Sermon Tone Analysis

It is a great delight to be asked to share some of the story of Immanuel Baptist Church.

It is especially kind of Brian Croft, who I has been my friend since my earliest days at Immanuel, to ask me to share with you.

I must admit that talking about the Church I Pastor for 45 minutes of so feels awfully self important.

So I want to make a few things clear before I start.

In the Apostle Paul says, “6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

I want you to know before I begin that every part of that verse applies to all I will share tonight.

I have not been in this alone.

Paul worked with Apollos and others, and I have worked with Tommy Hullette who first wanted to see Immanuel revitalized, Jeff King who has labored as an Elder for a decade and a half.

And we have worked with over 30 elders and hundreds and hundreds of saints of the living God.

I am speaking tonight but this is their story.

Paul did not work alone and neither have ‘I’.

In many ways the story of my ministry is the story of being surrounded with people whose godliness is greater than mine, and whose gifts support and complement my many deficiencies.

I am standing here as the Pastor but this really is the story of God’s recent work at Immanuel Baptist Church in downtown Louisville, Ky.

Again in Paul says, “God gave the growth.”

This is so important to emphasize.

Without Him we could do nothing.

Unless the Lord builds the house they labor in vain who build it.

Throughout the history of recent Immanuel God has provided the growth through empowering us with power we do not bring to the table.

He has also provided the growth in spite of us, as anyone who has spent any time at Immanuel knows the Elders have had to stand in front of the congregation to apologize for our sins against them.

Even to this day God continues to show me sin in my life that I must deal with if I am not going to derail the work.

Nonetheless, the God who does not treat us as our sins deserve has worked powerfully to glorify Himself through Immanuel Baptist Church and I want to tell that story to glorify Him tonight.

With those two truths (I have not done this alone, and God has done everything of value and power) hanging over us like a wet cloud and soaking everything I say like a hard driving rain, let me continue.

What I want to do tonight is to tell you about the recent history of Immanuel Baptist Church.

If you want a fuller history of Immanuel’s story you can find it in Dave Theobald excellent book, “A Great People’s Church: A History of Immanuel Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky 1887-2005.”

Dave, who is currently a Pastor in upstate New York served our congregation very well by producing a history that really tells the story of Immanuel Baptist Church.

Although I am going to tell you more about the recent history of Immanuel, I do think it is important to summarize Immanuel’s full history for you in just a moment or two.

The first line of Dave Theobald’s book summarizes Immanuel’s history perfectly.

He writes, “The history of Immanuel Baptist Church is inseparably linked with that of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.”

You see Immanuel was birthed by the student body of SBTS.

In 1887 the “Society for Missionary Enquiry of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary” decided that they would start a Sunday School Mission in downtown Louisville’s Germantown neighborhood and on January 9th, 1887 (when my home country of Canada was a mere 20 years old, and this country was only 22 years out of the civil war, Immanuel Baptist Church was born as the Germantown Mission.

From that day forward, until today, Immanuel’s history has been bound up with SBTS.

Most of Immanuel’s Pastors have been Southern Students.

Immanuel’s theology has followed Southerns.

Our first Pastors were Boyce’s men, men who loved the abstract of principles and who zealously evangelized our neighborhood seeking to fill Germantown with her doctrine.

As the years went on and Southerns theological foundation was eroded so was Immanuel’s.

In the sixties when Southern’s theological lines were getting very blurry so were Immanuel’s, so much so that Immanuel was having joint services at St. Martin’s Catholic Church and St. Matthew’s United Church of Christ.

In 1970 16 of Immanuel’s members left to join the Catholic Church.

When SBTS has been theologically solid so has Immanuel’s.

When SBTS has been shaky, Immanuel has been shaken.

Today things are no different.

Immanuel currently holds to and loves a doctrinal statement that is almost identical to the Abstract of Principles and of course we know that over the last 25 years of SBTS’s history that is just the kind of theology that Dr. Mohler has cultivated here.

My own story of coming to Immanuel centers on SBTS.

After attending a Bible College in Canada that was very theologically shaky I was determined to attend a more confessional seminary.

This led my wife and I in August of 2000 to load all of our worldly possessions into a horse trailer and to drive from Drumheller, Alberta to Louisville, Kentucky.

That’s 2316 miles if you are interested.

We studied together for one semester and then Christy stopped studying to have our first daughter.

Then I studied for one more semester and had to quit because, because well the Canadian dollars did not go very far back then since the Canadian dollar was worth peanuts.

We worked here in the states of a year but we could never seem to get ourselves in good place to get back to school.

Finally after about a year of trying we were ready to give up and we started getting ready to go back to Canada.

However, at that time, my friend Tommy Hullette had been trying to serve this little Church called Immanuel downtown.

Tommy approached me and said, “If you will become the Pastor of Immanuel I will buy a house in the neighborhood.”

And that is exactly what happened.

The story of how it happened is pretty funny so I should probably tell that one too.

Around October of 2001 I had preached at Immanuel but nothing came of it.

In February 2002 I preached again, only this time I had already given my resume to the Pastoral search committee and I had met with them once.

When I met with them but I asked for one condition, that no vote be taken regarding my candidacy immediately after the service.

So I preached and after I preached I went to the nursery where there were maybe two kids and I grabbed mine.

As I came into the sanctuary Steve O'brien, one of only three members of immanuel who have been there longer than Christy and I have came up to me and said, “Welcome aboard.”

I didn’t know what he meant so I just said thanks and smiled.

Then Oakley Belden walked up to me and said, “Well, I guess they liked you?”

I said, “What do you mean”, he said they had met just then and decided to vote to call me as their Pastor.

My first act as Pastor was to struggle with anger towards this dear old man.

What?

That was the one thing we were not supposed to do.

I insisted on one more meeting with the Pastoral Search committee but then, by the end of the week, I had accepted the call to be the Pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church.

That next Sunday, myself, my wife, a single man from Third Avenue Baptist Church named Doug Thorpe, and our friends Jeff and Christy King, along with Tommy Hullette, his wife, and their daughter Ruth all began attending Immanuel where I was now the Pastor.

Now I will tell you this.

I think it would get a little tedious to go on and tell you how the next 16 years went from there.

I think I would wind up droning on and on.

So I am going to do two things.

First, I am going to give you a quick glimpse by the numbers, and then I am going to look under the hood of Immanuel.

I want to look at the theology that has formed us.

I want to look at who God has revealed himself to be and how that has shaped us.

But before I do that I need another caveat.

I am not saying that all who hold these truths will see these results.

God is the one who gives the growth.

Many who hold the truth with greater clarity than I do, and who live it with greater faithfulness than I do have seen less results in this life.

Our view of God does not guarantee results.

But because we have tried to live these last 16 years in a way that focuses on God and seeking to do his work his way, we get the joy of saying that the results are from him.

He told us how to build the Church and he has blessed the building.

With that clearly said, here is Immanuel by the numbers.

In 2002 Immanuel had about 17 people in attendance.

For the next seven years we grew by about 50% per year, we have not grown at that pace in many years but today we are a congregation of about 700 members.

In 2002 there were no Elders at Immanuel, as of this year we have the privilege of having 17 Elders and I have had the privilege of serving alongside 30 men who have come and gone.

In 2002 Immanuel had no small groups, today Immanuel is blessed to have 47 and 95% of our people are involved in them.

In 2002 Immanuel had lost touch with one missionary who had gone out from her midst, today she is deeply connected and supportive of 19 missionary units whom she has sent out.

Each of the men we have sent out have been tested and deemed qualified in the same way we have assessed our Elders

In 2002 to the best of my knowledge we had never planted a Church, and by 2018 the men who are serving in ministry who have spent time at Immanuel are more than I can count.

What I can count is that God has allowed us to send out one one Church a year each year for the last four years, we are currently partnered with 13 Pastors and Churches throughout North America in what we call the Immanuel Network.

In 2002 we had no Elders and no plan for how to raise up future leaders, In 2018 we have about 60 men enrolled in our three year Pastoral Apprenticeship.

In 2002 I had to turn down the first two baptismal candidates because they did not understand the gospel.

In 2018 scarcely a members meeting happens where we do not welcome in over a dozen member and we celebrate multiple baptisms.

Finally, the people of Immanuel are increasingly diverse.

While still predominantly a white Church God has gathered African Americans, Asians, Africans, and Latinos into our midst.

We also love seeing our leadership reflect diversity and it is a great joy to me to know that 40% of the men in the first year of Pastoral Apprenticeship are visible minorities.

Not only is Immanuel racially diverse but our membership includes the most and the least educated, the richest and the poor, and our visitors each week include those in rehab, those recently released from prison, as well as those from other faiths.

We count all of this a great, undeserved blessing from God that he is doing for His own glory.

So to wrap up, currently Immanuel is a Church of about 700 people, led by 17 Elders, 7 deacons, 47 GCG’s, who are ministering to one another and our city and regularly seeing new members join, and new believers baptized.

And we are seeking to be a sending people who reach out into our prisons, our refugee community, and to our friends and neighbors even as we train up and send men and women across this country and the world.

Now, I must stop there and say to hear these numbers is encouraging, but I do not think it explains Immanuel for what has shaped Immanuel is not her size but her God.