I never considered his preaching/teaching to be solid. Yet, when I was a younger and a less informed believer, I thought he was a great exhorter in the faith. He actually came to our church in Jonesboro AR when I was in college and did a emotionally charged message on true hypocrisy, ie, a person who walked the aisle and so forth, but is not geninunely saved. It was akin to the Lordship stuff John MacArthur was defending at that time.

Later, when I had matured more in the scripture, I had occasion to hear him preach at Grace at some Word Publishing arranged conference. It was terrible. All illustrations, no substance from the text. Probably the only ones who actually taught the Bible and stayed relevant to the theme of the conference (the authority of scripture) was MacArthur and Stephen Olford.

A buddy of mine I know from seminary attended Rogers's church for many years. He had positive things to say about the overall congregation and so forth. However, in the mid-90s, several college kids became calvinistic in their theology. They were promoting the Founders and various Reformed writings. I want to say several of the college staff also became Calvinistic and were teaching the doctrines of Grace from the college pulpit. Rogers became alarmed and basically went on his personal witch hunt to smoke out all the Calvinists causing division in his Church. One of the results was an address he gave to the overall college department in which he, and his army of strawmen, outlined Calvinism and explained why it is unbiblical and he is by no means "calvinistic." He hurled the typical illogical argumentation about reading every book in print on Calvinism (why is this assertion so often raised by anti-calvinists?), that he wanted to preach the Bible, and basically equated historic Calvinism with hypercalvinism.

The transcript of the talk use to be on-line with comments by one of the ousted Calvinistic college students who attended the meeting. It has since been taken down at Roger's request.

Anyhow, I can't deny the impact Roger's has had in Memphis and there are many positive things I can say about his overall ministry, but on the other hand, I can't say I am sorry to see him go, especially in light of his recent anti-Calvinistic crusades.

Fred

"Ah, sitting - the great leveler of men. From the mightest of pharaohs to the lowest of peasants, who doesn't enjoy a good sit?" M. Burns