John R. Rice - Evangelism Conferences

Evangelism Conferences

In 1945 Rice began to organize evangelism conferences, which in 1974 became Sword of the Lord Conferences. These meetings drew influential evangelists, such as Hyman Appelman, Joe Henry Hankins, John F. MacArthur, Sr., and especially Bob Jones, Sr., whom Rice called "the dean of all the evangelists." The conferences attracted large crowds of clergymen from various denominations, not just Baptists. For instance, the Fort Smith conference of August 1952 had an average attendance of six to eight hundred at the morning sessions and a thousand to two thousand in the evenings. So many fundamentalist churches began to accept Rice's role as a clearing house for approved evangelists that to relieve some of the burden, he established a "Sword Extension Department," headed by his brother Bill. The Sword of the Lord even placed babies born to unwed mothers.