I will never forget a man I met down in West Columbia Texas named Dan Smith. They called him the meanest man in town. His face looked like a road map from being cut by so many beer bottles. But, God gave a pastor named B. B. Hankins a burden for that man and he just kept loving that man. He would go into the bar, sit down beside him and talk to him about Jesus until he would leave.
Then one day, the meanest man in West Columbia Texas got saved and do you know what he did? He got after his boys and began to bring them to church. He told them he would whip them if they didn’t go to church with him so they did because they knew the old man could whip them. He was mean.
See they didn’t know about all the transformation that had taken place, all they knew as that he was still capable so one by one they came to church. I remember the week he brought all of his family in and he wasn’t nice about it. And he brought them in and told them to sit down and then he took the aisle seat so they couldn’t get out. When the altar call was given he would say, “Do you want to accept Jesus?” One by one they would come down and get saved, bawling and squalling and hugging each other. Mean old Dan Smith, that’s the only life he had ever lived. He didn’t know any different.
Dan Smith was a soul winner for Jesus. He thought it was a sin if he came to church without bringing somebody who needed Jesus. You may say, “I wouldn’t want that old man in my church.” Hey, I wish I had a thousand of them. You can build churches with folks like that. Dan Smith was not a nice man but thankfully churches aren’t made for nice people because none of us were nice before Jesus found us. Church is for sinners who have found the saving grace of Jesus Christ. People like you. Well I think you get the essence of the message, it’s time to win some people to Jesus.
One of the great men of days gone by could not go to sleep at night unless he had won somebody to Jesus. One night over in London, he had laid his head on a pillow after a long day of preaching and it dawned on him “I haven’t won anybody to Jesus today”. He got out of bed, changed out of his night clothes went out to the street corner and found one lonely soul under an umbrella and won him to Jesus then went back to bed. You say that is fanaticism. No that is new testament Christianity. Do you have to win the city? No, but by all means win some and whatever it takes, bring them in.