THE INDEPENDENT BAPTIST GLOSSARY
A. Sandlin
WARNING! DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR.
Spiritual Men: Christians who don't use their minds.
Independent Baptists: Baptists who are independent in everything but their thinking.
Public Schools: Places Christian young people go to learn to be faithful on the outside and the inside.
Christian Schools: Places Christian young people go to learn to be faithful on the outside and wicked on the inside.
Christian School Teachers: People who are severely overworked and underpaid.
Independent Baptist Pastors: People who are severely under worked and overpaid.
Evangelists: People Independent Baptist Pastors hire to tell their people what they don't have the guts to tell them.
Jonathon Edwards: A Puritan that Independent Baptists eulogize but would not let preach in their pulpits today if they understood what he really believed.
Doctor: A title Independent Baptist preachers can get even if they didn't graduate from any college or seminary, just as long as they can get big offerings and attendances and send students and money to Bible colleges.
Brother: A title for saved men who are not as prestigious as "doctors."
Prayer Breakfast: Place you go to drink coffee and eat donuts and then pray at the end to justify being there.
Fellowship Meeting: Meetings you go to an politely sit through hearing somebody else's pet peeves in exchange for the chance to stand up and air your pet peeves.
Invitation: The time at the end of the preaching during which the organist plays soft music and Independent Baptist Preachers attempt to get people to walk up to the front regardless of the sermon topic. Note: A service cannot be ended without one.
Rededication: Decision that disobedient people make instead of getting saved, found nowhere in the Bible. Normally indicated by a new "Profession of Faith".
Revival: What Independent Baptist Preachers talk about when they want higher attendances and higher offerings. Originally spanned a week or longer, but were shortened to three days.
Business Meeting: Meeting in which the flock decides how and where the shepherd should lead.
Shepherds: Elders
Flock: Church members.
Youth Directors: Men who get paid to dress in flashy clothes and entertain worldly teenagers during the adult church service.
Immodest Clothing: What worldly women wear today.
Modest Clothing: What worldly women wore ten years ago.
Pastorate: Where men go to unlearn what they learned in Bible college.
Faith (non-saving): What you have when you want to do something strange.
Foolishness: What someone else has when they do something strange.
Dispensationalism: A theological system that explains the differences between the Church and Israel that most Independent Baptists carry to extremes never imagined.
Hyper-Dispensationalism: The aforementioned "extreme" that categorizes everything in the Bible away from everything else.
Ingrates: People who don't believe in evangelism, but do believe in predestination.
Predestination: A doctrine Independent Baptists try to ignore, hoping it will go away.
Theaters: Vile hell-holes that show movies.
VCR: Respectable devices in Independent Baptist Homes that show the same movies shown in theaters.
Obesity: A sin Independent Baptists do not preach against.
Contemporary Christian Music: Modern music to which Christian lyrics are added, written anywhere but Nashville.
Old-fashioned Christian Music (a.k.a. Southern Gospel Music): Country music to which Christian lyrics are added, written in Nashville. Doubly acceptable when sung by four men accompanied only by piano.
Deputation: The Independent Baptist Plan for a missionary to find support other than his home church that is uneconomical and unbiblical.
Missionary Letter: Letter from a missionary trying to prove to the people that send money that it is being spent on getting impressive statistics so they will continue sending money.
Mission Board: Non-local church organizations doing the job local churches should do.
Furlough: Chance for missionaries to see their families and to attempt to persuade the churches that have stopped sending their money to resume.
Support: Something some missionaries have way too much of, and other missionaries need a lot more of.
Charles Spurgeon: Another preacher who Independent Baptist preachers eulogize but would never let preach in their pulpits today if they understood what he taught.
TV: What some Independent Baptists preach against owning.
Radio: What no Independent Baptist preaches against owning.
Biblical Separation: Separating from Christians you don't like.
Sowing Discord Among the Brethren: When someone separates from you.
Study: Something Independent Baptist preachers did in Bible college.
Old Time Religion: Any practice you want to justify by claiming it is old, even if it started less than a hundred years ago.
Professions of Faith: Prayers made ten years ago by unsaved people who still love to sin but don't want to admit they are going to hell.
Fundamentalists: People who believe just like you do.
Militant Baptist: People who fight, and separate from one another, and fight and separate from one another, and fight and separate from one another, and fight and separate ...
Moderate Baptist: People who don't fight and separate from one another as frequently and vigorously as Militant Baptist would like.
Modified Baptist: People who fight and separate from the World, but are "compromisers" according to the Militant Baptists.
New (Neo) Evangelicals: Intelligent, smarty-pants Christians who won't stand for anything.
Seminaries: Places young men go to lose their faith.
Bible Colleges: Place young men go to lose their individuality.
Fervent Prayer: Something Baptist talk about all the time but rarely do - except in public.
Visitation: Two hours of culturally extinct wandering on Thursday nights.
Evangelism: Something you are supposed to do daily, but put off until Visitation.
A Balanced Ministry: Something you have that nobody else does.
Standards: Conduct of codes the Bible doesn't say anything about but that divinely inspired preachers have revealed.
Sins of the Heart: Biblical imperatives Baptist don't say anything about.
Seminars: Places Christians go to get multi-colored notebooks and catch up on all the gossip.
Feminars: Places Christian women go to listen to women preachers teach them how to manipulate their husbands without appearing sinful.
Deacons: Men who spy on the congregation on behalf of the preacher.
Board-run Churches: Churches with a Wimpy Pastor
Fundamentalist Churches: Churches with a Dictator Pastor
Compromisers: People who don't oppose as many things as you do.
Fanatics: People who oppose more things than you do.