New Members Class Part 1

The Purpose and History of Sunnyside Baptist Church

And there would be a benefit to folks who maybe can't come to every session or who maybe later on would like to view them as part of learning about Sunnyside. And I think about becoming members and wanted to do it in Collaboration with my normal Sunday school class so that we can get some context and perspective from folks who've been members here for much longer than I have so.

And it's a little odd. I feel The least qualified among the elders to lead this class because I've been here The fewest amount of years or so, but we'll see how it goes. And I expect Megan and Ryan and Haley to correct me When I get details wrong.

So you joined I suppose before October 10th 2004. Because that's when the I've noticed the notation in the bylaws when they put the class together. So ah, so good you get to have a class.

Benefit.

Very good. Maybe we'll all learn something new. Let's begin with a word of prayer father. I thank you so much for gathering us together this morning. I pray that she would bless our time as we think about the meaning of a local church and The importance of our joining together in in covenant Commitment and what I pray that you would help us to grow closer to Christ and closer to one another.

We pray these things for his sake. Amen. Okay, well there's a few documents and I'm sure we haven't passed them all out yet. Ryan if you could help me out just a.

Little bit.

I know I've got David and the houries covered. But if one copy of each of these for you three back there and then if anyone else comes in if you could just kind of make sure that they get the documents now what we have in front of us is a definition of the local church.

That we can reference we can come back to kind of as a go-to page when we need to answer some questions. We also have a Copy of two particular pages front and back from the bylaws that talk about membership in particular.

It's going to be a helpful Guide for our class for this in the coming weeks on the very back of the two-page handout. It'll say page 14 of 24 on the bottom and you'll see a Sunnyside membership class course outline that we're going to be following over the next few sessions.

Now, I've I've already misspoken and said it's going to be three weeks long and it may end up being four weeks. But I want to aim for as most efficiency as I can and we'll see where we end up and then for David and the houries.

I've also handed out one of these Mounts and Megan have you got one of these before we're down to one left in the office. And so I'll ask Marsha to maybe Make some more see if we can. I don't know if we still have the materials too, but I think we do but in About 15 years ago somebody put together the 50th Anniversary history of Sunnyside Baptist Church so we can reference that a little bit.

Sunnyside’s History and Early Development

Okay, that's to get us started. We're supposed to talk about the history of Sunnyside which let's talk about our church polity. How are we organized? How do we go about doing things? We're also going to talk about the threefold purpose of the church something that every bulletin references on the front.

Anybody if you want to quote our threefold purpose. Very good. Glorify God build up the body evangelize the lost. And we'll also take a look at our doctrine our statement of faith. And talk about our ministries and special meetings.

So that's right there on your outline. That's what we're headed today. So what is Sunnyside like? Yeah, what is it? Like what is what is our church like? It's a lot like a family I would say and that's been my experience on my wife's experience here.

It feels a whole lot like a family. I always found it interesting as I got to know people here at Sunnyside. From how folks would drive in from all these different Quadrants of Oklahoma City about 20 of our membership lives somewhere close to the church but everybody else lives here and there and everywhere and the connections that have been made over the years because of Ministries like CHA and other things we'll talk about.

These bonds have been made and the folks just stick together. And so we've very much it feels like a large family now as far as the history of Sunnyside and I've read through this probably three or four times and Learned a few things.

Noticed a few more things every time I've read it. I've also talked to some of our charter members and the members who have been here almost exactly from the beginning and so I've learned a few things about the history and I've been told a lot about the good old days.

Ever since I've been here. So hopefully I have something to share about that. But Sunnyside Baptist Church was Planted on this property. We own about three quarters of the of the block. There's some houses.

My orientation is always very terrible. So there's some houses. That way that we don't own but the two houses over here behind the church the missionary houses and then everything on this side of the block is property of the church and Part of it back there was donated by somebody and I forget their name but I found I was going through the deeds the other day and Kind of compiling little bits and pieces of the history and somebody noted it at the property back here.

To the to the Baptist General Baptist Convention of Oklahoma and then all the rest of it was just property that the Baptist Association Southern Baptist wanted to start a church in this area.

And.

So the the money that was gathered together part of the money was gathered together to purchase this property and to start this church was gathered together from vacation Bible schools throughout, Oklahoma.

That children bringing in their nickels and dimes to VBS and of course VBS was two weeks long and three hours in the morning in the good old days and and. And so and they had very much like church every single day and and they gave offerings back then so that's part of our background.

It was in June 22nd 1952 that the church was constituted. And it was in September that they had a groundbreaking ceremony to begin to put some things together. The parking lot used to be a field and that's where they met originally to have their initial church service and They built a small structure.

Kind of a pavilion to help them stay out of the elements and they had a wood heated stove in it. And when it got too cold They just gathered around the wood heating stove for a prayer and an offering and they all went home.

And that's the kind of humble beginnings of this church. W .E. Creswell was the first pastor and he pastored somewhere around five years. The list is in here and W .E. Creswell was actually the pastor of Now somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

I think Central Baptist Church in downtown and they were doing some Improvements and they were putting in a highway and it was going to split up. The neighborhood and certain people who went to the church wouldn't be able to get to it easily anymore.

And it was going to be very disruptive for this community-based Neighborhood church and some of them wanted to continue on even though and some of them said we need To plant a new church and those who wanted to plant a new church went with Dr. Creswell and I don't know if he was a doctor or not, but W .E. Creswell and they came Here to plant this church and the rest stayed and that church continued as well.

The.

Second pastor was Harry Boydston who pastored for just a few years before his brother Emmett Boydston Pastored for five years and then left for work in California. And then we had a brief pastored of Jack James and then Harry Boydston came back and pastored on direct ministry from 1966 to 1996.

He's very much as the definitive pastor of Sunnyside Baptist Church and Anything that gets compared present is always compared to when when when Harry Boydston was here. And so he's just kind of the defining landmark of the history of the church.

Now the history says he was here to 2001. Well from 96 2001. He was pastor emeritus. Which I don't really know what a pastor emeritus does.

And.

But he was not the the go-to man in those years, but he was still around. And then Jack Renfro and you'll see in your 50th anniversary that Jack Renfro is still pastor from 1977, which is inaccurate.

Actually Jack Renfro started pastoring in 1996 and taking over from his father-in-law Harry Boydston and Co-pastored with Harry Boydston's son for a year and then Jack Renfro continued on from 1997 to for quite a few years.

In about ten years in 2007 Jack Renfro left for Colorado and I was looking for a job and there was some pastoral needs in the church and There was president of family the Smith family Ken and Cheryl Smith and their children and Ken Smith had some experience in pastoral ministry and he really stepped up to the plate and began to do things in the absence of a pastor and was very ministerial In in helping the church and as the story it was related to me.

The church kind of looked around and said well, he's doing the work of a pastor. Let's call him to be pastor. Which he said that he did with somewhat of a fear and trepidation. As he knew what it took to become a pat to be a pastor of a church.

And so he served faithfully for the ground almost seven years and Then he and Cheryl left to go take care of Cheryl's parents who were in very poor health and very needy up in, Illinois. And they left and were there for 18 by 18 months I think and were really instrumental in helping her parents and doing everything they could To be of help to them in that interim time Sunnyside Baptist Church found itself in a very unique position having to look for a pastor that wasn't directly related to The church body as you can see from the from the history Harry Boyd soon and Jack James perhaps were the last ones that they had to find who weren't directly perhaps connected.

But since then it was you know It's Harry Boyd's and his brother Emmett and then Harry Boyd stood and there was Jack Renfrow his son-in-law and Ken and Cheryl were already members here at the church.

And so everything was very much in-house. And so the elders of Sunnyside.

Were.

Set up for success by Ken as he kind of helped them get things ready to go and. And so they they labored to find a new pastor and God Saw fit to bring myself and my family here and we've been here since July 1st of 2014.

So I know there's probably some really important parts of the history that I'm missing. One of them would be. CHA Christian Heritage Academy was started in 1972.

Here.

The school was started it was to be a unique kind of school not only because it was a Christian school, but also in the way that they structured the curriculum and the way the style in which they went about educating the kids.

And they really wanted to stress the connection between Christianity and the founding of the nation and the fact that We're a republic if we can keep it.

And.

Our government was designed for a moral and religious people and not for anyone else. And so how do you you know? How do you be good citizens of the United States by being good Christians and being involved?

And that was really the focus of CHA and Not the very first but.

It's.

Basically the first Headmaster was Ralph Bullard who Ralph and Starling are still members here still faithful here and He became the headmaster and Shirley Wigley one of our Elderly ladies charter member of the church was also the secretary for the school.

Really helped. Ralph says she's the one who started the school. She's the one who got us got it started. And Quentin Hall who was sitting over here? Just he was on the board that called Ralph to be to be the headmaster of the school and so there's a lot of connections between us and CHA.

The reason why we have so many classrooms everywhere and Facilities here and there is because we there was a school here for quite a few years. But my brother-in-law came here during some of his elementary and my my wife was in preschool going to CHA Just a little bit and my cousin Emily graduated from CHA.

And.

There's a lot of good that's happened now. CHA grew out of the capacity that the facilities here could afford and. And after that Sunnyside still had a very good connection with CHA. Five of the nine members of the board were Sunnyside folks and that stayed for a while and then it was three out of the nine and now it's.

I don't know if any of them are. But they certainly outgrew us and they you know, they're they're doing great. We used to be called the supporting church now. We're the founding church. Our role with CHA is one of legacy and memory.

More than anything else we do have some folks who are still teaching there serving there. A couple of our Youth still go to school there so we still have those connections and it's. It's I think it's overall.

It's a good relationship, even though it's not as strong today as it was in previous.

Decades I.

Suppose the other bit of information we have to cover is why we have the name Sunnyside. Legends abound about why we're called Sunnyside Baptist Church. I've heard a variety of tales. I Don't know if anyone knows for sure.

It's something something been lost, but it's fun to trace the myths. One of them was that The church was planted on the sunny side of the street. Why might that be so. I believe there was an apple orchard in the area and Perhaps the orchard was on one side and the field was on the other and so it was the sunny side Of the street.

It wasn't in the shade. Perhaps that was emphasized by the fact that the first meeting People left afflicted by severe sunburn. And perhaps that contributed to the name and I was also informed by some of the elderly folks who resent that kind of Unspiritual origin of the name that Sunnyside refers to the joy that was in the hearts of the people as they started the church so I'll leave it to you to Poke through the details.

This is a great little document. I hope that you will take the time to to read it. And if anything else you can find out what folks 15 and a half years ago thought about the church. And then you can compare to it how things are going now.

Church Polity and Elder-Led Government

So there's the history any questions about the history of Sunnyside Baptist Church, okay something else I'm forgetting. When Jack Renfro was Pastor the church ceased being a Southern Baptist Church and became unaffiliated.

This was due mostly to the fact that Sunnyside had hardly ever Contributed funds to the.

The.

Southern Baptist Convention or the local Baptist Association that at one point there was a percentage that was being given which is traditional for Southern Baptist Church about 10 and then I got reduced to a hundred dollars a month and then that was done away with and so there was a big fat zero next to Sunnyside's name on every document that went through the the the General Baptist Convention of Oklahoma and and finally Jack Renfro.

There's a big meeting and I've read through some of the notes and I've read through some of the letters that were written to brother Jack and plumbing digging through some of the old history and it just came came down to the fact that You know if we're going to be a part that we should give them the money and play the full role of being a part.

And we're not we just don't do that. We do support missionaries. We support I think about 11 different missionaries across the world. We also support several local Ministries that reach out with the gospel.

But we do so in a very focused way a very local localized way personal way we like to host our missionaries in the missionary houses and get to know them and. So there's so that not to say that that is a superior version to the cooperative program.

I've heard from missionaries on the field who are not part of the cooperative program not part of Southern Baptist that sometimes the Southern Baptists are the only ones who get the supplies in on Time and they help keep a lot of the independent missionaries alive and going when their stuff does not come through on time.

So I'm not saying either one is superior. But the fact is we wanted a more personal accountable relationship to the missionaries that we support. Let's talk about our government. This is just talking about the polity of the church.

How does the church make decisions how does the church move forward. If there's a question about what we should do with the funds who's deciding that. If there if we recognize that we have a problem with the way that we're doing something in the church.

How does those how do those problems get resolved? How do we make decisions? So that's that's what this is. This section is all about. Originally Sunnyside Baptist Church was Designed in a very traditional manner, which means you have one pastor and Bunch of deacons and then a bunch of committees and so decisions are very often made by the committees and Decisions are made by the deacons and decisions are made by the pastor and hopefully they all agree when there's conflict usually it turns out that The one in the spotlight is the most wrong.

And so in traditional Baptist polity usually. Traditionally in Southern Baptist churches the pastors get fired Fairly often and they're moving on. I think the last Stats were about four years for the life of a pastor in one particular church in ten years for the whole scope of a pastoral ministry is average.

So pastors don't stay long and they burn out quick. Is the kind of situation we're at now. I was not raised that way Early on in my life. I was part of a church where there were elders. Which meant that there was more than one visible spiritual leader making decisions.

And they try to make together in unity about what would happen and the deacons were there. But the deacons weren't necessarily calling shots. They were looking for needs to fill and the word deacon in the Greek diaconess.

It means one who stirred up a lot of dust so someone who's like I see a need and they serve a lot of dust and getting things done and trying to meet those needs and that was that was my background that the Members were involved they were asked to serve in various ways.

They were they were stirred up to ministry by the deacons they were stirred up to discipleship into into meeting those spiritual needs by the elders and that was my background and That stayed true for the church.

I went to In my college years my collegiate years at Grace Rebaptist Church for five years four years. They were they had elders and they had deacons and they had a congregation and the elders made decisions together.

And.

And if there was disagreement, they would wait and pray and look for unity. And that would never be hashed out in front of the people. And there were a lot of deacons. My father-in-law was one of them and they would seek to meet the the basic need to the church.

Was there a widow who needed some help. Did. Does this. Single mom with a big with a lot of kids need to move from one house to another. What are the needs of the church? Let's let's let's get in there.

Let's help. And then I went to Memphis for my for my Masters of Divinity and my wife and I joined with Southwoods Baptist Church and they also were elder led and deacon served and Congregationally ruled is the way that it said in other words that the congregation Whereas we're directly involved in there.

They did have committees and if you were a member of something of Southwoods Baptist Church, you had to serve on a committee because you had to be active in ministry somehow some way and. And so that and that helped and then they had several elders I got to sit on sit in on their meetings and learn from them as they Led the church and there were several deacons.

And it was something that was very healthy.

The.

Pastors at the churches where there were elders when I was at college. He's been he's still there. He was there 12 years when I was there. He's still there. So he's been there Almost 25 years now. The pastor at Southwoods Baptist Church has been there over 30 years now.

And why is that? Why is there stability. Because you have a group of spiritual leaders? It says that in Acts that Paul went through Asia Minor and Macedonia and other places and he was helping to establish elders plural in every church singular and That's repeated throughout the New Testament.

That's the model that we're given and You know in the qualifications for elders are given to us in Titus and in the Timothy and this is what they're supposed to be. It's what's supposed to look like and so I'm very blessed here to have five of their elders including Ken Smith Who was a former pastor and we all work together?

To try to.

Make.

Decisions for the direction of the church and we want to do that in unity if one of us is Out of source about something we don't you know, you know, well, we have a majority so you better get on board.

We try to do everything in unity to make sure that we're moving together. That does mean we move a little bit slower perhaps. But we want to move with a surer pace. I am NOT the the end all of this church.

I don't have all the wisdom. I don't have all the authority. I'm maybe a little bit more visible than some of the other guys. But I sure don't want to be the one making the decisions without without them.

We want to be making decisions together. We have so we have six elders. We have seven deacons and the deacons Help by Serving the physical need to the church. We have a lot of physical needs in terms of facilities.

We were trying to invest in so that we can be have an active effective ministry in this area of town. Which I pray that that will grow. Deacons also each have been assigned a Couple or three widows that they're supposed to be focused on ready to help if they have any particular needs.

We've also gone through some training with the deacons recently about how we Minister to those who are in need the homeless people who perhaps come by knocking on the door asking for help or those kinds of things.

So we try to train the deacons to lead out in service. To be thinking about how we supposed to how are we supposed to use the funds that God has entrusted it to us to meet? The physical need of the church.

That's the model we have an axe there were some physical needs in the church and the elders the Apostles said you know. We've been handling this for a while and you read in Acts 4 about that money was laid at the Apostles feet and so they were the ones managing all this stuff and then all of a sudden they didn't have time to do the work of elders and This other work at the same time.

So they asked the church. They said church. We have a need. Can you can you nominate or a point? Seven from among you fill with the Holy Spirit who can meet these physical need to the church and they did and We have the birth of the deacons of the diaconate along with the the elders and so the deacons do their job and the elders do their job and were strengthened by Folks doing what we're called to do.

No more like a body more like a body of Christ where we don't have one person doing it all. We have a lot of people working together. As far as the congregation isn't is concerned.

We do.

Call for the congregation to step in and to help and for a variety of ways. There's always ways to serve in terms of things, you know. The normal things like Sunday school and nursery and you know all the different kind of needs of of the body will call for extra help when we want to give special offerings to missionaries if we want to.

Try to do something new will be in communication with the congregation asking them to step up and then the congregation also Is involved when we have any kind of major decision or something really major like calling a pastor?

Okay, or something even less? We stop and say okay, we're not going to the elders are in agreement. But we don't know where the congregation is at and we're just gonna put this decision out before the congregation.

We're gonna explain it to you answer any questions that you may have. And we're gonna give you all two weeks to pray about this with us, would you read the scriptures? would you pray with us and then would you get back to us and.

If you have any concerns, we want to hear from you. Okay, so there have been many decisions that have been stopped. Because the congregation wasn't ready for it yet. Maybe they weren't stopped forever.

Maybe they just they were there was a time of waiting before things could be put in order and then we moved forward. Maybe a direction of the church was halted because the congregation. Well, we just we just don't know about this and that so we don't.

We'd want to hear the concerns of the congregation and not just make decisions behind closed doors and and move on. There's a few things that happen behind closed doors that you never know about. Part of it you should know about and part of it.

You probably don't need to part of it that you should hear about is is Elders fault if we fail to communicate well, and we we do struggle with that. And so we're gonna be trying to make a correction in that as much as we can to be in better communication with everybody.

But.

Some of the decisions that have to be made have to be made about the direction of the church. Where are we headed and things like a budget a budget is a mission statement saying this is what we value.

You know, this is what we should be doing. And so the elders are involved with that setting the focus of where we're headed. And and then we make adjustments as we need to and talk about it with the congregation.

So those are some items that we could Think about and digest about the government the particularities of it. You'll find in the bylaws any questions about polity and I failed to address. It's a great question.

That's a great question. Traditionally in a Baptist Church, the deacons are functioning as elders and Sometimes they have trustees who function as deacons. I've passed at a church like that and the trustees were always going about trying to take care of the Facilities and the deacons were acting like elders.

In our particular case the elders are the ones who would Send out a call with an agreement with the congregation. Hey congregation. We need a pastor. Yeah, so we're going to send out a call and we're going to see if you know anyone fits and they're gonna read you know, they what they did with me is that the elders kind of reduced the options to about three different people and they set up opportunities for the people to get to know the Candidates and one came before me and and preached and accepted the call and was going to be pastor of Sunnyside.

And then he decided not to.

Okay.

And.

But through that process The the elders are setting that up and then communicating with the congregation After they get to know this person to some degree. You know, what do you think? Do you have any concerns?

Do you need more time? What are your questions that you want him to answer? There was a Q &A session we had here May 31st 2014 in the evening where everybody in the congregation Got a chance to ask me questions Things that were important and they needed to know Before they could talk to the elders about whether they were comfortable with the idea.

So that's kind of how it's set up that the elders Send out a call and then involve the congregation to see if we're all in agreement. So that's how that works anything else. We have a threefold purpose you see on the front of your bulletins To glorify God build up the body and evangelize the lost.

The Threefold Purpose of the Church

This is a traditional kind of purpose mission statement kind of thing where it's the way they used to teach it in seminary is upward inward and outward and Come up with your own terms. But the idea is that we want to be a balanced Church in the way that we glorify God, it's There's a variety of ways when she glorified God that's almost a catch-all.

But perhaps the specifics of what that's about is that we would be worshiping God that we would be giving him praise and honor and glory that we would Demonstrate through our lives and through our gatherings what we do here.

We would demonstrate the worthiness of Jesus Christ and we would praise him and honor him and glorify him. And then we would be in that sense this is connected to Building up the body and evangelizing the lost because when you glorify God and praise the worthiness of Christ This does build up the body and it does send a witness To the world, doesn't it?

And so so these are not as we look at each of these three on the triangle if you will. They're not Disconnected they really do have connections. The second one to build up the body Is something that I think that has been the primary emphasis of Sunnyside Harry Boyson was known for being a teaching pastor.

He is quoted as once said that if he had to do it all over again, he would not put pews in the auditorium. He would put desks so people could get out their paper and pencil and take notes and we're going to go to class Every and he was also known for not Not bothering with anything such as a clock.

So.

Very heavy emphasis on Expositional teaching and preaching which means that it's important to take the scriptures as they are written. And and let the but the scriptures by the Holy Spirit set the agenda of what we're going to talk about.

So for instance my sermon today, there's stuff in my sermon in my text I wish I would never have to preach about but it's there and God's in charge and Christ has a message for us. So we're going to look at that.

So in that sense, I think brother Boydston followed that and he preached and he taught Expositionally through books of the Bible. It was through that kind of expositional teaching that led him in conviction to change the polity of Sunnyside Baptist Church from the traditional Baptist model to an elder led model that we have today.

That's one example of how things change when the scriptures are taught and preached in that way. So there's been a heavy emphasis on on teaching. I'm building up the body and Evangelizing the lost our church has a very rich history in Supporting missionaries and going on mission trips.

Though that has not been something that we've done a whole lot lately in terms of sponsoring folks to go on mission trips. But it's something that is is there and it's in the it's in the tradition of things.

We still have folks doing mission work if you know CHA. Has part of that DNA still they go on mission trips every single year multiple mission trips to various parts of the world. Every year and that's something that Sunnyside and CHA share as far as part of their emphasis historically.

Our church budget is traditionally around 15 to 20 percent missions. And we give money to missionaries. One of our missionaries Are members here of our church. Can any of our Church members tell us which one of our missionaries and members here trivia time.

The Wilcox, that's right Jonathan Rachel Wilcox our members here. We sent them out and we we do not fund all of their needs, but we do give significantly more to them than we do the other missionaries because they are From us and and we sent them out.

They're missionaries.

With.

It's no longer new tribes. It's ethnos 360 and they're in the UK and they do mission work in South America as well as in the UK and so we have a history of supporting missionaries and going on mission trips and.

That's something that I think that will continue. Evangelize in the loft locally as something that we've had a question mark for some time as our neighborhood has changed To about 80 Hispanic. How do we reach them?

Well, we have the ESL class. Adam and Kimberly Collins help out with that every Wednesday night. It is up and down. Sometimes there's a lot sometimes there's not. Sometimes we have surprising people that come to The ESL class and.

But it's it's an opportunity. Danny Roten is a an elder of Sherwood Baptist Church. And he when he's healthy and when his wife's healthy, he is here to help try to with ESL class and he's also done what he could to help start a Hispanic mission in our facilities.

He's also the Hispanic chaplain for the prison out in say El Reno. And he does a lot of different work like that and he's he has decades of experience of being a missionary in Mexico. He and Janet do.

So.

We've done we've tried to help out in that way. I try to reach out in that way. We also have some counseling services to meet in our facilities upstairs about four of our classrooms is used by above all counseling services to help Hispanic families.

The lead counselor there's names Jose Solis and Jose his favorite saying is no, I'm saying. Which do you know what I'm saying? No, I'm saying. And he's a great guy. He's got his master's from SNHU Southern Nazarene University and counseling.

He's a I think he's a very young Christian, but he's doing his best excited about the gospel and those kinds of things, but he's trying to help Hispanic families Deal with the pressures and the after-effects of trying to accomplish the American dream.