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Matt Maddix takes TV stand
This is copied from Matt Maddix's "myspace blog" today. It was sent to me by someone UPC asking me if I would post it on the forum...here it is....
September 6, 2007 - Thursday
My View on the TV Issue
You will never know success until you try for it. Doug Flutie tried; forty-eight yards and six seconds later, he became a sports legend. At 28 seconds until the end of the game, Boston College got the ball to the 20-yard line. Two passes and twenty-two seconds later, the ball was just a few yards beyond midfield. Boston College's only hope was a Hail Mary pass.
With only six seconds on the clock, Flutie dropped back, scrambled for a split second, and launched the ball. Phelan fell five yards into the end zone as he caught the ball. Suddenly, the score read Boston College 47, Miami 45, and the time expired. For the Eagles, punting the ball away was not an option; neither did they have the option to kick a field goal. The choice was to lose the game to Miami or to go for the end zone. Twenty-three years later, we all remember the famous Hail Mary thrown by the legendary quarterback Doug Flutie.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the United Pentecostal church is in desperate need for a Doug Flutie right now. We don't have any more options! As an organization, we've done everything that we can to win souls and advance this gospel into the hands of the seven billion people on this planet. We owe a great debt to the many great leaders, pastors, missionaries, evangelists and officials that have finished the course and await the last day church to bring home the victory; we stand on their shoulders as we continue the work that they began.
As a 31-year-old minister that has poured ten years of passion, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears into the United Pentecostal Church, I am greatly concerned about our future. We can ignore the scoreboard and continue to operate the way we did in the first quarter or we can pull together and throw a historic Hail Mary!
We all realize that we've been blessed with a rich and powerful heritage. We've had incredible movements like Because of the Times for the past 25 years as well as hundreds of conferences to inspire and encourage us; Deeper Life, Landmark, family camps, and Youth Congress, not to mention the passionate, anointed, and gifted ministries of people like the Urshans, Manguns, Haneys, Kilgores, Barnes, Tennys, Cunninghams, Coles, Huntleys, Godairs, Cornwells, Jones, Bookers, Crafts, Keyes, Williams, Bectons, Mooneys, Howells, and Lee Stoneking, as well as countless thousands of unsung heroes of the United Pentecostal Church who have supported this organization through their giving to our various ministries. However, these powerful ministries still haven't come close to completely fulfilling the great commission. Many of our most passionate leaders and revivalists such as myself are completely worn out. I'm confident that our organization couldn't work any harder; we've given everything that we have.
It's time for us to give it a try. I'm not in favor of using television simply as a last resort or as an excuse to give in to carnality or laziness. However, even with all of our efforts, we are still coming up short. My heart is heavily burdened for large cities such as Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Miami, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tampa, Orlando, Detroit, and Pittsburg, and the many cities around the world that have been almost untouched by the United Pentecostal Church. Are we in need of a revival and awakening? Absolutely!
We must all prayerfully consider throwing a Hail Mary on Wednesday, September 26, 2007, allowing our organization a chance to use another tool to reach our world. We've worked, sacrificed, prayed, given, traveled, motivated, and inspired as much as we can. Many powerful, inspirational voices have spoken over our assembly and to our world, like the voice of Anthony Mangun in Louisiana, yet we still have over seven billion souls that may spend eternity in Hell. Because of this great need for our leaders and visionaries to be broadcasted, I can support the use of television to fulfill the command that Jesus gave us; "Let your let shine before men that they may see your good works."
The world has seen enough televangelists; now they need to see our giving, our missions, our youth congress, our conferences, our Boot Camps, our feeding the homeless, our block parties, our baptisms, and our service in the community. I'd love to obey Jesus and let the world see what we have. After feeding the homeless in St. Petersburg every week for the past three years, doing over one hundred block parties, having three Soul Winner's Boot Camps, reaching, serving, and working overtime as a home Bible study teacher and soul winner, I can tell you that we need to throw a Hail Mary. We need to give the Tampa area and the whole world a chance to see that there is a different church full of power and love. I'd like for the world to see our good works!
I am joined with approximately 20 United Pentecostal churches in the Tampa Bay area in a network of fellowship; together, we are responsible for over three million souls in addition to the 5,000 plus devoted apostolic people we have been blessed with in our area churches. If we planted 200 churches in the next 20 years and motivated all 200 churches to grow to 400 people in attendance, it would be an unprecedented miracle! We would have a grand total of 85,000 people in the Tampa Bay area baptized in Jesus name and filled with the Holy Ghost. However, as exciting and seemingly challenging as this goal may be, with this number of apostolic believers, we'd still have a total of 2,915,000 souls headed to a lake of fire because we were unable to share the new birth message with them.
What burden of responsibility would be greater? Would you be more willing to answer for the blood of billions of people who may never hear the gospel than you would be to invest in the technology that the 21st century has afforded us? With real-time information at our fingertips via the Internet and mobile communication an ever-expanding technology, do you truly believe that the use of television would destroy our organization and our belief system?
I implore you, my fellow pastors and brothers, to refrain from becoming angry with me for my stand; please don't misunderstand my intent and isolate me or forbid your church members from associating with ministries such as Soul Winner's Boot Camp. There are very few people who are burning with such a great passion to equip our organization for aggressive evangelism; my motives are completely pure. Thank you for allowing me to use technology for the cause of Christ, employing web casts, radio advertisements, DVDs, and the World Wide Web, as well as copy machines, telephones, and fax machines; these tools have been invaluable in helping to fulfill the great commission. I'm asking you to take this gospel a step further; throw a Hail Mary that will allow me to show Tampa and the rest of the world our good works.
Sincerely,
Matthew J Maddix
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