"Ministry is not an elective. It is a divine mandate. Any church not involved in ministry is guilty of high treason and spiritual disobedience. . . . For too long we've evaluated a church by how many people stream in the front door on a Sunday.' He proposed an alternative: 'Evaluate a church by how many people serve the Lord Jesus by serving the hurting all week long.' Mr. Roesel referred to the main sin of Sodom and said it was not homosexuality: That was a sin, but it was part of the Sodomites' overall tendency to be 'arrogant, over-fed, unconcerned.' He said many of today's churches are like Sodom: 'staff members strutting on platforms,' with the church becoming 'the knife and fork club . . . ignoring the needy, callous and unconcerned, committing silent murder. . . . We don't spend time with those who are lost, we spend time with each other.' Mr. Roesel began emphasizing what he calls 'ministry evangelism' shortly after he became the church's pastor in 1976. The church's typical attendance of 200 leaped to 600 six months later, but not everyone was on board with the plan to make First Baptist known for its compassion. When the pastor pushed for the church to create a children's home, only 51 percent of congregation members voted for it. 'I backed off and started expository preaching through the New Testament,' Mr. Roesel recalls. 'The centrality of ministry to the needy comes up over and over. I hit it hard.' One couple decided to give $25,000 for the children's home, and additional money came in once the home opened and stories about the needy children circulated within the congregation. One 9-year-old who came to the home trembled when anyone tried to hug him, didn't know what a bathroom was, and at first slept in the closet rather than on a bed, because that was all he knew."
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