171. Fundamental Footprints - A Personal Story under Bob Gray Sr - James Spurgeon Interview

5/8/202500:47:08

Fundamental Footprints

Survivor Stories & Testimonies

Finding a Healthy Church

Freedom In The Church

Israel & the Holy Land

Episode Notes

James was a student under Bob Gray in the 80's and 90's and came to share of his experience with the Longview Movement.

His book - www.amazon.com/dp/B0DZV12M4W/ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_cp_apin_dp_94BE7C3C2R3CDGJW2SMS

To Purchase our cigar line go to: 1689cigars.com/collections/4-freedom-cigars

For more info visit our website: 4freedompodcast.com

For Merch visit this site: www.teepublic.com/user/freedom-ministries?utm_source=designer&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Gq_E0abDp_8

Transcript

Podcast Introduction and Welcome
I found my freedom in you I found a joy I can't lose And thank God it's true You wrapped your arms around me And heaven broke through From the moment you found me I found my freedom in you
Welcome to the 4-Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Safrit and Brett Martin.
Well, welcome back to the 4-Freedom Podcast. We're glad to be here with you today. We've got a lot planned for you today. We've got some good stuff, some good material. We've had a lot of good feedback from our last episode over the past week.
A lot of people reaching out. A lot of people calling us.
Wanting to just kind of dig in a little deeper to this subject. And James, that's kind of what we've been dealing with over the past week, isn't it?
Yeah, I would have never thought that doing an episode on Bob Gray Sr.
of Longview Baptist Temple, that this would have been the response. And we've been getting phone calls from all over the world, social media messages. It's been great. It's been great to hear from people. It's been great to just see where people are at. And so we're pivoting our schedule a little bit.
And our schedule is never permanent. But we've got an interview lined up today from the response of this previous episode.
And if you have a story, if you've got something that you want to share, a story that maybe predates the story or even after the time where we interview with James, and you'd like to share your experience, by all means, reach out to us. We'll try to get you on the schedule.
And you can share your time and your story, what that looks like.
But yeah, man, Brett, the firestorm that's coming from this has been great for us. It's been great to hear from these things and to hear from you. And we always appreciate that.
We always appreciate you reaching out to us and looking forward to today's interview. Let's take care of some housekeeping issues. Brett, what do we got coming up in just, I mean, about a month. We're a month away. One month away.
We are one month away from going to the Big D, and I do mean Dallas. And we're going to go there to Dallas, Texas, to the SBC conference.
And we're going to have a good time there. We've already got some meetups scheduled there. If you're going to be in and around Dallas, Texas, between the 7th and 11th of next month in June.
And swing by the SBC conference and see us. You know, even if you're not a Southern Baptist, I think they'll let you in.
I don't know. Just tell them at the door you're at the 4-Freedom Podcast. I'll give you a VIP ticket. They will roll the red carpet out for you. Absolutely.
That's right. That's right. But that's where we're going to be next month. And like I said, if you are going to be near, hit us up. Let us know. Message us on social media. We'd love to meet you. Yeah.
And I'll be there the week before in McKinney. My sister lives in McKinney, so we'll be hanging out with her. I've already got a couple of events lined up to show off the For Freedom cigars
at a lounge there in McKinney, but also just be able to hang out. So if you want to meet up, if you want to be there, maybe you can't be there the week of the convention, but you can be there the week before.
And you're in the area. You want to hang out. Shoot me a message.
Definitely will let you know where I'll be at. And, Brett, one cool thing, we're going to be touring the Dallas Cowboy Stadium. It's one of the best stadiums in America.
And my sister, since she lives just an hour north of Dallas, we can be at the stadium. And so I think it's that Thursday that we'll be down there before the convention that we're going to go down and behind-the-scenes tour,
go in the locker rooms, get to go on the field, get to go in the crow's nest way up top and see the massive stadium.
So I'm super pumped about that for our family to be able to go and do that. You know, I heard that the weather that week is going to be like the Dallas Cowboys. It's going to peak in the 90s.
New Cigar Launch Announcement
Amen. Amen. I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. So speaking of the Four Freedom Cigars, we are, this week, Lord willing, we will be rolling out our Sweet Elder Cigar. We've had some supply chain issues, but we have finalized a cigar that we love, we enjoy.
And so, Lord willing, the entire line of all four cigars will be out. You can get a sampler pack. You can get a single. You can get a five-pack. And then our boxes of 20 will also be out there on our website. Please go by.
We've been getting some great response from that. It's a small way for you to support the show and support what we're doing. And we're excited about this little adventure that we've got.
We'll be taking this to G3 in September and been able to have a booth set up there and talk through what we've got going on.
And we're super excited about that. Me and Brett, Lord willing, will both be there. I know I'll be there. Brett's trying to get his schedule worked out. So another opportunity, September 11th, 12th, and 13th, to be able to be with us and hang out and have a great time. And then, Brett, across the seas, we will go.
Tell us about Israel. Shabbat Shalom. We are going to the Holy Land for Freedom in the Holy Land. We're heading out last of January, 1st of February of next year, 2026.
And we want you to go with us. And I'm telling you, now is the time to go. There are tour groups there. It's safe. We've had talk from people that are over there touring.
And listen, it's the time to go to Israel. And so we want you to go with us. All you need to do is go to our website,
our trip website, which you can find on our social media pages, and put in your registrations. It's $450 for registration to guarantee your spot. The cost for the trip, overall, all in is around $4,500.
You pay that in payments over the next year. And that really is a good price. There are a lot more expensive trips over there. And when I tell you, this is, you know, that guy in Jurassic Park that said, you know, we spared no expense. That's what this company does.
This company spares no expense when they take care of you. It is a first-class trip from beginning to end. And you're never going to regret going. Absolutely.
Can't wait. It's going to be an awesome time. You can also find that information out on our website at 4freedompodcast.com. You can go and check that out there on the Israel 2026 tab.
Interview Introduction with James Spurgeon
We would love for you to join us. And without further ado, we are excited about jumping into this interview today with Mr. James Spurgeon.
And I believe he'll have some enlightening information for you if you've ever been a part of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement. Or if you've ever just wanted to know more about Bob Gray and Longview Baptist Temple. And so let us jump into our episode today. Welcome today.
We are excited to have James Spurgeon with us here today. James is an alumni of Bob Gray in Longview and Texas Baptist Institute there at Texas Baptist Temple. And he also wrote a book called The Texas Baptist Crucible.
And so he's going to be sharing his story today. I want to share the back page of his book. You can find it on Amazon. We'll put the link in there as well. But he wants to share his story today and where he's been at.
But this is the back page. It says, it's a true story of one young man's experience in fundamentalist churches and Baptist Bible colleges in the 80s and early 90s. As he was been trained for ministry. Enter a bizarre world that is often dark, sometimes funny, but always entertaining.
It'll keep you turning pages until the very end. He describes the totalitarianism state in which he lived, the absurd rules by which he lived, and the unreasonable, chaotic cast of characters who ruled over him.
And he does so with candor and humor. At the same time, he exposes what was and is wrong with the particular brand of independent Baptist fundamentalism that he lived through and came out of by simply making a record of his own experience.
If you've ever been hurt or abused in church or abusive ministers in cult-like settings, you will be encouraged by this book.
And my favorite part of the whole back is the keynote. He says, if you've read 1984, I lived it.
Only this story, by God's grace, doesn't end with my loving big brother. In this story,
big brother doesn't have the last word. So, James, welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us just a little bit about yourself, your background, where you're from, and what you're doing now. So, I'm a hospice chaplain, full-time.
I am a bivocational minister, so I'm a pastor of a little place called Winsboro Reformed Church in Winsboro, Texas.
I preach to 30 or 40 people there every week. I re-preach all my sermons in nursing homes and assisted living during the week, and I tell people that I have the greatest job in the world. I love where God has me.
I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. And through all of the bizarre twists and turns that God and His providence put me through, I am exactly where He wants me to be.
But part of that, I think, is to help and encourage others who are hurt by, you know, the type of fundamentalist ministry that I came up through. I was born in Indiana,
had lived in Colorado and California by the time I was two. My parents then, I got saved in the Bellflower Missionary Baptist Church, Bellflower, California, when I was 10 in 1979. Some people that lived up the street from us were, they were originally from Arkansas.
And so they went to, it was an ABA church. I don't know if you're familiar with the American Baptist Association. That's where I got saved and baptized. And then my family moved to West Tennessee. And we went to another ABA church in Bonniver, Tennessee until I was probably 17.
And then through the influence of my aunt, my dad's sister, he started receiving the story of the Lord newspaper.
And he got all fired up about, you know, these people were out there doing something for God. Our little church wasn't doing anything for God. And so we wound up changing churches and going to a little independent Baptist church in Jackson, Tennessee, pastored by a very young Tennessee Temple graduate.
And they had a Christian school and they had a bus ministry and they had all the standards. And so I didn't, I wasn't really into that. You know, I was, I was a teenager in the eighties. I had long hair.
I had, you know, all the, went to public high school. And it was funny because when we started going to that church and I was known as a nerdy, goody two shoes kid at public high school, I was immediately a rebel when I walked through the doors of the independent Baptist church.
And what was funny is that that made me attractive to every teenager there.
They just wanted like, wow, somebody from the outside world is here. I look back at that and laugh. But that's how I got, kind of got into fundamentalism, independent fundamental Baptist. Love it.
Now I'm sure some of our listeners are asking the question, are you the great, great grandson of Charles Haddon Spurgeon? Your last name is Spurgeon and you are reforms.
We know Spurgeon was reformed. Is this part of the culture that you're in or do you know that? Well, I'm not directly related to him. I tell people that I'm from the other side of the family, the other Spurgeons.
I'm descended from Spurgeons who came out of North Georgia and East Tennessee who are basically hillbillies. And, but I became aware after I left fundamentalism of Charles Spurgeon, read a ton of his stuff. I love, I refer to him as Uncle Chuck. I don't think he would have liked that.
But people ask me about him and say, oh, I love Uncle Chuck. But no, I'm not directly related. James, I hate you because you stole my joke. Because I literally have written down on my post-it note, Uncle Charles.
I was about to ask him about Uncle Charles and you beat me to it. Let me say, though, that I have a lot of respect for hospice chaplains.
It's a calling and it is a wonderful ministry. I mean, you get to just go around ministering to people. And so I love that.
I want to say that my pastor was from Tennessee Temple, graduated Tennessee Temple under Lee Robertson as well.
But, you know, you kind of told us about how you kind of first dipped your toe into, you know, the IFB movement. I want to talk about your time in the IFB. When you got in there, what initially attracted you to it?
What kind of made you say, okay, man, this is awesome. Let's get involved in this thing. What attracted you to the whole movement?
So a lot of pressure was put on me to finish high school at the Christian school. And I only had one year of high school left. I didn't want to do it. They were not accredited. It was an A.C.E. school. And I finally...
What happened was we had a revival with our preacher. I announced it for months ahead of time.
We were having Joe Boyd and a bunch of red hot on fire for God preacher boys. We're going to be coming through. And, of course, our family hosted two of them for the week that he was there preaching.
I don't know how familiar you are with Joe Boyd and all that. I wound up... I was called to preach under Joe Boyd ministry.
To this day, I believe that call is the most genuine thing that's ever happened to me. I knew that God was calling me to preach. I went up to Joe Boyd one night. And this is after I had been talked into going with them as a Joe Boyd preacher boy. Like that week.
I didn't know until later that those guys got like bonus tuition money for recruiting me.
You know, I just thought, man, they want me to go. I'm going to go. Like, and I just bought in because I sincerely...
I love God. I love the scriptures. I've never... I never thought of myself as a rebel. Quote, unquote, rebel.
And I felt like this was God's calling on my life. I asked... I went up to Joe Boyd one night and said, how does somebody know if they're called to preach? And he said, well...
Well, Jim, do you sing? Do you sing specials in church? No, sir, I don't. Well, he ain't calling you to sing then, is he? And that was basically...
Okay. I said, well, I guess I'm giving my life to be, you know, surrendering to preach as it was known. And so that was my calling and entrance into ministry.
I became a Joe Boyd preacher boy. That was between my junior and senior year of high school. And so, obviously, then it was decided I was going to Christian school. And that I was going to a fundamentalist Bible college.
Before then, because they're the only ones doing anything for God. Amen. So, I mean, before then, I would have probably wound up somewhere like Memphis State University, maybe Mississippi State, somewhere like that. Might have gone local. Excellent Southern Baptist school in Jackson,
Tennessee. That I look back and think, why didn't I just go there?
You know, and stay home. But God knows better than we do.
And so, I finished out my senior year of high school at Bethel Christian Academy, Jackson, Tennessee. It's no longer there. The church is no longer there.
And wound up at Texas Baptist College in Longview, Texas, because Bob Gray came through. Again, the influence of that young pastor from Tennessee Temple University.
And I love the guy. Brother Tim is a great guy. Still is. Still would tell you he's a fundamentalist. And it's people like him. I don't broad brush the whole movement as cultic.
But I do kind of view it as fringe Christianity. Does that make sense? Yes, sir. Absolutely. Yeah. But that's how I wound up after I graduated high school. I graduated one.
I was the only one that had a whole ceremony for me. I tell people I have a high school reunion every year.
And everybody shows. You're a valedictorian and class president and all of it. All wrapped together. Yes. Captain of the basketball team. I was everything. I love it. That's awesome. Yeah.
So. I'm not familiar with Joe Boyd. Right. I've never heard that name, actually. I think Brett may be. So. Joe. Joe Boyd. I heard Joe Boyd preach probably more than anybody else. Because Wendell Evans loved Joe Boyd.
And Wendell Evans would say, I've got three heroes in my life. And he would listen to all. I think Jack Howell was one. I forget who the second one was. But then the third one was Joe Boyd.
And man, I heard Joe Boyd preach a lot. He would always come. He would talk to the preacher boys. So, yes.
I know Joe Boyd a lot. And he was. He was a card. He was a cut up. He was hilarious.
Yes. And he was. He was. I really liked him. Yeah. I'll say this for him. He was not mean. I run across a lot of meanness in fundamentalism. But he was not mean. Yeah.
He can be blunt sometimes. But he. I feel like he really. He loved people. And that was rare. Absolutely. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so you. We got to this point where you went to Longview. You went to Texas Bible Institute. Texas Baptist College.
And you were able to be there under Bob Gray. And under the training. And this is sort of where our paths sort of aligned.
Because, you know, me and Brett were not as familiar with Bob Gray. I've got a couple of connections that came from Bob Gray to Champion, where I went to college at. And you reached out to us. And you said, hey, I've been a part of it.
Experiences in Fundamentalism
But I've wrote a book. I'd like to, you know, possibly share some story. And so we brought this into,
you know, we've had tons of response from this Bob Gray episode that we came out with. Missionaries from all across the world really have reached out to me and messaged us. And I've been getting messages on social media and Facebook. And one guy got my phone number and called me.
And I got a phone call from the other side of the world. I'm not going to mention where. But and so we talked for a little while.
And so we felt it was important to maybe sort of we were going to go ahead and push through and talk about a couple other issues. But because this issue came up and we didn't realize it was going to cause, you know, sort of a firestorm of social media, people talking about this.
We thought maybe let's pause for a moment. Let's take some interviews and talk through some some personal stories, some personal attributes of what had happened. And so why don't you just describe your experience at Longview under Bob Gray and sort of the experience at Longview Baptist,
the culture, the culture that you were in, the leadership style.
I know in the back of the book, you said that totalitarian leadership and then how the environment sort of shaped your view of ministry and what that looks like.
So I got I was able to ease into Longview Baptist Temple and and Texas Baptist College because my my parents moved with me to Longview and my dad enrolled in the college the same time I did.
And the first year he took mostly like night courses. And so I was there during the day. I was working all night at a grocery store, warehouse grocery store.
He was working during the day. We didn't take a lot of the same classes, but we took a few of the same class. He graduated and left.
And that's when I went into the dorms and that's when I really got exposed to it.
I saw a lot of it while I was living with my parents and going to school.
But when I moved into the dorm is when it was just it's like if you've ever been in a jail, I used to preach in a jail every Friday and the door closes behind you and you know you're there. Right.
And that's what it felt like moving into the dorms at Texas Baptist College because it was every aspect of your life was controlled and you were taught to be open to leadership about everything. What are you hiding? If you're trying to hide something, you must have sin.
Anything you did that was a little bit different was like must be sin in your life. It was a it's bizarre.
As I mentioned to you or as I before we started recording, I've been out of this so long. In fact, I wrote my book in between ninety nine and two thousand four when all these memories were still fresh.
I decided to republish it and I went back. And as I'm editing it, I'm beginning chapters that I can't remember how they end. And I got sucked in and I was like, wow, is an emotional roller coaster for me just reading the book again and editing and getting it ready for publication.
So that's that place is different for people who don't know fundamentalism.
The stories are hard to believe. A couple of people from my church have read the book and they're like, man, you got to be making this stuff up.
And I'm like, I promise you, I'm not. This is the way it was. This is the way it still is, I'm sure. In some places. I've rambled. I can't remember your question now. No, you're good.
So tell us about the the specifics of the church culture, the leadership style, the the experience that you had while you're there.
I know that was oppressive as far as the the door in the college. But what was it like specifically being under Bob Gray and working with him and doing things around him?
Bob Gray is the king or was he's no longer there. Bob Gray was the king. What he said ruled. You did not question him. No one who worked for him questioned him. He's surrounded by yes men.
He told us that when you go to hire people, staff, the number one thing that he looks for is loyalty.
That's it. He doesn't look for soul winners. He doesn't look for all these other things. Loyalty.
He said, you can you find somebody loyal. You can mold them into what you want them to be. And that's what he looked for. He looked for people he could rule, people he could control.
And the church membership. So I can't remember what they what they claimed as numbers because they you know how the numbers go. I think in reality there were probably 800 to 1,000 members. And I would guess that of those maybe.
20 to 30 at the most were actually from Longview. All the rest had moved there from out of state to be a part of that great soul winning church.
So the church really was promoted by his Monday, Tuesday preaching around the country and the college getting people to move to the church, come to the college.
People would come to the college and just roll out and just stay at the church and be members of the church forever. And so the church wasn't even really from Longview.
People in Longview looked at it like it was a bizarre place. I remember I first got hired at the grocery store.
I'm 18. I don't know anything. And one of the guys who worked with me says, you're from that church that that made is the reason why we don't have MTV on cable.
They blamed the church for that for like because they rallied against having MTV on the cable or whatever it was.
People in the community look at it like it's a cult. There's like rumors that go around about it. Is it true? They lock the doors once the service starts and they have all these these things that go around. It's pretty funny.
But, yeah, the church is like a foreign entity in Longview. Those people aren't from Longview. Wow. That's an interesting thought.
You know, I had similar to that when I was at Gospel Lighting Champion because a lot of it was, you know, transplant people that came in. And, you know, Eric was from the area, but there were some changes.
There were some things that were different and people from the community saw this church that was there but wasn't really there for the community.
And now the culture has changed a lot since then, and they've done things that I believe have been good. But there is still that environment that sometimes can breed that.
And I want to ask you just to follow up with that of how do you think the environment of Longview and Bob Gray, how did that shape your view of ministry and the gospel when you initially left and,
Transitioning from Longview Baptist
you know, you're called to be a pastor? I'm assuming you went and you pastored or started a church after you had graduated. And so what did you take away from Longview that stuck with you in ministry until eventually we'll talk about you leaving the ministry,
leaving the IFB movement and how that changed? So the initial part, how did that influence you? So I was run out. I was eventually left on bad terms.
I left and as far as they were concerned, I was leaving God forever. But when I left Longview Baptist Temple, I left Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement.
I knew whatever I was going to be, it was not that. And it put me in a place to question everything. Where I wound up was a little Baptist church, maybe about an hour away from Longview in Mineola, Texas. And there were gracious people there.
And they were, I'm sure they looked at me as odd.
I showed up for church the first time in a suit and tie and nobody there had a suit and tie on. I was a fish out of water for a long time there, but the pastor was very gracious. The pastor hired me to do Spanish ministry at his church,
sent me to Costa Rica to learn Spanish. I came back and started preaching in Spanish and I still had a lot of fundamentalism in me. But honestly, it was like, that's where things began to come off of me because I was willing to question everything.
So I remember coming back from having learned Spanish and picking up Dennis Coral's book on King James onlyism and reading it and thinking, this guy doesn't have, he doesn't even understand how languages work. It was just like, this is ridiculous.
And so I was like, that dropped off. There were other things that just came off a little bit at a time. I remember the first time I bought a Bible that was not King James. I sneaked into the Bible bookstore in Tyler,
Texas, looking around like I was a Baptist sneaking into a liquor store. And I went in there and got, I had done research. I got a New American Standard and big black leather New American Standard.
The church that I was at was still kind of King James only, not rabid King James only, but kind of King James only. So in my office, I had a desk drawer, the middle drawer that you pull out. It's got pens and stuff in it.
And I had that Bible opened up in that drawer.
And so I would just read it. I would sit there with the drawer open and read.
I read the entire New American Standard. And if anybody walked into the office, I would just push the door or the push the, yeah, the door closed to the, to my desk, push the Bible back up under my desk, you know, talk to whatever. When they left, I'd pull it back out.
It's just hilarious to me that I was sneaking to read the Bible. That's hilarious.
Well, let me ask you, what was, what was like the straw that broke the camel's back? What was the thing that's like, okay, this happened, I'm out, I'm gone. And then once you left, what was the hardest part of leaving?
So the, I guess the, the straw that broke the camel's back for me was, um, the control. It just became ridiculous to me that at the age of 25, they wanted to completely control my finances. They wanted to, uh,
they could tell me whether I could date or not, or who I could or couldn't date.
And it just struck me one day how ridiculous that was that anybody would even want to have that much control over someone else's life.
And that's when I knew I was going to leave. And that was within a few months of actually leaving.
I mean, I relate the events in the book of what caused me to actually walk out for the last time. Uh, I realized that whenever he preached at people that he didn't know what he was talking about half the time, he was just making it up.
Uh, he was, the whole thing was manipulation. These, there was never, um, I don't think there was ever a moment when that was it. It was just like, I'm sure there was the straw that broke the camel's back was the control issue, but it was a lot of things just piled up.
And when I left, I was done with them, but I'm sure that even today, I, some of my behavior is a reflection of how I was molded there.
I, I won't go to a conference. I have nothing against conferences. I hope people go to them and, and get good out of them and enjoy themselves, fellowship, everything else. I ain't interested.
I've had, I, I, I don't even care about a big name preacher of any kind, even, you know, like when I started running in the more reformed Calvinist circles and they're like, Oh, RC Sproul. Oh, James White and all this. And I'm like, okay, well you have fun. I don't care.
Cause I'm, I'm just, I'm kind of burned out on that. You know?
Yeah. The, uh, exactly. It's definitely the, the pandemic epidemic of that world is how big can your name be? How many people can you affect?
And it's a hard part to, to swallow when we begin thinking through that as, as older ministry. Let me say that from me going to house Anderson,
I feel you on the control. Just like every, I mean, I've said several times that going to that college was like, I mean, they didn't treat you like an adult. They treat you like a little girl at summer camp. Yes. Control every move.
The, the, the girls, they can't leave the property unless there's three of them. And, you know, you have to sign all these papers and, and all this stuff. So I definitely feel you on the control aspect.
Yes. And, and to be honest with you, the whole place was fake. It just took me a long time to figure that out. The whole thing was a charade. And, um, you know, when I went through their master's program is he's telling us stuff.
I'm realizing more and more how fake everything is. Like he's, he's big on, um,
you know, like they have parking lot attendance and there's a way that they park the cars.
They park every other space, starting at the road, working their way in, and then go back to the road and fill in those spaces. And the stated reason for that is so that people driving by will think the parking lot is full. No, it projects an image.
There was never to be an empty seat in the choir behind him because didn't want people sitting there looking up and seeing empty seats. It was projecting an image. Everything was projecting an image.
It was just stuff like that, that I was, I would think, man, this is so fake. Well, I've never heard of the, every other road parking. I think that is, wow. I'm blown away right now that that was the reason behind it.
And, uh, you know, I've always, you know, I've noticed that, you know, you gotta have a big choir. They modeled after Adrian Rogers and Charles Stanley, you know, the choir stays up there so that there's this big audience behind him.
Uh, and I hate when people are behind me like that, when I'm preaching, I'm like, get down, get out there with your families. What are you doing sitting back here? Yeah.
So not only are they behind him too, so it looks full, but they are trained in how to respond to the message.
The entire church is trained in how to respond to the message. But especially if you're sitting up on the platform,
you are to say, amen, you are to be looking and nodding. I mean, these are things that were explicitly stated that we were to be doing because we are projecting that we are for everything that he's saying.
So it makes it a more powerful presentation. Yeah. Before we get to our last two questions that we're going to ask today and wrap this up, I do have one question because this question or this thought gets brought up a lot. And I'm going to get your thoughts on it. When you left Longview,
again, your entire culture was wrapped up in Joe Boyd. I think he said his name was the Tennessee Temple grad, Bob Gray, 25 years old. You go to this church.
You've now left everything that you've known for pretty much your entire adult life, your friends, your family. I don't know where your family stood when you left. Did it feel like or did you have this sense that you were on an island by yourself?
And if you did, sort of talk into that a little bit because I felt like that.
Finding Support After Leaving IFB
I know Brett said he's felt like that. And others have said, you know, this island feeling that there was no one else out there for me because I'd left everything is a hard pill to swallow. So I had the support of my parents when I left. They had left before I did.
And they were doing they were on a Navajo mission work in New Mexico.
And so they my dad supported me through some of the roughest times when he was away and I was still there. So when I left, I still had them. And they eventually through my influence, they left the IFB movement also.
But it took I think it took seeing what happened to me to open my dad's eyes a little bit to, you know, this is this is not right. This is not the right way to treat people. This is not the love of Christ.
And so and when I left, I immediately found a church because, like I said, I knew I knew ordinary life before the IFB movement.
And so I found a church and I still had a lot of baggage, but they were a gracious church and they helped me through a lot of that. And so I was blessed in that way.
And it's funny because I I love those people and I love that church. I wouldn't go there now, but that was exactly the church God wanted me to be in, because that's that's where his he and his grace was helping me through these issues and through that largely through that church.
And so, yeah, and so it was about five years after I left or four that I discovered the unofficial Jack Hiles webpage and an unmoderated forum called the Fighting Fundamentalist Forum. 1999 before social media and you could just be anonymously post and argue.
And I was cage stage anti-fundamentalist by that time and just rolled into that and spent hours arguing online. And that's where I eventually started writing my book. Wow. Fighting Fundamentalist has been years since I thought about that.
I spent just a couple, you know, when I got into college, it was 07 when I got the champion. So, you know, social media was rolling out and the Fighting Fundamentalist Forum had began to make its way off the scene.
But I remember going on and typing in a person and then these threads of just comments after comments. And I'm like, what is this?
It was so foreign to me because I was in the IFB, but I wasn't in the House Bob Gray movement of the IFB. It was very IFB light. We had the standards and we had the strictness and the overarching control, but it wasn't near what you've experienced and what Brett experienced.
So I was just so foreign to it. And I'm like scratching my head a little bit like, what is this? Yeah.
So last two questions we want to ask. I'll ask the first one, Brett. You can follow up with the last one and then we'll leave it open to you to say whatever you want, James. What would you say to someone who is starting to question their IFB church bringing?
What would you say to someone that is starting to, you mentioned that questioning, that moment of, you know, what is this?
And so what would you begin to say to someone that is questioning that? And then, and I'll ask the second question.
So I would say, first of all, that if you are in any situation, church or otherwise, where the leadership tells you that you are not allowed to question them. I mean, with the exception of the military, I guess.
Advice for Leaving Fundamentalism
But if you're in a church where the leadership tells you, you don't question me, get out because that's not biblical Christianity. We're to use discernment. There's no one above reproach. There's no one above rebuke.
You read in the book of Galatians that Paul says that he withstood Peter to his face because he was to be blamed. And I don't think that that's quite as bombastic or that happened in quite as bombastic a way as when I initially read it, you know.
But I do think that if Peter can be rebuked, then anybody can be rebuked. So leadership, if you're in a church with leadership like that, get out.
And I know that they, that type of leadership programs you to say, if you leave me, you're leaving God. And I'm here as a witness to tell you, no, you're not. You go find grace and find Christ ministered by a gracious church.
And I wouldn't even begin to tell you which church to go to. Find one that's local where the people are friendly and gracious.
And they won't understand you because they won't, they will find it hard to believe that any church was like the one you're in. But they'll be kind to you and, and they'll be patient with you.
And you may have a whole lot of things to work through to, to try to understand. And that's okay. Take it slow, but don't, don't forsake Christ in his body because they are there for you to help you. Amen.
Well, you, you kind of answered my last question, which was, what advice would you give to those who are looking for a healthy church after leaving the IFB? You know, if you'd like to speaking any more into that, you can.
And then after that, we're just going to kind of leave things open for you.
Is there just anything else you wanted to, wanted to have said? Yeah. Yeah. Just like I said,
find that gracious and loving congregation and they are out there. We were told when I was in the IFB that we were the only ones. And that is such a lie, such a lie. God uses people from across the denominational spectrum.
Well, you're looking at a guy who has hardcore opinions on theology. Okay. And I'm here to tell you, just find a church where Christ is preached and people will love you. And don't feel like you have to be involved. You don't be. There's nothing wrong with leading an ordinary Christian life.
99% of everything God has done through his church has been through ordinary means. It's just people loving each other, loving the people in the community, speaking about their faith, doing good, being gracious. Just find a place like that.
And I promise you, they're not hard to find. May not be the first one you walk into. Everyone, I joke that Baptist Church Planning 101 is, they got mad about the carpet in the foyer and went down the road and started another church. That happens.
But for the most part, it shouldn't be hard to find a congregation of people who will love you. And it's okay to go to a different church. Just, yeah, go. Go and question.
Ask the pastor questions if you can't answer them or doesn't want to answer them or tells you you shouldn't ask. Go to the next place. But find you a preacher, not a man of God, a preacher, a pastor, a shepherd who will shepherd you.
Yeah, that's so great. I was this past week, I preached on Paul's conversion of Acts 9. And, you know, I brought the analogy of Ananias and Barnabas.
Ananias was just an ordinary man serving there in Damascus.
And God told him to go. He didn't go. He didn't find Peter. He didn't find the apostles that were in Jerusalem. He found an ordinary man who loved Jesus,
who loved the church, and said, go to this man who needs to be heard. And then Barnabas, another man who was just an ordinary person, who just so happened to be the son of encouragement, that name there.
And I said, maybe you're an Ananias in here that needs to be someone who just needs to listen to the Lord. Or maybe you're here in your Barnabas that needs to go and encourage someone. He's calling ordinary people. He's not calling you to be this famous person.
He's just wanting ordinary Christians to step out by faith and trust him in our everyday life. Amen. Amen. Any closing final thoughts from you, my friend?
I had one, and it slipped away just a second ago as I was listening to you. I have that problem all the time. Yeah.
It slipped. You may want to, like, edit a little bit right in here. Yeah, I can't find it now. Perfect. Well, James, thank you so much for coming on. You've been an encouragement to me.
You've been an encouragement to, I know, our listeners as they listen to this. And looking forward to cracking open that book when it gets here and looking forward to enjoying hearing some more of your story. And so I can't wait to do that.
Okay, let me, if I can, plug one more time the book and let you know or let your audience know.
People who never grew up IFB who read the book tell me, man, that was the funniest thing I've ever read. And so I know that's easy for me to say because I obviously think that it's a good book and I'm funny.
Closing Remarks and Farewell
But that's what I've been told. So give it a shot, and I think it'll be a blessing to you. Great. I can't wait. And until next time, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. Amen.
Thanks for listening to the 4-Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the 4-Freedom Podcast. 4-Freedom Podcast.

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171. Fundamental Footprints - A Personal Story under Bob Gray Sr - James Spurgeon Interview

5/8/202500:47:08

Fundamental Footprints

Survivor Stories & Testimonies

Finding a Healthy Church

Freedom In The Church

Israel & the Holy Land

Episode Notes

James was a student under Bob Gray in the 80's and 90's and came to share of his experience with the Longview Movement.

His book - www.amazon.com/dp/B0DZV12M4W/ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_cp_apin_dp_94BE7C3C2R3CDGJW2SMS

To Purchase our cigar line go to: 1689cigars.com/collections/4-freedom-cigars

For more info visit our website: 4freedompodcast.com

For Merch visit this site: www.teepublic.com/user/freedom-ministries?utm_source=designer&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Gq_E0abDp_8

Transcript

Podcast Introduction and Welcome
I found my freedom in you I found a joy I can't lose And thank God it's true You wrapped your arms around me And heaven broke through From the moment you found me I found my freedom in you
Welcome to the 4-Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Safrit and Brett Martin.
Well, welcome back to the 4-Freedom Podcast. We're glad to be here with you today. We've got a lot planned for you today. We've got some good stuff, some good material. We've had a lot of good feedback from our last episode over the past week.
A lot of people reaching out. A lot of people calling us.
Wanting to just kind of dig in a little deeper to this subject. And James, that's kind of what we've been dealing with over the past week, isn't it?
Yeah, I would have never thought that doing an episode on Bob Gray Sr.
of Longview Baptist Temple, that this would have been the response. And we've been getting phone calls from all over the world, social media messages. It's been great. It's been great to hear from people. It's been great to just see where people are at. And so we're pivoting our schedule a little bit.
And our schedule is never permanent. But we've got an interview lined up today from the response of this previous episode.
And if you have a story, if you've got something that you want to share, a story that maybe predates the story or even after the time where we interview with James, and you'd like to share your experience, by all means, reach out to us. We'll try to get you on the schedule.
And you can share your time and your story, what that looks like.
But yeah, man, Brett, the firestorm that's coming from this has been great for us. It's been great to hear from these things and to hear from you. And we always appreciate that.
We always appreciate you reaching out to us and looking forward to today's interview. Let's take care of some housekeeping issues. Brett, what do we got coming up in just, I mean, about a month. We're a month away. One month away.
We are one month away from going to the Big D, and I do mean Dallas. And we're going to go there to Dallas, Texas, to the SBC conference.
And we're going to have a good time there. We've already got some meetups scheduled there. If you're going to be in and around Dallas, Texas, between the 7th and 11th of next month in June.
And swing by the SBC conference and see us. You know, even if you're not a Southern Baptist, I think they'll let you in.
I don't know. Just tell them at the door you're at the 4-Freedom Podcast. I'll give you a VIP ticket. They will roll the red carpet out for you. Absolutely.
That's right. That's right. But that's where we're going to be next month. And like I said, if you are going to be near, hit us up. Let us know. Message us on social media. We'd love to meet you. Yeah.
And I'll be there the week before in McKinney. My sister lives in McKinney, so we'll be hanging out with her. I've already got a couple of events lined up to show off the For Freedom cigars
at a lounge there in McKinney, but also just be able to hang out. So if you want to meet up, if you want to be there, maybe you can't be there the week of the convention, but you can be there the week before.
And you're in the area. You want to hang out. Shoot me a message.
Definitely will let you know where I'll be at. And, Brett, one cool thing, we're going to be touring the Dallas Cowboy Stadium. It's one of the best stadiums in America.
And my sister, since she lives just an hour north of Dallas, we can be at the stadium. And so I think it's that Thursday that we'll be down there before the convention that we're going to go down and behind-the-scenes tour,
go in the locker rooms, get to go on the field, get to go in the crow's nest way up top and see the massive stadium.
So I'm super pumped about that for our family to be able to go and do that. You know, I heard that the weather that week is going to be like the Dallas Cowboys. It's going to peak in the 90s.
New Cigar Launch Announcement
Amen. Amen. I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. So speaking of the Four Freedom Cigars, we are, this week, Lord willing, we will be rolling out our Sweet Elder Cigar. We've had some supply chain issues, but we have finalized a cigar that we love, we enjoy.
And so, Lord willing, the entire line of all four cigars will be out. You can get a sampler pack. You can get a single. You can get a five-pack. And then our boxes of 20 will also be out there on our website. Please go by.
We've been getting some great response from that. It's a small way for you to support the show and support what we're doing. And we're excited about this little adventure that we've got.
We'll be taking this to G3 in September and been able to have a booth set up there and talk through what we've got going on.
And we're super excited about that. Me and Brett, Lord willing, will both be there. I know I'll be there. Brett's trying to get his schedule worked out. So another opportunity, September 11th, 12th, and 13th, to be able to be with us and hang out and have a great time. And then, Brett, across the seas, we will go.
Tell us about Israel. Shabbat Shalom. We are going to the Holy Land for Freedom in the Holy Land. We're heading out last of January, 1st of February of next year, 2026.
And we want you to go with us. And I'm telling you, now is the time to go. There are tour groups there. It's safe. We've had talk from people that are over there touring.
And listen, it's the time to go to Israel. And so we want you to go with us. All you need to do is go to our website,
our trip website, which you can find on our social media pages, and put in your registrations. It's $450 for registration to guarantee your spot. The cost for the trip, overall, all in is around $4,500.
You pay that in payments over the next year. And that really is a good price. There are a lot more expensive trips over there. And when I tell you, this is, you know, that guy in Jurassic Park that said, you know, we spared no expense. That's what this company does.
This company spares no expense when they take care of you. It is a first-class trip from beginning to end. And you're never going to regret going. Absolutely.
Can't wait. It's going to be an awesome time. You can also find that information out on our website at 4freedompodcast.com. You can go and check that out there on the Israel 2026 tab.
Interview Introduction with James Spurgeon
We would love for you to join us. And without further ado, we are excited about jumping into this interview today with Mr. James Spurgeon.
And I believe he'll have some enlightening information for you if you've ever been a part of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement. Or if you've ever just wanted to know more about Bob Gray and Longview Baptist Temple. And so let us jump into our episode today. Welcome today.
We are excited to have James Spurgeon with us here today. James is an alumni of Bob Gray in Longview and Texas Baptist Institute there at Texas Baptist Temple. And he also wrote a book called The Texas Baptist Crucible.
And so he's going to be sharing his story today. I want to share the back page of his book. You can find it on Amazon. We'll put the link in there as well. But he wants to share his story today and where he's been at.
But this is the back page. It says, it's a true story of one young man's experience in fundamentalist churches and Baptist Bible colleges in the 80s and early 90s. As he was been trained for ministry. Enter a bizarre world that is often dark, sometimes funny, but always entertaining.
It'll keep you turning pages until the very end. He describes the totalitarianism state in which he lived, the absurd rules by which he lived, and the unreasonable, chaotic cast of characters who ruled over him.
And he does so with candor and humor. At the same time, he exposes what was and is wrong with the particular brand of independent Baptist fundamentalism that he lived through and came out of by simply making a record of his own experience.
If you've ever been hurt or abused in church or abusive ministers in cult-like settings, you will be encouraged by this book.
And my favorite part of the whole back is the keynote. He says, if you've read 1984, I lived it.
Only this story, by God's grace, doesn't end with my loving big brother. In this story,
big brother doesn't have the last word. So, James, welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us just a little bit about yourself, your background, where you're from, and what you're doing now. So, I'm a hospice chaplain, full-time.
I am a bivocational minister, so I'm a pastor of a little place called Winsboro Reformed Church in Winsboro, Texas.
I preach to 30 or 40 people there every week. I re-preach all my sermons in nursing homes and assisted living during the week, and I tell people that I have the greatest job in the world. I love where God has me.
I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. And through all of the bizarre twists and turns that God and His providence put me through, I am exactly where He wants me to be.
But part of that, I think, is to help and encourage others who are hurt by, you know, the type of fundamentalist ministry that I came up through. I was born in Indiana,
had lived in Colorado and California by the time I was two. My parents then, I got saved in the Bellflower Missionary Baptist Church, Bellflower, California, when I was 10 in 1979. Some people that lived up the street from us were, they were originally from Arkansas.
And so they went to, it was an ABA church. I don't know if you're familiar with the American Baptist Association. That's where I got saved and baptized. And then my family moved to West Tennessee. And we went to another ABA church in Bonniver, Tennessee until I was probably 17.
And then through the influence of my aunt, my dad's sister, he started receiving the story of the Lord newspaper.
And he got all fired up about, you know, these people were out there doing something for God. Our little church wasn't doing anything for God. And so we wound up changing churches and going to a little independent Baptist church in Jackson, Tennessee, pastored by a very young Tennessee Temple graduate.
And they had a Christian school and they had a bus ministry and they had all the standards. And so I didn't, I wasn't really into that. You know, I was, I was a teenager in the eighties. I had long hair.
I had, you know, all the, went to public high school. And it was funny because when we started going to that church and I was known as a nerdy, goody two shoes kid at public high school, I was immediately a rebel when I walked through the doors of the independent Baptist church.
And what was funny is that that made me attractive to every teenager there.
They just wanted like, wow, somebody from the outside world is here. I look back at that and laugh. But that's how I got, kind of got into fundamentalism, independent fundamental Baptist. Love it.
Now I'm sure some of our listeners are asking the question, are you the great, great grandson of Charles Haddon Spurgeon? Your last name is Spurgeon and you are reforms.
We know Spurgeon was reformed. Is this part of the culture that you're in or do you know that? Well, I'm not directly related to him. I tell people that I'm from the other side of the family, the other Spurgeons.
I'm descended from Spurgeons who came out of North Georgia and East Tennessee who are basically hillbillies. And, but I became aware after I left fundamentalism of Charles Spurgeon, read a ton of his stuff. I love, I refer to him as Uncle Chuck. I don't think he would have liked that.
But people ask me about him and say, oh, I love Uncle Chuck. But no, I'm not directly related. James, I hate you because you stole my joke. Because I literally have written down on my post-it note, Uncle Charles.
I was about to ask him about Uncle Charles and you beat me to it. Let me say, though, that I have a lot of respect for hospice chaplains.
It's a calling and it is a wonderful ministry. I mean, you get to just go around ministering to people. And so I love that.
I want to say that my pastor was from Tennessee Temple, graduated Tennessee Temple under Lee Robertson as well.
But, you know, you kind of told us about how you kind of first dipped your toe into, you know, the IFB movement. I want to talk about your time in the IFB. When you got in there, what initially attracted you to it?
What kind of made you say, okay, man, this is awesome. Let's get involved in this thing. What attracted you to the whole movement?
So a lot of pressure was put on me to finish high school at the Christian school. And I only had one year of high school left. I didn't want to do it. They were not accredited. It was an A.C.E. school. And I finally...
What happened was we had a revival with our preacher. I announced it for months ahead of time.
We were having Joe Boyd and a bunch of red hot on fire for God preacher boys. We're going to be coming through. And, of course, our family hosted two of them for the week that he was there preaching.
I don't know how familiar you are with Joe Boyd and all that. I wound up... I was called to preach under Joe Boyd ministry.
To this day, I believe that call is the most genuine thing that's ever happened to me. I knew that God was calling me to preach. I went up to Joe Boyd one night. And this is after I had been talked into going with them as a Joe Boyd preacher boy. Like that week.
I didn't know until later that those guys got like bonus tuition money for recruiting me.
You know, I just thought, man, they want me to go. I'm going to go. Like, and I just bought in because I sincerely...
I love God. I love the scriptures. I've never... I never thought of myself as a rebel. Quote, unquote, rebel.
And I felt like this was God's calling on my life. I asked... I went up to Joe Boyd one night and said, how does somebody know if they're called to preach? And he said, well...
Well, Jim, do you sing? Do you sing specials in church? No, sir, I don't. Well, he ain't calling you to sing then, is he? And that was basically...
Okay. I said, well, I guess I'm giving my life to be, you know, surrendering to preach as it was known. And so that was my calling and entrance into ministry.
I became a Joe Boyd preacher boy. That was between my junior and senior year of high school. And so, obviously, then it was decided I was going to Christian school. And that I was going to a fundamentalist Bible college.
Before then, because they're the only ones doing anything for God. Amen. So, I mean, before then, I would have probably wound up somewhere like Memphis State University, maybe Mississippi State, somewhere like that. Might have gone local. Excellent Southern Baptist school in Jackson,
Tennessee. That I look back and think, why didn't I just go there?
You know, and stay home. But God knows better than we do.
And so, I finished out my senior year of high school at Bethel Christian Academy, Jackson, Tennessee. It's no longer there. The church is no longer there.
And wound up at Texas Baptist College in Longview, Texas, because Bob Gray came through. Again, the influence of that young pastor from Tennessee Temple University.
And I love the guy. Brother Tim is a great guy. Still is. Still would tell you he's a fundamentalist. And it's people like him. I don't broad brush the whole movement as cultic.
But I do kind of view it as fringe Christianity. Does that make sense? Yes, sir. Absolutely. Yeah. But that's how I wound up after I graduated high school. I graduated one.
I was the only one that had a whole ceremony for me. I tell people I have a high school reunion every year.
And everybody shows. You're a valedictorian and class president and all of it. All wrapped together. Yes. Captain of the basketball team. I was everything. I love it. That's awesome. Yeah.
So. I'm not familiar with Joe Boyd. Right. I've never heard that name, actually. I think Brett may be. So. Joe. Joe Boyd. I heard Joe Boyd preach probably more than anybody else. Because Wendell Evans loved Joe Boyd.
And Wendell Evans would say, I've got three heroes in my life. And he would listen to all. I think Jack Howell was one. I forget who the second one was. But then the third one was Joe Boyd.
And man, I heard Joe Boyd preach a lot. He would always come. He would talk to the preacher boys. So, yes.
I know Joe Boyd a lot. And he was. He was a card. He was a cut up. He was hilarious.
Yes. And he was. He was. I really liked him. Yeah. I'll say this for him. He was not mean. I run across a lot of meanness in fundamentalism. But he was not mean. Yeah.
He can be blunt sometimes. But he. I feel like he really. He loved people. And that was rare. Absolutely. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so you. We got to this point where you went to Longview. You went to Texas Bible Institute. Texas Baptist College.
And you were able to be there under Bob Gray. And under the training. And this is sort of where our paths sort of aligned.
Because, you know, me and Brett were not as familiar with Bob Gray. I've got a couple of connections that came from Bob Gray to Champion, where I went to college at. And you reached out to us. And you said, hey, I've been a part of it.
Experiences in Fundamentalism
But I've wrote a book. I'd like to, you know, possibly share some story. And so we brought this into,
you know, we've had tons of response from this Bob Gray episode that we came out with. Missionaries from all across the world really have reached out to me and messaged us. And I've been getting messages on social media and Facebook. And one guy got my phone number and called me.
And I got a phone call from the other side of the world. I'm not going to mention where. But and so we talked for a little while.
And so we felt it was important to maybe sort of we were going to go ahead and push through and talk about a couple other issues. But because this issue came up and we didn't realize it was going to cause, you know, sort of a firestorm of social media, people talking about this.
We thought maybe let's pause for a moment. Let's take some interviews and talk through some some personal stories, some personal attributes of what had happened. And so why don't you just describe your experience at Longview under Bob Gray and sort of the experience at Longview Baptist,
the culture, the culture that you were in, the leadership style.
I know in the back of the book, you said that totalitarian leadership and then how the environment sort of shaped your view of ministry and what that looks like.
So I got I was able to ease into Longview Baptist Temple and and Texas Baptist College because my my parents moved with me to Longview and my dad enrolled in the college the same time I did.
And the first year he took mostly like night courses. And so I was there during the day. I was working all night at a grocery store, warehouse grocery store.
He was working during the day. We didn't take a lot of the same classes, but we took a few of the same class. He graduated and left.
And that's when I went into the dorms and that's when I really got exposed to it.
I saw a lot of it while I was living with my parents and going to school.
But when I moved into the dorm is when it was just it's like if you've ever been in a jail, I used to preach in a jail every Friday and the door closes behind you and you know you're there. Right.
And that's what it felt like moving into the dorms at Texas Baptist College because it was every aspect of your life was controlled and you were taught to be open to leadership about everything. What are you hiding? If you're trying to hide something, you must have sin.
Anything you did that was a little bit different was like must be sin in your life. It was a it's bizarre.
As I mentioned to you or as I before we started recording, I've been out of this so long. In fact, I wrote my book in between ninety nine and two thousand four when all these memories were still fresh.
I decided to republish it and I went back. And as I'm editing it, I'm beginning chapters that I can't remember how they end. And I got sucked in and I was like, wow, is an emotional roller coaster for me just reading the book again and editing and getting it ready for publication.
So that's that place is different for people who don't know fundamentalism.
The stories are hard to believe. A couple of people from my church have read the book and they're like, man, you got to be making this stuff up.
And I'm like, I promise you, I'm not. This is the way it was. This is the way it still is, I'm sure. In some places. I've rambled. I can't remember your question now. No, you're good.
So tell us about the the specifics of the church culture, the leadership style, the the experience that you had while you're there.
I know that was oppressive as far as the the door in the college. But what was it like specifically being under Bob Gray and working with him and doing things around him?
Bob Gray is the king or was he's no longer there. Bob Gray was the king. What he said ruled. You did not question him. No one who worked for him questioned him. He's surrounded by yes men.
He told us that when you go to hire people, staff, the number one thing that he looks for is loyalty.
That's it. He doesn't look for soul winners. He doesn't look for all these other things. Loyalty.
He said, you can you find somebody loyal. You can mold them into what you want them to be. And that's what he looked for. He looked for people he could rule, people he could control.
And the church membership. So I can't remember what they what they claimed as numbers because they you know how the numbers go. I think in reality there were probably 800 to 1,000 members. And I would guess that of those maybe.
20 to 30 at the most were actually from Longview. All the rest had moved there from out of state to be a part of that great soul winning church.
So the church really was promoted by his Monday, Tuesday preaching around the country and the college getting people to move to the church, come to the college.
People would come to the college and just roll out and just stay at the church and be members of the church forever. And so the church wasn't even really from Longview.
People in Longview looked at it like it was a bizarre place. I remember I first got hired at the grocery store.
I'm 18. I don't know anything. And one of the guys who worked with me says, you're from that church that that made is the reason why we don't have MTV on cable.
They blamed the church for that for like because they rallied against having MTV on the cable or whatever it was.
People in the community look at it like it's a cult. There's like rumors that go around about it. Is it true? They lock the doors once the service starts and they have all these these things that go around. It's pretty funny.
But, yeah, the church is like a foreign entity in Longview. Those people aren't from Longview. Wow. That's an interesting thought.
You know, I had similar to that when I was at Gospel Lighting Champion because a lot of it was, you know, transplant people that came in. And, you know, Eric was from the area, but there were some changes.
There were some things that were different and people from the community saw this church that was there but wasn't really there for the community.
And now the culture has changed a lot since then, and they've done things that I believe have been good. But there is still that environment that sometimes can breed that.
And I want to ask you just to follow up with that of how do you think the environment of Longview and Bob Gray, how did that shape your view of ministry and the gospel when you initially left and,
Transitioning from Longview Baptist
you know, you're called to be a pastor? I'm assuming you went and you pastored or started a church after you had graduated. And so what did you take away from Longview that stuck with you in ministry until eventually we'll talk about you leaving the ministry,
leaving the IFB movement and how that changed? So the initial part, how did that influence you? So I was run out. I was eventually left on bad terms.
I left and as far as they were concerned, I was leaving God forever. But when I left Longview Baptist Temple, I left Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement.
I knew whatever I was going to be, it was not that. And it put me in a place to question everything. Where I wound up was a little Baptist church, maybe about an hour away from Longview in Mineola, Texas. And there were gracious people there.
And they were, I'm sure they looked at me as odd.
I showed up for church the first time in a suit and tie and nobody there had a suit and tie on. I was a fish out of water for a long time there, but the pastor was very gracious. The pastor hired me to do Spanish ministry at his church,
sent me to Costa Rica to learn Spanish. I came back and started preaching in Spanish and I still had a lot of fundamentalism in me. But honestly, it was like, that's where things began to come off of me because I was willing to question everything.
So I remember coming back from having learned Spanish and picking up Dennis Coral's book on King James onlyism and reading it and thinking, this guy doesn't have, he doesn't even understand how languages work. It was just like, this is ridiculous.
And so I was like, that dropped off. There were other things that just came off a little bit at a time. I remember the first time I bought a Bible that was not King James. I sneaked into the Bible bookstore in Tyler,
Texas, looking around like I was a Baptist sneaking into a liquor store. And I went in there and got, I had done research. I got a New American Standard and big black leather New American Standard.
The church that I was at was still kind of King James only, not rabid King James only, but kind of King James only. So in my office, I had a desk drawer, the middle drawer that you pull out. It's got pens and stuff in it.
And I had that Bible opened up in that drawer.
And so I would just read it. I would sit there with the drawer open and read.
I read the entire New American Standard. And if anybody walked into the office, I would just push the door or the push the, yeah, the door closed to the, to my desk, push the Bible back up under my desk, you know, talk to whatever. When they left, I'd pull it back out.
It's just hilarious to me that I was sneaking to read the Bible. That's hilarious.
Well, let me ask you, what was, what was like the straw that broke the camel's back? What was the thing that's like, okay, this happened, I'm out, I'm gone. And then once you left, what was the hardest part of leaving?
So the, I guess the, the straw that broke the camel's back for me was, um, the control. It just became ridiculous to me that at the age of 25, they wanted to completely control my finances. They wanted to, uh,
they could tell me whether I could date or not, or who I could or couldn't date.
And it just struck me one day how ridiculous that was that anybody would even want to have that much control over someone else's life.
And that's when I knew I was going to leave. And that was within a few months of actually leaving.
I mean, I relate the events in the book of what caused me to actually walk out for the last time. Uh, I realized that whenever he preached at people that he didn't know what he was talking about half the time, he was just making it up.
Uh, he was, the whole thing was manipulation. These, there was never, um, I don't think there was ever a moment when that was it. It was just like, I'm sure there was the straw that broke the camel's back was the control issue, but it was a lot of things just piled up.
And when I left, I was done with them, but I'm sure that even today, I, some of my behavior is a reflection of how I was molded there.
I, I won't go to a conference. I have nothing against conferences. I hope people go to them and, and get good out of them and enjoy themselves, fellowship, everything else. I ain't interested.
I've had, I, I, I don't even care about a big name preacher of any kind, even, you know, like when I started running in the more reformed Calvinist circles and they're like, Oh, RC Sproul. Oh, James White and all this. And I'm like, okay, well you have fun. I don't care.
Cause I'm, I'm just, I'm kind of burned out on that. You know?
Yeah. The, uh, exactly. It's definitely the, the pandemic epidemic of that world is how big can your name be? How many people can you affect?
And it's a hard part to, to swallow when we begin thinking through that as, as older ministry. Let me say that from me going to house Anderson,
I feel you on the control. Just like every, I mean, I've said several times that going to that college was like, I mean, they didn't treat you like an adult. They treat you like a little girl at summer camp. Yes. Control every move.
The, the, the girls, they can't leave the property unless there's three of them. And, you know, you have to sign all these papers and, and all this stuff. So I definitely feel you on the control aspect.
Yes. And, and to be honest with you, the whole place was fake. It just took me a long time to figure that out. The whole thing was a charade. And, um, you know, when I went through their master's program is he's telling us stuff.
I'm realizing more and more how fake everything is. Like he's, he's big on, um,
you know, like they have parking lot attendance and there's a way that they park the cars.
They park every other space, starting at the road, working their way in, and then go back to the road and fill in those spaces. And the stated reason for that is so that people driving by will think the parking lot is full. No, it projects an image.
There was never to be an empty seat in the choir behind him because didn't want people sitting there looking up and seeing empty seats. It was projecting an image. Everything was projecting an image.
It was just stuff like that, that I was, I would think, man, this is so fake. Well, I've never heard of the, every other road parking. I think that is, wow. I'm blown away right now that that was the reason behind it.
And, uh, you know, I've always, you know, I've noticed that, you know, you gotta have a big choir. They modeled after Adrian Rogers and Charles Stanley, you know, the choir stays up there so that there's this big audience behind him.
Uh, and I hate when people are behind me like that, when I'm preaching, I'm like, get down, get out there with your families. What are you doing sitting back here? Yeah.
So not only are they behind him too, so it looks full, but they are trained in how to respond to the message.
The entire church is trained in how to respond to the message. But especially if you're sitting up on the platform,
you are to say, amen, you are to be looking and nodding. I mean, these are things that were explicitly stated that we were to be doing because we are projecting that we are for everything that he's saying.
So it makes it a more powerful presentation. Yeah. Before we get to our last two questions that we're going to ask today and wrap this up, I do have one question because this question or this thought gets brought up a lot. And I'm going to get your thoughts on it. When you left Longview,
again, your entire culture was wrapped up in Joe Boyd. I think he said his name was the Tennessee Temple grad, Bob Gray, 25 years old. You go to this church.
You've now left everything that you've known for pretty much your entire adult life, your friends, your family. I don't know where your family stood when you left. Did it feel like or did you have this sense that you were on an island by yourself?
And if you did, sort of talk into that a little bit because I felt like that.
Finding Support After Leaving IFB
I know Brett said he's felt like that. And others have said, you know, this island feeling that there was no one else out there for me because I'd left everything is a hard pill to swallow. So I had the support of my parents when I left. They had left before I did.
And they were doing they were on a Navajo mission work in New Mexico.
And so they my dad supported me through some of the roughest times when he was away and I was still there. So when I left, I still had them. And they eventually through my influence, they left the IFB movement also.
But it took I think it took seeing what happened to me to open my dad's eyes a little bit to, you know, this is this is not right. This is not the right way to treat people. This is not the love of Christ.
And so and when I left, I immediately found a church because, like I said, I knew I knew ordinary life before the IFB movement.
And so I found a church and I still had a lot of baggage, but they were a gracious church and they helped me through a lot of that. And so I was blessed in that way.
And it's funny because I I love those people and I love that church. I wouldn't go there now, but that was exactly the church God wanted me to be in, because that's that's where his he and his grace was helping me through these issues and through that largely through that church.
And so, yeah, and so it was about five years after I left or four that I discovered the unofficial Jack Hiles webpage and an unmoderated forum called the Fighting Fundamentalist Forum. 1999 before social media and you could just be anonymously post and argue.
And I was cage stage anti-fundamentalist by that time and just rolled into that and spent hours arguing online. And that's where I eventually started writing my book. Wow. Fighting Fundamentalist has been years since I thought about that.
I spent just a couple, you know, when I got into college, it was 07 when I got the champion. So, you know, social media was rolling out and the Fighting Fundamentalist Forum had began to make its way off the scene.
But I remember going on and typing in a person and then these threads of just comments after comments. And I'm like, what is this?
It was so foreign to me because I was in the IFB, but I wasn't in the House Bob Gray movement of the IFB. It was very IFB light. We had the standards and we had the strictness and the overarching control, but it wasn't near what you've experienced and what Brett experienced.
So I was just so foreign to it. And I'm like scratching my head a little bit like, what is this? Yeah.
So last two questions we want to ask. I'll ask the first one, Brett. You can follow up with the last one and then we'll leave it open to you to say whatever you want, James. What would you say to someone who is starting to question their IFB church bringing?
What would you say to someone that is starting to, you mentioned that questioning, that moment of, you know, what is this?
And so what would you begin to say to someone that is questioning that? And then, and I'll ask the second question.
So I would say, first of all, that if you are in any situation, church or otherwise, where the leadership tells you that you are not allowed to question them. I mean, with the exception of the military, I guess.
Advice for Leaving Fundamentalism
But if you're in a church where the leadership tells you, you don't question me, get out because that's not biblical Christianity. We're to use discernment. There's no one above reproach. There's no one above rebuke.
You read in the book of Galatians that Paul says that he withstood Peter to his face because he was to be blamed. And I don't think that that's quite as bombastic or that happened in quite as bombastic a way as when I initially read it, you know.
But I do think that if Peter can be rebuked, then anybody can be rebuked. So leadership, if you're in a church with leadership like that, get out.
And I know that they, that type of leadership programs you to say, if you leave me, you're leaving God. And I'm here as a witness to tell you, no, you're not. You go find grace and find Christ ministered by a gracious church.
And I wouldn't even begin to tell you which church to go to. Find one that's local where the people are friendly and gracious.
And they won't understand you because they won't, they will find it hard to believe that any church was like the one you're in. But they'll be kind to you and, and they'll be patient with you.
And you may have a whole lot of things to work through to, to try to understand. And that's okay. Take it slow, but don't, don't forsake Christ in his body because they are there for you to help you. Amen.
Well, you, you kind of answered my last question, which was, what advice would you give to those who are looking for a healthy church after leaving the IFB? You know, if you'd like to speaking any more into that, you can.
And then after that, we're just going to kind of leave things open for you.
Is there just anything else you wanted to, wanted to have said? Yeah. Yeah. Just like I said,
find that gracious and loving congregation and they are out there. We were told when I was in the IFB that we were the only ones. And that is such a lie, such a lie. God uses people from across the denominational spectrum.
Well, you're looking at a guy who has hardcore opinions on theology. Okay. And I'm here to tell you, just find a church where Christ is preached and people will love you. And don't feel like you have to be involved. You don't be. There's nothing wrong with leading an ordinary Christian life.
99% of everything God has done through his church has been through ordinary means. It's just people loving each other, loving the people in the community, speaking about their faith, doing good, being gracious. Just find a place like that.
And I promise you, they're not hard to find. May not be the first one you walk into. Everyone, I joke that Baptist Church Planning 101 is, they got mad about the carpet in the foyer and went down the road and started another church. That happens.
But for the most part, it shouldn't be hard to find a congregation of people who will love you. And it's okay to go to a different church. Just, yeah, go. Go and question.
Ask the pastor questions if you can't answer them or doesn't want to answer them or tells you you shouldn't ask. Go to the next place. But find you a preacher, not a man of God, a preacher, a pastor, a shepherd who will shepherd you.
Yeah, that's so great. I was this past week, I preached on Paul's conversion of Acts 9. And, you know, I brought the analogy of Ananias and Barnabas.
Ananias was just an ordinary man serving there in Damascus.
And God told him to go. He didn't go. He didn't find Peter. He didn't find the apostles that were in Jerusalem. He found an ordinary man who loved Jesus,
who loved the church, and said, go to this man who needs to be heard. And then Barnabas, another man who was just an ordinary person, who just so happened to be the son of encouragement, that name there.
And I said, maybe you're an Ananias in here that needs to be someone who just needs to listen to the Lord. Or maybe you're here in your Barnabas that needs to go and encourage someone. He's calling ordinary people. He's not calling you to be this famous person.
He's just wanting ordinary Christians to step out by faith and trust him in our everyday life. Amen. Amen. Any closing final thoughts from you, my friend?
I had one, and it slipped away just a second ago as I was listening to you. I have that problem all the time. Yeah.
It slipped. You may want to, like, edit a little bit right in here. Yeah, I can't find it now. Perfect. Well, James, thank you so much for coming on. You've been an encouragement to me.
You've been an encouragement to, I know, our listeners as they listen to this. And looking forward to cracking open that book when it gets here and looking forward to enjoying hearing some more of your story. And so I can't wait to do that.
Okay, let me, if I can, plug one more time the book and let you know or let your audience know.
People who never grew up IFB who read the book tell me, man, that was the funniest thing I've ever read. And so I know that's easy for me to say because I obviously think that it's a good book and I'm funny.
Closing Remarks and Farewell
But that's what I've been told. So give it a shot, and I think it'll be a blessing to you. Great. I can't wait. And until next time, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. Amen.
Thanks for listening to the 4-Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the 4-Freedom Podcast. 4-Freedom Podcast.

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Episode Notes

Transcript

Podcast Introduction and Welcome

New Cigar Launch Announcement

Interview Introduction with James Spurgeon

Experiences in Fundamentalism

Transitioning from Longview Baptist

Finding Support After Leaving IFB

Advice for Leaving Fundamentalism

Closing Remarks and Farewell

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Episode Notes

Transcript

Podcast Introduction and Welcome

New Cigar Launch Announcement

Interview Introduction with James Spurgeon

Experiences in Fundamentalism

Transitioning from Longview Baptist

Finding Support After Leaving IFB

Advice for Leaving Fundamentalism

Closing Remarks and Farewell

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