First Baptist Church

Yeah.

Yeah, and that machinery, I say machinery because like First Baptist Hammond, that was a machine.

That model, that came out of the Southern Baptist model initially is my understanding.

It did.

Yeah.

The largest church to ever be in the world was the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana.

There you go.

Pastored by Jack Hollis.

Like, I think, oh, there is definitely sunk cost fallacy that...

Like, I have experienced Hyles-Anderson, uh, First Baptist Church of Hammond culture of using sunk cost fallacy to control people.

Like, that's absolutely something that they do frequently, and it's absolutely something that cults do in general.

So I think there's, like, a, like, a sunk cost fallacy going on.

My mom doesn't listen to the podcast, so I think I'll be okay.

My dad, so when my dad was about to graduate from Hyles-Anderson, Jack Hyles called my dad in his office and basically offered him a position of being a Bible teacher at Hammond Baptist High School, which would have put him on a track to be staff for First Baptist Church basically forever.

It would have put him on a track to be probably never, like, an assistant pastor or pastor at First Baptist Church of Hammond, but to be very involved in the ministry.

Like, they, it was basically offering him a lifetime of jobs.

And what do you think about that? You have to

remember, Pastor Wickens, that I went to First Baptist Church of Hammond for six years.

I went to Howells Anderson College.

And in that timeframe, I would guess, and these numbers are accurate because I was there.

Another part of this book that I thought was fantastic in the concept, maybe not the practice, but the concept, uh, was good pastoral ministry.

Jack Hyles says that the pastor himself tries to personally meet with every high school senior before graduation, and now you think of, of First Baptist Hammond.

They're running 20,000, 30,000 people during this time.

I mean, you're talking thousands of teenagers that he's meeting with, high school seniors that are graduating out of his church ministry.

Rocky Point, Pleasant Grove is not, uh, isn't Jesus.

Howells Anderson isn't Jesus.

First Baptist Hammond isn't Jesus.

The Southern Baptist Convention isn't Jesus.

right.

But people also underestimated how much staying power First Baptist Church of Hammond had.

And I think that could also apply to that whole populist tariff, America first, throw the immigrants out.

I think there is some staying power to all of that.