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Above all, in those days [1960s, 1970s, 1980s] there was a godly vision to be caught at Highland Park Baptist Church. It was a place where multitudes of lives were changed to the glory of Christ, and great masses of people heard the gospel and hundreds of Bible-believing churches were planted as a result of what was “caught” at Highland Park Baptist Church in those days.

Roberson “was determined to make Highland Park Baptist Church a hub of evangelistic activity that would reach into the tri-state metropolitan area.”

The theme was “The Church of the Green Light.” It was based on the GO of Mark 16:15, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature...” A large replica of a traffic signal with the green “go” sign lit was placed near the church. This sign was printed on the church stationary.

Roberson tried to put a zeal for evangelism into every church member. Every Tennessee Temple student was busy in evangelism.

It was a soul-seeking atmosphere, which is right and godly. Wherever they went, Highland Park people and Tennessee Temple students would hand people a tract and try to talk to them about Jesus.

Highland Park preached the gospel to its own “Jerusalem and Samaria” by every means possible: by its well-organized door-to-door visitation program, by its Sunday School ministry, by its bus ministry, by Vacation Bible Schools, by Bible clubs, by street preaching and tract distribution, by extended Gospel meetings, by jail ministries, by nursing home ministries, by radio, by its own gospel paper, by its youth camp, by its rescue mission, by its far-flung chapels.

Roberson preached the gospel and gave a call for sinners to be saved in every message. He told about a meeting in a church where he preached the gospel every night and many were saved. When the host pastor expressed surprise at the results, Roberson asked him how often he preached on the new birth. The pastor said, “I make it my business to preach on that theme at least once a year.” Roberson said, “I quickly told him that I try to bring this theme before people in every sermon” (Roberson, “The New Birth”).

This is a good example and it was followed by a great many preachers who were influenced by Highland Park in those days.

Bruce Lackey, for example, pastored one of the Highland Park chapels and though he was largely an expository preacher who went through books of the Bible, he always got in the gospel and challenged the unsaved to be saved, even in the mid-week service.

Lackey exemplified the evangelistic atmosphere of Highland Park in those days. My wife, Linda, told me of how he led a man to Christ in the hospital. She was working as a nurse in the intensive care unit at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga when a man was brought in with a serious gunshot wound. He had been shot in the head while trying to break into a house, and after his operation he was admitted to ICU. Though coherent, he was paralyzed on one side. After Linda witnessed to him for a few days, he told her that he wanted get saved and that he wanted to talk to a preacher. She called Dr. Lackey, and he took time from his busy schedule to drive over the next day and lead the man to Christ. She said that Dr. Lackey contacted her later and thanked her for calling him.

Roberson was motivated to see souls saved. He was burdened for the salvation of souls to the end of his life. When he was in his 90s, he said, “I am burdened for souls. I want to hear Him say, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ I want God to be pleased with my life and receive commendation at the judgment seat of Jesus Christ” (Wigton, p. 354).

This is a splendid example for every pastor and preacher and every child of God.

In the 1940s or 1950s, Roberson brought in Louis Entzminger for a Sunday School training campaign and adopted his program of making Sunday School the focus of evangelism, as it had been for J. Frank Norris.

Roberson started one of the first regular evangelistic bus ministries.

We must hasten to warn that Highland Park’s evangelistic zeal was corrupted by the Quick Prayerism program, as we will discuss further on.

The other major emphasis was world missionary work. Lee Roberson took Christ’s Great Commission to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth very seriously.

Missionary work was one of the things that brought Highland Park into conflict with the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Roberson wanted to train missionaries himself rather than send them to Southern Baptist schools, and he wanted to send out and support missionaries directly instead of through the SBC Cooperative Program. He founded Tennessee Temple for the training, and he founded Highland Park’s World Wide Faith Missions for the supporting. When the Southern Baptist Convention, in the form of the Hamilton County Baptist Association, complained and actually criticized Highland Park publicly, the Convention and the church went their separate ways.

Roberson also helped found Baptist International Missions Inc. (BIMI) in 1960 to channel support to, and provide other services for, missionaries. By the end of Dr. Roberson’s life (d. 2007), there were about 1,000 BIMI missionaries in 90 countries, with support coming from 8,500 churches. The focus was always on church planting. Through the years, more than 500 BIMI missionaries were Tennessee Temple graduates (Wigton, p 250).

Roberson said: “In my first year at the Highland Park Baptist Church, we had one missionary. The blessings of God came down upon us, and many were saved. As we kept on preaching the Gospel at home, we were driven to a deeper concern for the rest of the world. So we began putting on missionaries with support of them through the regular offerings of the church and by special offerings on Sunday evening and Wednesday evening. We saw scores of our young people volunteer for missionary work. During my fortieth year at Highland Park [1982], we were giving support to 565 missionaries in all parts of the world. Fifty percent of the church’s offerings went to home and foreign missions. Every need of the church was met, and every building was paid for. At home we were seeing the salvation of hundreds. People were happy and the blessings of God were upon us. Obey God! Don’t question. Don’t procrastinate! Don’t quibble! Obey God! Obedience brings manifold blessings.”

In the 1970s, the Highland Park missionary conferences were glorious and powerful. There would be 75-100 missionaries in attendance, setting up displays, speaking, showing slide presentations, answering questions, mingling with the members and students. They stayed in the homes of church members. Three missionaries spoke each morning and two each evening. The auditorium was decorated with flags and artifacts of foreign nations. The music was geared toward the missionary theme. “There would be grass huts, mud huts, and mission field scenes all over campus. One year an African village with thatched-roof cottages was built to represent the Congo. ... Missionary booths were everywhere, with missionaries handing out free curios from their various countries. Every building on campus was decorated to represent a different nation” (Wigton, p. 161). The missionaries represented about 30 mission boards. Each year, the boards would be chosen from a list of some 80 boards that were supported by the church. There were no “independent” missionaries who were directly out of churches and not members of mission boards. My wife and I were supported by Highland Park during our first two years of missionary work, but we were dropped as soon as we left the board to become “independent.” We would hasten to add that many of the mission boards at Highland Park’s conferences were New Evangelical. Dr. Roberson wasn’t careful enough about such things.

The effect of Highland Park’s missionary conferences was electrifying. Hundreds of men and women surrendered to the call of God and preached the gospel throughout the earth. It was estimated that 30 to 35 percent of Temple graduates went into missionary work (Wigton, p. 211).

To focus on evangelism and world missions is a biblical and very important thing. Christ has commanded it. The Trinitarian God is zealous for this. The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world (1 Jo. 4:14). The Spirit of God came from heaven at Pentecost, sent by the Father and the Son, to testify of Christ and to empower God’s program of world evangelism (Joh. 15:26-27; Acts 1:8).

Every church should be zealous for getting the gospel to every creature in obedience to Christ’s command (Mr. 16:15). That requires participation by every child of God (“every hand on deck”), as every child of God is appointed by God to be an ambassador of Christ (2 Co. 5:20). Effectual evangelistic/missionary work requires leadership; it requires planning and organization; it requires promotion in the sense of challenge and exhortation. “No position can be maintained without a campaign.”

Highland Park had all of this, and all of this is good.

Quick Prayerism

The problem is that Highland Park Baptist was 100% into Quick Prayerism and the numbers racket and the puffed up church membership statistics, and this was the program that was copied by most of the graduates.

That is what I was taught by Bill Long in evangelism class. That is what I was taught in the bus ministry.

Quick Prayerism is an evangelistic methodology that is quick to get people to pray a sinner’s prayer after a shallow gospel presentation and usually without any hint of the necessity of repentance. It is quick to pronounce those people saved and give them “assurance” and to try to baptize them even if they barely show any interest in Jesus Christ and even if they give no biblical evidence of having been born again. Quick Prayerism emphasizes “going to heaven when you die.” (“Do you want to go to heaven when you die? Then pray this prayer.”) Quick Prayerism typically incorporates psychological salesmanship manipulation. In Quick Prayerism, a “sinner’s prayer” replaces Holy Spirit conviction and miraculous regeneration. Quick Prayerism is characterized by soul winning reports that are grossly exaggerated, since the number of real conversions (as evidenced by changed lives) are minute compared to the overall statistics.

We realize that not everyone who professes Christ will “pan out.” There will be false professions in any ministry, but Quick Prayerism is characterized by the fact that the majority--yea, usually the vast majority--of its professions are empty. A pastor friend wrote, “Several years ago I asked one of the ‘soul winners’ from a church in Bridgeport, Michigan, how many out of 100 professions get baptized. The reply was ten. I asked of those ten how many stick. The answer was one. I just could not in good conscience buy into that type of thinking.”

And we are not talking about any sort of sinless perfection on the part of converts. We know that believers grow at different rates and exhibit different levels of discipleship and bring forth different levels of fruit. What we are warning about is a program that counts people as saved when there is zero evidence thereof, zero change, zero discipleship, zero growth, zero fruit. Zero!

It was claimed there were 63,000 baptisms at Highland Park during Dr. Lee Roberson’s 40-year pastorate (Wigton, p. 158). (The number of professions was vastly larger.) It was claimed that 28,000 children “made decisions for Jesus Christ” at Camp Joy (Wigton, p. 217). 28,000!

A great many of Highland Park’s professions and baptisms were through the bus ministry. M.J. Parker was the first bus director. He was followed from 1976 to 1980 by Clarence Sexton.

The church operated 45 bus routes that ran as far as 90 miles from Chattanooga! A joke in those days was, “Did you know that one of Highland Park’s buses crashed into one of Jack Hyles’ buses this week? Yeah, the accident was in Kentucky!”

A bus ministry itself is fine. It is a tool that can be used to bring people to church and get them under the sound of the gospel. If used properly, it can have good fruit and can build up the church. The keys to a biblically effective bus ministry include the following: First, to focus on families, not just children, to focus on reaching into the homes and winning parents to Christ. Second, to be very careful in dealing with souls about salvation, to make sure that they fully understand the gospel, to be patient and wise, to aim for genuine conversions, not mere professions of faith, to look for clear evidence of salvation, regardless of how long it takes. Third, to focus on the serious discipleship of those who come to Christ. This requires spending a lot of time with them. Children and youth who profess Christ can be “adopted” by church members for discipleship and spiritual protection. The church needs to find a way to have those who profess Christ in every service and every discipling opportunity, not just Sunday morning.

But the way the bus ministry was operated at Highland Park and many other fundamental Baptist churches in that day was more like a three-ring circus. The focus was a quick, shallow gospel presentation, getting people to pray a sinner’s prayer and counting these as salvations, giving assurance to people who showed no evidence that they were born again. When I worked in the bus ministry, there was no serious discipleship of those who prayed the prayers.

Under Sexton, the ridership on the buses averaged over 2,000 each Sunday. Sexton started a afternoon Sunday School “during which thousands of people placed their faith in Christ” (“About Clarence Sexton,” ClarenceSexton.com). Thousands! In four years! In that Sunday afternoon program alone!

There were some genuine conversions at Highland Park in those days, and there are people serving the Lord today who were saved at that time, but most of those thousands were simply nowhere to be found even then.

In one year, M.J. Parker reported personally leading 287 people to Christ (Wigton, p. 74). That is more than five per week, every week, the whole year!

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A lengthy study of the very influential Lee Roberson can be found in The History and Heritage of Fundamentalism and Fundamental Baptists, www.wayoflife.org.