I'm of Shubal

In the year 1755, a diminutive but dynamic preacher by the name of Shubal Stearns settled his extended family and a few others on the undeveloped land of what is now west-central North Carolina. The place was called Sandy Creek, and the little band of Separate Baptists (as they were called) quickly constituted the Sandy Creek Baptist Church.

Somewhere around 1740, Shubal Stearns, along with most of his family, was gloriously saved under the preaching of George Whitefield. Heavily influenced by his “new birth” experience, Stearns began preaching, and soon his little band of followers officially became Baptists. When he arrived in North Carolina, he brought with him his own unique blend of New England orthodoxy and revivalist worship. In Stearns these two blended to form a style of preaching and worship that I feel still lives in my own spiritual DNA.

Immediately, the Sandy Creek Baptist Church, and its congregational offspring began to blaze a holy trail into the rugged country of their adopted home. John Sparks, in his interesting biography of Stearns, says this:

“…the religion and preaching of Shubal Stearns exploded over the Piedmont like a hurricane, the enthusiasm it generated rivaling that of the original Whitefield Revivals and its success surpassing anything that…Stearns…could have possibly have hoped for.”1

To support this, Sparks cites some remarkable statistics from Stearns’ ministry. Between November of 1755 and January of 1758, Stearns and his brethren baptized 900 people, 590 of whom became a part of the Sandy Creek Church ministry.2

As impressive as those numbers are, especially considering the sparse population of the country at that time, what really draws me to Stearns is the style of preaching and worship that he seems to have fathered. Stearns’ preaching was enthusiastic, melodic, ecstatic, and energetic. The people who listened to him fed off of this, and together they were a noisy and boisterous bunch. Outsiders who were used to a more formal, refined, or liturgical church experience were puzzled by these back country Baptists. Many times they were viewed not just suspiciously, but with disdain and embarrassment by the more “high church” Baptist brethren.

What does this have to do with me? Well, my dad was saved in 1972, in an independent Baptist church in Boone, NC. He was called to preach not long after, and he and my mother both grew up, spiritually speaking, in churches that worshiped with a style and form much like that of those early Separate Baptist at Sandy Creek. The fiery preaching and fervent worship of those mountain churches had very much descended from the ministry of Shubal Stearns.

My dad still talks about “the glory”. I know what he means by that. If you’ve ever been “in the glory”, then you know what he means by that too. Though I grew up in a “city” church, my dad was my pastor, and he brought that same Stearns-style worship into that church. Though my definition is my by no means technical or authoritative, “the glory” is when the Holy Spirit moves upon the congregation, and God’s people begin to shout, weep, praise, and sing. It is when the preacher preaches with a special unction, and the Word goes forth with a passion and power that I imagine sounds very much like the enthusiastic, melodic, ecstatic, and energetic style of a little, fiery Baptist preacher who shook an entire region some 250 years ago.

In I Corinthians 1, the Apostle Paul rebukes the Corinthians for their petty factions. In verse 12, He writes, “Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.” I assure you, not with the same party spirit that was sinful and divisive, but rather with a clear recognition of who I am by God’s grace, and a gratitude for the heritage of my faith, I proudly say, I am of Shubal. Somebody say, “Amen!”

1 Sparks, Elder John, The Roots of Appalachian Christianity: The life and legacy of Elder Shubal Stearns, (The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 2001), p. 63
2 Ibid