners and told them that they were going to hell.  THIS WAS MINISTRY!?  There were a couple of guys that did things a little different.  They would go out on the streets amongst the drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes and gangmembers and basically "debate" doctrine with them.  You know, stuff that really mattered to gangmembers and alcoholics like, the pros of trinitarianism or the cons of "once saved, always saved".  Now before I go any farther, I want to admit that there was one group of people that I always thought were doing things out of sincerity and the love of God and that was Pastor Wayne Holcomb's group.  Pastor Holcomb is a man that I admire and respect to this day.  But the rest of them were genearally causing raucuss mayhem that made it very hard to decipher if it was truley helping or hurting the kingdom of heaven.
     I'm sure by now that someone is taking this too personally.  I assure you I am not thinking of any one person or group of people but I am discussing the big picture for the sake of my point about "facebook evangelism".
     Any way, here we are now close to a decade later and we have a huge presence on the streets of Tulsa.  We have brought thousands to church, seen hundreds pray, had dozens and dozens to get help, get saved, get healed and get delivered.  And minstries are literally using us all across the country to find out how to go about reaching the masses the way that God has helped us to.  To God be the glory for eveything!
     The only reason that I tell this story is not to glorify self, (there are a couple hundred other people that I would have to share the glory with any way even if we took God out of the equation), but to liken it to facebook. 
     There are quite a few people that are using facebook as there own personal evangelizing tool.  Once again, I myself am one of them.  It is a very tricky place to operate.  You should take several things into consideration when using it.  #1 Am I saying things that could be controversial on my page, or someone elses?  If you know me very well, you know that I do not shy away from the controversial, but I generally speak about such things when I am asked, invited or when I "own the venue".  I would never have a problem with someone being controversial, because I am all the time.  But to just interject your disgust and or disdane or harsh correction into someone elses life...look at it this way.  I know most of you guys.  You wouldn't have the audacity or the stupidity to just barge into your neighbors cook out and start lining people out.  But behind the computer screen, a hundred miles away, you are not only a little bolder but perhaps a little less understanding.  I know what you are thinking, "brother Todd is going soft on us".  HAHA, not hardly.  But use some common sense.  You would be offended if someone through a bunch of junk up on your page that you disagreed with.  What's the difference.
     #2 This is a HUGE one.  When reading words that are sent electronically, by e-mail, text or what have you.  NO BODY CAN TELL FOR SURE WHAT SPIRIT YOU HAD SENT THEM IN!!!  Your tone of voice cannot be heard, your words cannot be emphasized.  You were being funny, they thought you were mad.  You were being sarcastic, they thought you were serious.  You can do a lot of damage and never even mean to.  I am sharing "facebook evangelism" the same way that I share "street evangelism"...by experience. 
     #3 Probably the most important.  When I started working the streets I realized right away that there was a problem.  Preachers were "blasting" people, "lining them out", "tuning" people up.  They were getting a sense of pride for what they had done.  They could share with others what they had done and said and seem big for it.  Let me tell you something from a man that has made a lot of mistakes in ministry over the past fifteen years.  A man the has been broken over and over again and yet seen God have his handy work after all.  Ministry, especially evangelistic ministry is HUMBLING if you do it correctly.  It can be almost degrading at times, especially if you aren't fully submitted to the will of God.  But rarely is it boasting.  If you are doing what you are doing to "feel good about yourself".  You are probably causing God a lot of problems.
     While  I'm out here in deep water, let me tackle one more little subject.  This subject that keeps coming up about "if God hates sinners or not".  Again, don't any body take this too personal.  It has come up serveral different ways lately.  I must admit at different times I have come down on different sides of the issue.  And it is a lot like the end of time, I know some great men that dissagree on it.  But here is my point.  As far as you are concerned...IT DOESN'T MATTER!!!  Wheather you think that God hates sinners or not, one thing is clear.  You are not supposed to!  Some have scriptures that they use to "prove" that God hated sinners, others have verses to "prove" that God couldn't hate sinners.  I have my opinion, but if I put it down here, then someone would just come along and debate it.  Here is all I am saying...some body give me the chapter and the verse that says that we WE CAN HATE SINNERS. 
     If you are aggressively trying to help and win souls to Christ, fight for truth and morality, I am 100% for you.  But if you are just out to "prove" yourself right or someone else wrong...what have you done?  What have you accomplished?
     One last point about that.  And please, please believe me, I am not upset or mad or pushing back or anything like that.  I love all my friend and readers and everyone else for that matter.  I want to help not hinder.  But please think things through before you post on my page.  I'll tell you why.  I have amassed about 1,200 friends in the last few weeks.  They come from every walk of life.  Almost every single one of them are attached to my ministry in some form or another.  They are alcoholics, tramps, drug addicts, preachers, drug dealers, baptist, nazarenes, church of God, holiness, assembly of God, pentecostal, homeless and on and on.  You have no idea how long I have been working with them or what thier past or back ground is or what they know or don't know.  If you just jump in there and start "fixing them good", you may be stabbing me in the back and tearing down what little we have managed to build up.
    One last time I say, I am saying all of this out of the love of my leart and true concern for souls.  God bless you and remember to pray for us at HMA.
     If you can please help us finish raising our Christmas money for the homeless project.  You can donate here online or send to HMA PO box 12 Sapulpa, OK 74067.
Your humble servant,