{"id":20898,"date":"2020-08-10T16:05:34","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T21:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/?p=20898"},"modified":"2020-08-10T16:06:39","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T21:06:39","slug":"does-your-church-have-a-gospel-blimp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/does-your-church-have-a-gospel-blimp\/","title":{"rendered":"Does your church have a gospel blimp?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 1960, Dr. Joe Bayly wrote an entertaining little volume of 85 pages about some church members who decide to reach their unsaved neighbors by floating a Scripture-carrying blimp above the city and bombarding the citizens with gospel tracts.<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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The Gospel Blimp<\/em> went through multiple printings and was turned into a movie to be shown in churches.<\/p>\n

The blimp idea was born when a little cluster of friends from a conservative evangelical church enjoying a barbecue in George and Ethel\u2019s back yard began discussing their next-door neighbors. Those folks clearly were unsaved since they were drinking beer and playing cards. Someone who knew them pointed out that they attend a liberal church, but only a few times a year. As a plane went by overhead, a fellow named Herm remarked that if that aircraft had been carrying a message such as \u201cBelieve on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,\u201d the lost neighbors would have received a witness since they also had glanced in its direction.<\/p>\n

One thing led to another and the idea was birthed to buy a blimp and have it trail Scripture messages across the sky\u00a0for\u00a0citizens\u00a0to read. They formed a non-profit, got themselves chartered, organized a board with officers, and made Herm, the fellow with the idea, its executive. Soon, Herm resigned his job and went full-time with International Gospel Blimps, Inc.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Next, someone had the idea of tying gospel tracts with colored cellophane tape and bombarding the neighborhoods with \u201cfire bombs\u201d from Heaven.<\/p>\n

A project like this naturally would require a great deal of money for maintenance, a hangar for the blimp, and salaries for the pilots and the executive.\u00a0 Fund-raising quickly took a\u00a0great deal\u00a0of time and energy\u00a0from the organizers.<\/p>\n

Within weeks, the board members\u00a0began devoting all their\u00a0spare hours to this project. In order to keep the blimp running, to tape the fire bombs, and to raise money, they missed their kids\u2019 little league ball games, had to turn down invitations from friends to go out for pizza, and\u00a0gave up all their evenings at home.<\/p>\n

Soon,\u00a0they added a loudspeaker to the blimp\u00a0so\u00a0Herm could preach short messages across the city while\u00a0dropping firebombs and dragging the Scripture du jour through the sky. When the sermons began invading their homes, citizens rose up in protest.\u00a0The police chief came close to arresting them for disturbing the peace, but backed off when they agreed to\u00a0dismantle the\u00a0speakers.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Herm, the executive,\u00a0began devoting less and less time to the actual day-to-day running of the Gospel Blimp ministry. He roamed\u00a0far and wide to raise money and make public appearances. Gone from home so much, his wife eventually filed for divorce, particularly when she learned the primary reason for his long absences. The board, however, decided that Herm was so valuable to the ministry they could not dismiss him. After all, it was only her word against his. So, they\u00a0went forward.<\/p>\n

And what about the unsaved neighbors who were the impetus for all this blimp business in the first place? A few times, when they knocked on George and Ethel\u2019s door to see if they wanted to come over or accompany them on a little fishing trip, they found them away from home or too occupied with the blimp business.<\/p>\n

George and Ethel were the first couple to drop out of the Blimp ministry, feeling that\u00a0it had somehow gotten off course and was taking too much of their time\u00a0with only\u00a0miniscule results.<\/p>\n

Some of the high-powered executives with whom Herm played golf (a lot of golf!) talked him into adding commercial messages to the blimp in order to increase its acceptance and generate more funds. Soon, the blimp began to display religious messages saying \u201cI am the way\u201d and others saying, \u201cThe American way is the best way.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the\u00a0third anniversary of the original cookout where the blimp idea had surfaced, George and Ethel invited over their friends who were still heavily involved in the work of the IGBI.\u00a0In their back yard, they introduced their neighbors, the ones whose salvation had been the original impetus for the blimp business. They had come to know Christ and George and Ethel thought the blimp board needed to know how that had happened.<\/p>\n

The board members were ecstatic.\u00a0\u201cWhich firebomb did God use to reach you?\u201d\u00a0\u201cWas it one of the Scriptures we trailed?\u201d \u201cWas it one of Herm\u2019s\u00a0sermons?\u201d<\/p>\n

None of that. In fact, they said, that infernal blimp had driven them batty.<\/p>\n

What had happened was that\u00a0after\u00a0George and Ethel had pulled out of the blimp ministry, they had time to get to know the neighbors. When the wife went into the hospital, Ethel would visit her, take flowers from the garden and sit with her.\u00a0She would read to the woman and\u00a0they would talk about Jesus.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0they invited the husband over for evening meals. He sat in on family devotionals when George read the Bible\u00a0and prayed. Neither the man nor his wife had ever met anyone to whom Jesus Christ was real.<\/p>\n

The husband told the backyard group, \u201cThere\u2019s something else. Any of you guys ever spend two weeks keeping house with the wife away?\u201d\u00a0His house\u00a0had been\u00a0filthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cEthel came in the day before\u00a0my wife came home and gave that house the going-over\u00a0of its life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wife added, \u201cYes, and for a month after I got home she wouldn\u2019t let me do a stitch of washing or ironing. Took all our dirty clothes home and did them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the silence that followed this testimony, one of the board members ventured that now that the neighbors were saved, they\u00a0would surely be interested in\u00a0joining the blimp ministry.<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry,\u201d the new believer\u00a0said. \u201cGeorge and\u00a0I are going bowling with the guy across the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joe Bayly gives his interpretation of this modern-day parable in the final chapter. The little city where the Gospel Blimp was conceived is the world, our latter twentieth century American world, in which Christians work and play, raise children, buy automobiles and face the devil.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our next door neighbors, Bayly said, may be down the road or across town. They may drink beer and play cards but they may just as well attend the symphony and lead the local civic club.<\/p>\n

Some of them may even sit near us on Sunday morning.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Blimp? Bayly says, Why the wonderful Gospel Blimp is every impersonal, external means by which we try to fulfil our responsibility to witness to our neighbors. Gospel programs over the radio, messages on billboards or in tracts; these are some of our blimps.<\/em><\/p>\n

These are poor substitutes for personal communication of the gospel, the sort of witnessing we glimpse from afar in the New Testament.<\/em><\/p>\n

Technical, organizational means have one enormous lack: a human heart. They may multiply a voice ten thousand times, but it remains only a voice.<\/em><\/p>\n

Adding anything to the gospel of Christ must weaken it. Jesus Christ refused to fall into this trap. \u2018My kingdom,\u2019 He said, \u2018is not of this world.’<\/em><\/p>\n

To tie Jesus Christ to the very best human system is to tie a star, light years distant, to a dead horse here on earth. Neither star nor Christ will thus be bound.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1960, Dr. Joe Bayly wrote an entertaining little volume of 85 pages about some church members who decide to reach their unsaved neighbors by floating a Scripture-carrying blimp above the city and bombarding the citizens with gospel tracts. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelism","category-healthy-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20898"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20911,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20898\/revisions\/20911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}