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Pollard Baptist Church
Free Grace among Baptists in the South

    During the Spring of 1950 at Easter all the Southern Baptist Churches east of the Mississippi were having simultaneous revivals. (For readers unaccustomed to Southern Baptist terminology revivals here means organized evangelistic campaigns.)  All the churches were having meetings at the same time to impact that region of America.  Don Wells, the pastor of the Pollard Baptist Church in Ashland, Kentucky, had not secured an evangelist. At the last moment he called Dr Charles Stevens, the president of Piedmont Bible College, and asked him to recommend an evangelist. Dr Stevens said, 'we have here an old evangelist, who teaches theology for us, who knows more about evangelism than any man in America. His name is Rolfe Barnard'. Pastor Wells soon secured the service of Barnard. On April 17th, 1950, Easter Sunday morning, Barnard showed up. Nearly a thousand people were there in their Easter frocks. As Barnard stood up to preach in his unique way, weaving forwards and backwards, he said in a low bass voice, 'I don't know why I am here, but I'm sure it has something to do with the fore-ordaining purposes of God'.

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