If There Was Only One Man Allowed to Preach Today, This Ought to Be Him

Just over a decade ago, my wife and I drove out to the little town of Haw River to visit a country church whose name we saw stamped inside a YMCA Bible.  It was quite a trip to get out there.  Our jaw dropped when we saw the tired building with its faded gray shingles.  I could not persuade my wife to turn around and take us home, so we walked in and sat down.

A barrel-chested man bellowed out the music.  He needed no microphone, so strong was his voice.  I believe people in the next county could hear Rick Surles singing.  His face turned red and dripped with sweat as he roared out the lyrics. He had a beautiful, powerful sound.  Rick's voice was full and rich, like an entire orchestra, all by itself.

Then a robed choir got up and sang a number.  We had been time-warped back to 1950.

Finally, a chubby, countrified man named Brian Biggers stood up to preach.  He wore a plaid shirt and cowboy boots.

I could see he had a way with the Queen's English.  Or rather, he had made up his own way.  He was not legalistic when it came to grammar.

No thought was complete without a folksy metaphor.  His uncultured mannerisms, his southern mispronunciations and his irreligious style meant continuous amusement for his audience.  And no one seemed to enjoy his preaching more than he did.

In his simple way, he moved the congregation from laughter to tears and back to laughter effortlessly.  Somehow, when he spoke, it truly felt as if Jesus Himself was speaking.

A few minutes into his message, it occurred to me that I needed to do whatever I could to get as many people as possible to hear this man preach. His words were alive with Christ.  There was no way to sit in that room and be unaffected.  This was what an anointing looked like.

So much of my life was changed by Brian's ministry:  I fell in love with the Word, attended and graduated from seminary, entered full-time ministry, and planted a church in Raleigh.  There is no part of my life God did use Brian to touch.

Today, that old country church has become a megachurch.  Sunday mornings, the tiny population of Haw River explodes to thousands upon thousands. 

The beloved Rick Surles past away years ago, but The Lamb's Chapel choir croons on.

And Brian Biggers is still belting out the best Bible preaching you will hear anywhere.

Click here to listen to some of Brian Biggers' recent messages.

“I Can’t Believe Your Church Lets You be Their Pastor!” My Angry Rant on the Misapplication of 1 Timothy 3 in the Internet Age :-)

Have you read? Billy Graham is into witchcraft! Did you know that Pope John Paul II sold cyanide gas to the Nazis during WWII? Of course, it wasn’t until later that he and Mother Teresa became homosexuals.*

How do I know all this? Because of the internet!

It seems harmless to go online and attack a public figure. It certainly feels good to even a score with a bad service provider, a mean boss or a psycho ex by trashing them on a discussion board.

But it’s all sin.

According to the internet, I didn’t lose my $11M business to the banking crisis of 2009. Instead, after 8 successful years, I purposely closed it down to hurt all my customers and my 200+ employees, and to benefit myself, even though it cost me everything I owned. Which makes no sense, but it’s online, so it must be true. Oh, but really, it’s not even a little bit true.

An ex-employee claimed online that I used foul language as I fired him. His post is so full of filth that if you’re able to finish his complaint to its end, you probably aren’t the kind of person who would mind if I did use that sort of language. But I didn’t. (I did fire the pottymouth, though.)

It’s fun to gossip. One Christian colleague, while “prayerfully” spreading rumors about me, acknowledged how far-fetched the online reports are. But as he told my boss, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” In other words, “There must be something to it if so many people hate him.” Yes, there is something to it. I’ll get to that in a minute.

A bad online reputation feeds itself. Attorney General Roy Cooper and his friends in the press, looking for a villain in the closing of American Kitchen (for which I worked part-time in sales), read the complaint boards and named me as an owner of the company. That the real ownership of the company is a matter of public record meant nothing to them. Bloggers said I was the owner and that settled it. Never mind that I had been laid off four months before it closed.

The Bible says that a leader in the church “must have a good reputation with those outside (the church), so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil” (1 Timothy 3:7).

One preacher told me that, while he didn’t think there was any truth to what was said about me, he thought I was disqualified from ministry on the basis of that verse. Never mind that God had called me into ministry. Or that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I asked the man, “Do you think that in 1 Timothy 3:7, Paul intended no distinction between truth and lies? Especially given that he himself was so often slandered?”

Reputation is reputation, the preacher said. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. If you have a bad reputation, you’re of no use to God as a pastor.

One big problem: Jesus is a man of considerable reputation Himself. According to the online intelligentsia, He was gay and He was married to Mary Magdalene. Which I know doesn’t compute, but hey, where there’s smoke there’s fire. Sounds like He was up to something, we just don’t know exactly what. Probably He was some sort of scam artist.

Only He wasn’t. He was perfect in every way. But according to the standards of my old pastor friend, because of millions of negative comments made about Him online, Jesus would be unfit for ministry. How crazy is this?

Satan works in every way to damage Christ’s reputation. Today, he uses rumors and complaints on the internet to “disqualify” Christians from serving in ministry. Which only works if we are dumb enough to let him.

So here are some things for you to decide on:

1. If someone trashes you online, it means nothing about your qualification for ministry. The Holy Spirit isn’t stupid. Only a well-deserved bad reputation disqualifies a person by 1 Timothy 3:7.

2. If you have a terrible reputation and you deserve it, and you’ve repented, then you don’t have a biblically bad reputation. You’re as white as snow. Serve the Lord.

3. Having an undeserved bad reputation will serve you well. It keeps holier-than-thou people away from your ministry. And it attracts people who know they need grace. At my church in Raleigh, Brier Creek Fellowship, God has assembled the sweetest, most loving group of believers I've ever known.

4. No matter what they say about you, it’s Christ that your enemies really hate. There’s no better way to know Him than to suffer with Him. Savor his scars, which you also bear.

5. If you’re a Christian, stop your gossiping, which destroys your fellowship with Christ, never mind what it does to your brothers and sisters.

And if the devil tells you (as he used a frantic public servant to tell me), “I can’t believe your church lets you be their pastor,” you might answer, “I can’t either.” My church – which I dearly love – didn’t call me to preach. Christ did. And I will proudly share his scorn through whatever Satan sends my way.




*In case you miss the sarcasm, let me be clear: none of this is true. Billy Graham is not a witch, Pope John Paul II wasn’t a poison gas merchant, and he and Mother Teresa were not sexually conflicted.