How can you combine a night of home-cooked wild game dishes and enthralling stories of hunting adventures with the amazing redemptive message of Christ Jesus? Winnfield First Baptist tackled that challenge through their annual Wild Game & Seafood Banquet that over 90 attended February 23 in their hunting-themed gym.
The event, more correctly, was the first return of the traditionally annual event but that run was interrupted by the COVID years, Pastor Jerry Pipes explained as he introduced friend, outdoorsman and 23-year pastor of First Baptist Haughton, Gevan Spinney. He noted his sports program “The Way It Was” is partnered with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and viewers are directed at the conclusion to a website, endthehunt.org. There, a message of salvation has seen 1,000 commitments for Jesus.
He told the crowd of young and old alike that when Moses asked the Lord in Psalm 90, “So teach us to number our days,” it wasn’t literally to count that number but rather to value them. “The yesterdays of life have the possibility of changing tomorrow.”
Spinney detailed weekends in the woods when everything went right. There were also those when everything went wrong. “But no matter what happens, God will bless you when you least expect it.”
He also noted that sometimes, life hits a “pause button” when you’re moving in one direction. He suggested that COVID might have been one such pause. “But God gets your attention. You move from what you’re been doing to realize what is really important. A pause can change your life, or that of someone else.”
Spinney had talked about his high school days and how skipping class one day had led to him hearing the Gospel of Jesus for the first time, a day that changed his life. He wove that message of salvation within a fascinating fabric of hunting stories that night and offered the opportunity of life with Christ to the men and boys in that upstairs room. “A day to change your tomorrow.”
Dr. Jerry Pipes observed at the event’s conclusion that “we had an amazing crowd, considering very difficult weather conditions. Which says to me there is a great hunger for the coming together of men, food, a message, hunting stories and faith.”
