Dr. Fred Wolfe


      “What you are is more important than what you do—because what you are determines the effectiveness of what you do.” 
      Dr. Fred Wolfe told The Christian View that he advises other preachers, ‘You’ve got to be something before you do something.’
      “The emphasis today is to do something, but the emphasis in Scripture is to be somebody—to be somebody in Christ, to live a Christ-controlled, Christ-filled life, to depend totally on the Holy Spirit. The most important thing in a preacher’s life is his personal walk with God, to walk with Him daily in a life of surrender, a life of yieldedness. Then, out of his personal walk with God, he will minister in the power of Jesus.” 
      Wolfe founded his Barnabas Ministry in 1997, at the time he entered full-time evangelism after serving 40 years as a Pastor. As part of each Barnabas weekend, Wolfe preaches on a Saturday night, Sunday morning, and Sunday night in a church and leads a seminar for area Pastors on Monday. He estimates that, in the past decade, he has preached at 300 different churches. 
      His years as a Pastor prepared him well for evangelism, he said. “A person cannot really understand the Pastor and his responsibilities and his ministry unless, to some degree, he has experienced it. Having been a Pastor from the age of 20 to the age of 60, I understand all about pastoring a church, what a Pastor’s responsibilities are and what his problems are. I am prepared to go into a church and relate to a Pastor, because that was all I had ever been. I can encourage him and give him counsel about things I learned in my 40 years.” 
      Wolfe was saved as a nine-year-old boy at First Baptist Church of Rock Hill, South Carolina. He has fond memories of the church from his childhood. “I had good Pastors, wonderful Sunday School teachers, Baptist Training Union leaders, and RA leaders—people who invested their lives in me from the time I was a child all of the way through high school,” he said. 
      He describes himself as an active child, who couldn’t keep quiet. “I talked too much at school,” he said. “I was an A/B student, but I always made my lowest grades in conduct. I was mischievous. In high school, I was a Christian, but my influence for Christ was not what it should have been. I was in church all during high school, but I could have lived a whole lot better Christian life than I did.” 
      He experienced a turnaround in college, and his life changed direction when God called him to preach. 
      “I was a freshman at the University of South Carolina,” he said. “I was on a football scholarship, and I was going to be a coach. Back when I was 11, I felt that God was calling me to preach, and I shared that with our Minister of Education, a lady named Ruth Epps, but I kind of dismissed it. When I was in my second semester my freshman year at the University of South Carolina, that’s when God, through a series of events, made it clear to me that I was supposed to go into the ministry.” 
      Wolfe graduated from USC in 1960 and from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas in 1967. He has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Mobile in Mobile, Alabama. 
      He first pastored a church as a college junior. “Pine Grove Baptist Church in Salters, South Carolina was a little church that ran about 25, sometimes as many as 50,” he said. “I would drive down on Sunday mornings and return on Sunday nights. 
      Other churches he pastored through the years were East View Baptist Church in Rock Hill, Monaghan Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina, and the 8,000-member Cottage Hill Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama. He served in his last pastorate for 25 years. 
      What he enjoyed most about being a Pastor was being with the people. “I love people,” he said. “I enjoy preaching. I love to preach the Gospel. But I love people, and I love relationships. To me, some of the greatest memories of my ministry are being involved with people’s lives. Blessings of the ministry have been the relationships that I’ve built with people, the friends that God has given me, the people I’ve grown to love like family, and the scores of people I’ve seen saved. And the young men who have been called into the ministry and are now either preachers or missionaries—I was their Pastor when God called them into the ministry, and they’re in different parts of the country and around the world. That has been a great blessing to me, to see God call them and use them.” 
      Wolfe, himself, was influenced by others over the years, beginning with his family. He was one of seven children born to Fred and Margaret Wolfe. 
      “My mother was a very godly woman,” he said. “She was a real influence in my life. Her Christ-like life and the way that she loved people unconditionally demonstrated the Christian life. 
      “My father was a police detective. He was a great provider and a very good authority figure in my life who provided discipline.”
      His wife, Anne, has been his encourager for the past 50 years. They met as students at Rock Hill High School and married in June of 1956, when she was a rising senior at Rock Hill High, and he was a rising college freshman. They now have two sons, Mark and Jeff, and six grandchildren, Stephen, Rachel, Laura, Stacy, Kelly, and Brandon. 
      In the ministry, his primary influence was the late Dr. Stephen Olford. “He pastored Calvary Baptist Church in New York and then became a traveling minister,” said Wolfe. “Spiritually, he had a profound influence on my life with tremendous Biblical truths. He was the first one who led me to a real understanding of the lordship of Christ, what it means for Jesus to be Lord, and the need to walk and to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. He was such a powerful preacher—with a blend of scholarship, spiritual power, and his understanding of those great truths of the lordship of Christ and the Holy Spirit’s filling. In the early years of my ministry, back in the 1970’s, I listened to a great number of his tapes. His messages became an inspiration and a guide for me. I never will forget when I went to an evangelism conference in February, 1969 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Dr. Stephen Olford and Dr. Vance Havner and others were preaching. I had a tremendous encounter with God, as did hundreds of other Pastors at that conference. That was a significant turning point in my life.” 
      Another person who had a great influence on Wolfe’s life was Bertha Smith, a missionary to China, from Cowpens, South Carolina. “I knew her personally, and she had a tremendous impact on my life,” he said. “Her emphasis on the importance of prayer and living a holy life helped me.” 
      Others have also encouraged him throughout his ministry. “I’ve had a lot of good friends, along the way, in the ministry, and most of them are still living,” he said. 
      Wolfe calls the Christian life ‘progressive, not static.’ “If you’re not growing spiritually, then you’re not really what God wants you to be, and you’re not pleasing God,” he said. “I think that, in your Christian life, God begins to teach you spiritual truths through many individuals and through your own personal study of the Bible. Then, as you understand those spiritual truths, they become a part of your life and help you grow into Christ’s likeness.” 
      One of those spiritual truths concerns the lordship of Jesus Christ. “Jesus is not just Saviour, but Lord,” he said. “We belong to Him, and He is to be in absolute control of our lives. While we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, the Holy Spirit needs to have all of us. We need daily to be emptied of self and sin and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 
      Another spiritual truth concerns the significance of prayer. “You can do a lot of things after you pray, but you can’t do anything until you do pray,” he said. “I read books on prayer and started prayer ministries in the churches that I pastored. Prayer is important to all that we do. “Another spiritual truth that really helped me go to another level spiritually and grow is the understanding of spiritual warfare. We are in a spiritual battle, and Satan is a real being. 
      “So, as I began to understand these truths and incorporate them into my life, I began to use them in preaching and teaching in my church.” 
      Wolfe’s favorite Scripture is II Corinthians 4:5. “That’s my life’s scripture,” he said, “For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.” 
      His favorite book of Scripture from which to preach is Hebrews. “I think it connects the Old Testament with the New Testament,” he said. “I think it shows how it all blends together.” 
      He preaches from the New King James version, but uses different versions from which to study and compare. 
      He enjoys reading works by the late preacher A.W. Tozer. “I love his writings,” he said. “He’s my favorite.” 
      Wolfe has written two books, The Divine Pattern and It’s Not an Easy Road…But Jesus. 
      In preparation for his sermons, he said that what is most important is to know the message that God has for him to use for a particular service. “I pray and ask God, ‘What do you want me to preach?’ The major thing is to find out which direction God wants you to go, and then study the Scriptures and let the Scriptures say what they say and apply the Scriptures to daily life.” 
      He remembers his first sermon, which he preached in 1957 at Central Baptist Church in York, South Carolina. He preached from Romans 1:16: For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. “I remember it well,” he said. “I was nervous as I could be. I thought that I had really prepared and that it was going to take me at least 30 minutes. But I was through in 10 minutes, so I had to go back over it again. That’s not my problem now—I preach a long time.” 
      One of his favorite sermons to preach is entitled, Overcoming, Not Overcome. “It’s about how not to be overcome by your circumstances,” he said. “God never intended for us to live under our circumstances, but He intended for us to live above our circumstances. With Biblical truths and the power of the Holy Spirit, we don’t have to be overcome by our circumstances, but we can overcome them. 
      “I have a sermon on how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and I have a sermon on the lordship of Christ. I have a sermon entitled, What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do, out of II Chronicles 20.” 
      Wolfe admires the writings and teaching of the Apostle Paul. 
      “I have a great admiration for Peter,” he added. “He messed up a lot, but Jesus kept reclaiming him and restoring him, and he finished well. 
      “Those two (Paul and Peter) are different types of characters, but both of them really speak to me, and I have a great admiration for them.” 
      Wolfe describes the ministry of preaching the Gospel as ‘a lifestyle.’ “You have to live what you preach,” he said. “By the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of Jesus, you live the Gospel, which is the Good News, and then you preach the Gospel. Preaching the Gospel comes out of a lifestyle—a lifestyle of surrender, a lifestyle of commitment, a lifestyle of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Preaching the Gospel is not an event. It’s a lifestyle. And you preach out of the overflow of your walk with God. As you walk with God, you preach out of that lifestyle, what Christ means to you and what He has done in your life and what He has taught you.
      “Christianity has to be seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. All of the life of a branch comes out of the vine, so we have to abide in Jesus. We have to be yielded and surrendered, and trust in, rely on, and cling to Jesus, and let Him be our life. As we stay close to Him and allow Him to be our life, we trust in Him, rely on Him, cling to Him, then He will be all we need. As we walk with Him and let Him be our life, then we’ll be the person God created us to be. Christianity is a person—Jesus Christ. Eternal life is a person—Jesus. It’s all about a relationship and fellowship with Jesus. 
      “Religion is outward pressure to keep the rules. Christianity is an inner change. Christianity is when Jesus comes in you, and you start loving God and serving God and obeying God—not because you have to, but because you want to. 
      “When God created us, He created us for a purpose, and that purpose is for our lives to bring glory to God. He can be our personal God. Real living comes when our sins are forgiven and our guilt and shame are gone and Jesus Christ comes to live inside us. Real living is when we know the God who created us and have fellowship with Him, and Jesus becomes a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Real living is when we find a new power and a new purpose when Jesus Christ lives in our lives. I would say that you’ve really not started living until Jesus Christ comes to live in your life.” 
      Wolfe’s mission is to make certain that his life glorifies the Lord. “I want God to be glorified in my life,” he said. 
      “The Lord’s Prayer says it well: ‘Hallowed be your name.’ God’s name is to be glorified. ‘Your kingdom come and Your will be done.’ I want God to be glorified in my life, because His kingdom came in my life, and His will was done in my life. I want to be remembered as a man whose life glorified God—the One who created me, the One who redeemed me, and the One who gives me life. I want my life to glorify God, glorify Jesus—That’s the bottom line."



      Link: www.brotherfred.com