Arkansas Pastor Says Extreme Generation Needs Extreme Christians

October 27, 2000

An extreme generation needs to feel the impact of extreme Christian lives, Dr. Ronnie Floyd, pastor of First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., told Oklahoma Baptist University students during the Wednesday chapel service, Oct. 25.

"Your generation is known to be an extreme generation," said Floyd.

In sports, in knowledge, in technology, in dress - students' new generation has proved to be radical in word and deed, he said.

"You're that way because you are reflecting the values of the culture in which you were raised," he said.

Everyone with a heart for God ought to be asking themselves one question about the current generation.

"Why doesn't your generation want, as a whole, our Jesus?" he asked.

The reason, Floyd said, is that Christians are not extreme enough to attract them. The Jesus that Christians model and express appears to be antiquated and boring.

The solution to this problem, Floyd said, is found in Acts 17, where Paul and Silas serve as models of extreme Christianity.

"Extreme Christianity means you are real, you maintain your personality, you go further with Christ than you've gone before," he said. "Paul and Silas are referred to as men who turned the world upside down. They were extremists, troublemakers. They lived extreme Christianity."

It is not good enough to notice the lives of extreme Christians like Paul and Silas and not emulate them, Floyd said.

"If you think that the work the church is doing now will gain the attention of this generation - it will not," he said. "They are not interested in what we are saying."

Living extreme Christianity must be rooted in living an extreme lifestyle, practicing extreme purity, and making an extreme impact, he said.

"As your spiritual life goes, so goes the rest of your life. The moment the price gets bigger than you are willing to pay is the moment you start to decline in your Christian walk."

Floyd told students that if they hold basic Christian principles as true, they are already extremists and radicals in this country.

"Will you be a part of a new generation? Don't settle for anything less."