Editor:  Dr. Jones, as you move into retirement from the pastorate and redirection of your ministry, how would you like to be remembered?"

Jones:  “I would like to be remembered as a man of God. I want to be known as a man of God who lived among my people and was sold out absolutely to the things of God. All else is nothing. The size of the pastorate or the impact of some of the things we call important really is nothing. It’s just that He (Jesus)
would be Lord of all.” 

  Dr. M. Randall Jones has served God as a full-time evangelist since retiring as Pastor from Langston Baptist Church in Conway, South Carolina in November, 2005. 
Jones led his congregation for 29 years.

Editor:  Describe what it is like to you having been with one congregation for so many years.

Jones: “Being a long-time pastor is like being a dad,” Jones said, in an interview with The Christian View. Blessings of his ministry, he said, have included the joy of seeing people saved and also watching them learn to deal with life’s struggles and learn that God is able to meet every need. “To watch my people grow in faith and become victorious in their daily walk has been my grandest experience in life,” he said. “I have so many memories all wrapped up in my ministry to the lives of people,” he continued. “Some of my brightest joys have been watching God perform the miraculous in the lives of my people, both in physical healing and through divine intervention to provide needs that were humanly ‘impossible.’ My brightest joy in preaching has been to watch God take the service away from me and watch the Holy Spirit work freely in the lives of the people. That is a most wonderful thing—to know that the worship experience is not a regimen of things to do but the wonder of a person to be experienced.” 

Editor: Dr. Jones' last sermon as Pastor of Langston was on his departure and what the people should expec t in the time before them.  "How did you "pass the torch" in your final message to your people?" 

Jones: “I remember it well,” he said. “I was seeking to prepare my people for the day that I would not be their Pastor, knowing that their lives would continue on, though I would not be there. My departure would not mean that the church nor their lives would come to an end, and their need was to keep their eyes on Jesus and their faith in God and His word.”

 Jones said that he decided to retire from the pastorate and become an evangelist full-time because he felt God  was leading him in that direction. “I had planned to remain in the pastorate as long as my mental  and physical health would allow me,” he said. “But God began to deal with me, as I prayed about my place in His ministry. There was such a need to awaken churches and to reach the lost through an evangelistic thrust, my heart was overwhelmed that I should be involved full fime. For about a year, I struggled with that emotion and finally came to a place where I searched my heart and searched for direction from God and announced to my deacons that I was going to step down. It took nearly six months to prepare my people for the transition, because many of my people had never known another Pastor. Some had been born while I was there, and others I had won to Christ had never before been in church. I wanted them to know that, though I would be stepping away, God had already prepared someone who would come and lead the congregation.

 “I had begun to find a greater burden for helping other pastors and churches,” he said. “Young preachers were asking for my time to disciple them in the area of the pastorate.  While I gave as much as I felt I could, a Pastor has no more time than anybody else, and I was already stretched almost beyond my capacity, . With a hunger that I saw from these men, I began to say, ‘I want to invest my last days pouring my life into other Pastors and other churches. If I can do that, if I can build a fire in other men’s hearts, then, when I’m done here, when the hourglass has about all of the sand at the bottom, I want the work of God to go on because I came this way.’” 

  Jones was born in Easley, South Carolina to Calvin and Eva Jones.

Editor: Tell me something about your parents and background.

Jones:“They were both textile employees,” he said of his parents. “Daddy was a weaver, and Mama worked in the spinning room. They were everyday kind of folks with a rural farming background. They married young, raised a family of seven children, and kept us all in church all of our lives. Three of my sisters played the piano and organ in the church, and I directed music as a teenager. We were greatly involved in church, because my parents loved Christ with all of their hearts and instilled in us the things of the Lord.

 “I’m grateful for my Pastor,” Jones said of Rev. Horace Ellis. “It was through him that I came to know Christ as my Saviour and was baptized and became a part of Pendleton Street Baptist Church.” Jones added that Pastors who came to his home church for revival meetings impacted his life while growing up. “After all those many years, I can still remember some of the things that those men said and how God dealt with my heart during those times,” he said.

 Jones was a 12-year-old boy when he sensed God calling him to preach. “I remember it as if it were now,” he said. “It was on a Sunday night in our church when I felt God dealing with me. But several young men in our church had made a commitment to ministry, and, though I was young, I knew that I didn’t want to do something just because somebody else had. I didn’t go to my Pastor and talk with him, but instead went alone into an area in the basement of the church building and, in my prayer, asked God for a miracle sign if He was calling me to preach. He did not give me one, because, as I understand now, we walk by faith and not by sight. Had He given me a miracle, He would have had to have given me another one every time the devil tried to talk me out of it.

 “I was a high school graduate preparing to go to Clemson when God spoke to me the second time. I hate to confess it, but, at that time, I was not  where I should have been with God. I had my own plans of what I was going to do, and preaching wasn’t included. So, I turned God down, and He let me go.  “He would not speak to me again until six years later. I was serving as a deacon in Welcome Baptist Church in Laurens, South Carolina when God dealt with me. I did not go forward in the invitation, but, after I had taken my family home, I returned to the Pastor’s house and  that night, I made the commitment to submit my life to Christ as a Pastor. I shared it with my wife, and we wept and made our commitments together. I quit my job and enrolled at North Greenville College, which is today North Greenville University. From there, I went on to graduate from Furman.University.   I have both of my graduate degrees, my master’s and doctorate, from Luther Rice Seminary.”

Editor: When did you preach your first sermon?

 Jones : "I had just surrendered to preach on Sunday night.  My pastor became ill and called me on Wednesday and asked me to "fill in for him" that evening.  My first sermon was on tithing.  I'm sure that did not endear me to the people.  I did the best I knew to do, though. "

 His first pastorate was at Fairmont Baptist Church in Spartanburg County.   Editor: Tell me about your first church.

Jones: “It was a rural community,” he said. “I was there for three and a half years. I took a church that was in a state of dying. Their numbers had fallen to less than twenty-five. But, God turned it around, and the church grew dramatically and soon outgrew their facilities. We bought property to relocate, but God relocated me before I could build the new church. They subsequently went on to build on their new property.

 “I moved to Greer, where I was Pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church for six years.  During that time it was the fastest growing church in South Carolina.” 

Then, as Pastor of First Baptist Church of Warrenville, South Carolina, just outside Aiken, for two years, Jones led that church to experience new growth. “It too,was a church in a state of decline, but God turned it around,” he said. 

 “Then, for 29 years, I pastored Langston Baptist Church in Conway. It grew from a struggling church to one of the greater churches in our state with more than 3,400 members.” 

After two years at Langston, Jones founded the Langston Bible Institute.
 
Editor:  "You founded a school to train men for the Ministry.  How did that happen?"

 Jones: “When I first came to Horry County, I found that one of the associations of Baptist churches in our county had 39 churches, and 38 of them had Pastors with no formal training,” he said. “They were all bi-vocational. They were struggling, and the churches were struggling as well. Because of that need, and because I have always had a longing to be involved in an educational work to help Pastors, we started the Institute, in 1978. We set it up with the blessing and encouragement of seminary and Bible institute presidents  which I personally knew. I asked them to evaluate the proposed curriculum and to offer direction. With their help the work began.  We have graduated hundreds upon hundreds of students who have gone on to so great things for God. Some have gone on to college and seminary. One has gone on for his doctorate, and others are in the process of doing that now. The Institute has been a vital program to prepare Pastors in the region. Now, we have men scattered all over the nation who are graduates of our program.”

 Jones also founded the Coastal Evangelism Conference, which is held at Langston each August. “That has now grown to be one of the premiere conferences in the nation,” he said. “We built a new 2,440-seat auditorium last year, and we have filled it with people who have come from five states to be a part of the experience of Holy Spirit power.
 
“In my pastorates, I have always tried to bring the greatest preachers  I could, to preach to my people, and we have maintained that same kind of commitment. We have brought some of the greatest evangelists and Pastors and educators from across the nation to address the Coastal Evangelism Conference.

It has been an amazing and wonderful thing to watch as God has worked.” 

When asked what he enjoyed most about being a Pastor, Jones replied, “Sharing my heart with my people.  “I believe that Scripture says that a Pastor is to weep when his people weep and rejoice when they rejoice,” he said. “As I shared my life with them, they became a part of my own life. We became family. I enjoyed my church. I had the greatest people that anybody could ever have, every place I’ve preached. And , I am grateful for them.” 

Jones said that a man cannot be a preacher unless he also is a student. “In a church where I recently taught leadership training, I shared this acronym. I made the statement that they should practice the ‘JOY’ principle—Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last."  You can’t be a preacher without loving God, and you can’t be a preacher without loving people. You can’t be a true preacher without investing your life into the lives of others.” 

Jones advises other preachers to “Love God, Love the Word, Love your people, and  Love your family. “A man who loves God will love His Word,” he said. “A man who loves His Word will seek to impart its wisdom. And a man who loves God will love those to whom God has entrusted to his care. 

Editor:  "What does it mean to you to be a Christian?"


 Jones:  “To walk with Christ is an all-consuming experience. It’s not bound up in little compartments that we pull out at particular times, but it pervades and invades every area of my being."  

Editor:  "How do you approach the ministry of persnal evangelism?"

Jones: “Through the years, I have gone through a lot of different types of evangelistic training. I have written my own  program, which I call WISE,  "Witnessing in Spirit Expression." Through it I have trained a lot of people. Of course, I  trained my own people, throughout all of my pastorates, to be personal witnesses. "
 
Editor: " To what do you attribute your success?"

Jones: "If there is any genius to the success that I’ve had, it’s because I’ve been able to involve others in the work with me. Each person I train,  doubles my own capacity. And I have been a student of evangelists and evangelistic preaching from the time that I began as a Pastor. God is anointing and blessing the work today because my heart’s desire is to reach a world that is undone  (lost) without God. In the process of seeking the lost, I seek to  encourage churches. We have so many churches that are struggling (plateaued or dying). God is using me, not just as an evangelist but as a revivalist to once again build a fire in the hearts of Pastors and churches to help them to break out and begin to claim their community for the Lord Jesus. I don’t believe anybody ought to just maintain the status quo. We ought to always be reaching out and affecting those around us.”  

Jones said that, early in his ministry, during his first pastorate, he had wanted to be an evangelist, but that God kept him in the pastorate. “At the same time, He allowed me to do the work of an evangelist,” he added. “I’ve done hundreds of revivals and crusades.” 


  Since 1968, Jones and others who have worked with him have helped start 14 churches in Haiti. “On my first visit, (to Haiti) when I preached and saw the response of the people, I was hooked,” he said. “That was one of the more rewarding experiences of my life—seeing their hunger for Christ.” For 12 years, Jones would return to Haiti, taking teams with him to work with Pastors there. “Through the
efforts of many, Pastors and laymen alike, we began to build church buildings, drill wells as a source of clean water, and begin agricultural projects to teach
the people how to feed themselves. We had a feeding program there. We bought hundreds of thousands of pounds of rice to help feed poor children who didn’t
have anything. We built an orphanage  to house more than 100 children. I purchased sewing machines and supplies and hired a lady to teach the women how
to sew. They began to be productive on their own and made clothing they could sell. They began to find a way to take care of the needs of their families. Watching God work to turn those dear people around was an amazing and wonderful experience.

 I believe that Christianity affects the entire person and that it’s not enough just to win their souls, but you’ve got to save their lives. That’s the way I built my whole ministry—to show people that there is more to being a Christian than just going to heaven, but living in the abundance of what God has for us on a day-by-day basis.” 

 While Jones was growing up, his family influenced his life for God.  “My mother was a woman of great faith, and both of my grandmothers, Ella Jones and Daily Revis, were outstanding women of faith who had a tremendous impact on my boyhood,” he said. “They taught me many of the principles that I still build my life upon today.” 


Two high school teachers also made an impression on the young Jones. “I had an eighth grade homeroom teacher, Helen Mozingo, who probably saved me from throwing my life away,” he said.  “During my first year on the high school campus, I was in play mode and thought that all of the girls were in love with me. But that teacher cared enough for me that she made a visit to my home. That,
by itself, turned my world around, and I moved back up to the honors section of my class. That teacher  taught me so much educationally, also showed a love and concern for me.  “Then I had a 12th grade English teacher, Martha Davis, who believed in me. I was somewhat introverted.  I was embarrassed to stand and speak before people, but she saw something, apparently, that neither I nor anybody else saw. She encouraged me to enter a public speaking contest and helped me with my preparation. That one effort turned my life to a point  where I began to believe that I could do more than  I, or maybe anyone else expected that I could do. "

Editor:  "Who are some of the preachers who have influenced your life?"

Jones: “A number of preachers have impacted my life,” he added. “Dr. W.A. Criswell was one of my heroes, and I hold dear today the chance that I had to meet him and personally talk with him and communicate with him by mail a few times. I read everything he ever wrote. I believed that if Criswell said it was it just about like the Bible itself, that it was Gospel, and I could build my life on the kind of principles  he had. 

“My prince of preachers was D.L. Moody, the great evangelist who rocked not only America but Europe for God. He had a speech impediment, but he was able to overcome that. He built one of the greatest churches and founded what is still one of the  great Christian schools in the world. As an evangelist, he won hundreds of thousands of people to Christ.  In my early days, as a student and  a Pastor, Moody became my ideal. Of course, I had never heard him. He was dead before I ever came along. But he has really impacted my life. 

  “I became a student of biographies of great men and looked for keys in their life that I felt would help me to do my own work for the Lord. “There have been other contemporary teachers and preachers who have been an
encouragement to me, and, for each one of them, I am eternally grateful.” 

Editor:  "What role does your wife play in your ministry?"

Jones: "The greatest influence by far in my life has been my wife. “My greatest encourager has been my wife, Juanita,” he said. “We met while we were students at Easley High School. During the years when I was a college student, we were already married and had four children. I got my education via the ‘hard road.’ We were so poor! 

Before going to college,  I had been employed in secular business in the insurance industry and I was fairly successful, making more money than I ever dreamed that I could.  When I surrendered to preach and went back to college, We took a 75% cut in pay. She did not have a new dress for three years.  But she was willing to sacrifice and stay home with the children , while I worked  the second shift in the mill and went to school all day. She never complained, and, when I would want to quit, she was there to encourage me to keep going on. She has become my greatest supporter and prayer partner to this day.” 

The Joneses have five grown children, their youngest having been born after he went to his first pastorate. “My eldest is Kimberly Hucks,” he said.
“She is married to a Baptist Pastor. They have a large and growing church, running about 1,000 in worship. I have twin sons, Richard and Robert. They have a clothing business together, and Robert is also a bi-vocational Pastor and is planting a new work in Hemingway, South Carolina.  Our next son is David, and he is the Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Lincolnton, North Carolina. My youngest son, Christopher, is an insurance manager and also a Gospel singer and has recorded several projects.” 


  The Joneses have six grandchildren: Joshua, Jonathan , and Lydia Hucks, Christopher Paul Jones II, Maggie Lynn Jones, Leah Grace Jones.

. 
  This past year, Jones has been able to spend more time with family, as well as play golf, a sport he enjoys. He has also had more time to select what he chooses to study. “God continues to challenge me in the area of studying the Word,” he said. Jones has written several books and is in the process of writing more. “My first effort was a book on prayer and how to maintain a daily prayer life and journal,” he said. “I’m working right now on a book on miracles, and I’m excited about that. I’m working on another on the revival we need, which I believe is a return to the empowering of the Holy Spirit in our church world.”  

Editor:  "What is your favorite  Scripture verse?"
 
Jones: "Isaiah 40:31. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. 

Editor:  "And which is your favorite book in the Bible?"

Jones: “If I had to pick a favorite book to preach from, it would be the book of Ephesians,” he said. “It gives us the keys, the principles, to victory in every facet of life. In the personal life, the book of Ephesians deals with the filling of the Spirit. In family life, the greatest treatise on marriage and home is found in chapters 5 and 6. In the area of church life, we are given the understanding of how the church is to be ordered and how we are to operate within the power of the Holy Spirit. So, if I have a favorite book, I suppose it’s the one that I’ve studied from and preached from perhaps more than any of them - Ephesians.   “But I have preached through the entire Bible. I believe that all of the Bible is important. So much of my preaching is teaching, and I preach to instruct people in the things of God. One can’t just preach on little pet passages and do all that God has instructed us to do.” Jones uses the King James Version of the Bible when preaching. “I am a student of the Word of God and study the Hebrew and Greek word studies in order to enrich my own life and to help me be able to preach and teach my people,” he added. “As a consequence of my committment as a student, have 37 different translations of the Bible that I use in my studies. I have many tools that go along with them. I have a large personal library that I have built through the years of thousands of volumes. It’s such a joy to consume the Word of God on a daily basis. I never grow tired of my Bible study. I maintain my quiet time with God today, just like I did when I was in the pastorate, and I study every day, just like I did when I was in the
pastorate.  

Editor:  "What are you reading right now?"

 “I still enjoy reading biographical type materials,” he added. “I’m reading one book which is a compilation of sermons by one of my evangelist friends. Another one I’ve just finished is a book of stories that one of our  great  christian educators shares from his childhood about how God used people in his life to prepare him for what he has become. I am reading a book on praying the Proverbs, which is an exciting experience. It becomes not only just reading the book but then praying each portion of it.  It’s a prayer journal designed to cover a year. I am also reading another book on encounters with Christ, which is a study with a number of different men on how they met Christ and what effect He has had upon their life. And I’m reading a book on Bible questions and answers, written by Dr. Elmer Townes, one of my friends. I find it to be a blessing, that he addresses so many different areas of life. He gives rather concise yet realistic answers from the Bible.  “I am always reading something. I read every day.”

  Jones said that, when he was in the pastorate, he would begin every Sunday night on the following week’s sermon. “I would look at the Scripture and lay down a basic outline of what I was going to be preaching the next Sunday,” he said. “Then, throughout the week, I studied various materials and the Scriptures themselves, doing word study and other things in order to put the ‘meat’ on the ‘skeleton.’ Then, by Friday, I had finished that work, and usually on Saturday I locked myself in my study and did not come out until I was ready to go before my people for Sunday morning and Sunday night and share the Word of God. I might add that the same was true for Wednesday. “Several sermons I have enjoyed preaching, and God has really used them to light my own fire and keep me aware of who He is. 


 One of my favorite sermons is "Worthy is the Lamb."  I have another sermon that has been preached by me and by others through the years on the wedding feast, entitled ""Here Comes the Bride. "  Another one I have really enjoyed preaching is about the woman who was healed of an issue of blood, which I call ‘Fingertip Faith.’ Another one is   "WhenJesus Passed By" in which I do an allegorical type presentation of the change that Jesus brought and used to encourage people to know that the same Christ who met Zacchaeus is still passing by today.”
 

      Jones has been influenced by sermons from other evangelists. “Dr. R.G. Lee’s most famous sermon was Payday Someday,” he said. “I don’t know the number
of times I have listened to that, and I don’t know how many thousands of times he preached it. 
  Dr. J. Harold Smith was a man who impacted my life greatly, and his sermon God’sThree Deadlines really touched my heart.”Jones has also been influenced by songs, especially the old hymns. “I love singing, and I love the hymns,” he said. “I believe that one of the greatest problems the church has today is that the church is deserting the hymns. As a people, we have learned our theology from singing hymns. I suppose that my favorite of all of the hymns is "When They Ring Those Golden Bells," a song about going to heaven. A companion to that is a song that most people have never heard, called It’s Real."  I know that my relationship with Christ is real. I love all of the hymns. I love "Holy, Holy, Holy,"  "Down at the Cross," "At Calvary," "When We All Get To Heaven"—all of those are on my list of favorites.” 


  The Apostle Paul is a hero of the faith whom Jones admires from Scripture and whose life he has studied. “It’s amazing to me , how any man could accomplish what he did in a lifetime,” he said. “I suppose all of the apostles are heroes, and I have studied their lives and have written brief presentations of who they were and what it cost them to be a disciple. I suppose that Peter comes closer to where I live. He had great desires, but he kept showing his human frailty and making his mistakes, and that just reminds me that, if God can use Peter, He can use me. 

  “I’m in the process of restudying and making a
commitment afresh and discovering that the wisdom of Solomon is beyond most of our comprehension. I just can’t take in all that God gave to Solomon as Solomon asked only that God would give him wisdom and understanding. When he sought the things of God, God
gave him all of the other! My journey in the Proverbs is an exciting experience for me right now. 

 “I would encourage every Christian to set a particular time every day to meet with the Lord in reading the Bible and prayer. A person who will spend even just a few minutes with Him at the beginning of the day will find that his life will be richer and fuller than he ever thought it could be. The biggest failure in the Christian world today is the millions of Bibles that are never opened and the millions of Christians who pray only when they’re in need. I believe we ought to work at loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and being, and that will only happen when we begin to read the Bible and believe the Bible and live by its principles. 

 “We have more churches than we’ve ever had, but we have less power than we’ve ever known. We still say that we’re a nation under God, but there is a lot of evidence that we have put God aside. I believe that our liberal court system and educational system are doing everything they can to destroy the work of Christianity. God declared through Solomon, in II Chronicles 7:14, If my people,
which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land."  Unless we have a return to the basics, I’m not sure about the future of America.  “I believe that God loves everybody and that it’s in God’s plan that everyone be saved. John 3:16 declares that. If anyone is looking for answers for the questions of life and direction for living, they should give their heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. He stands ready to save all who will call on His name. 

  “My total outlook on life has changed since Jesus became Lord in my life. And I have learned that He is a God of might and miracles today just like He was in the days of the Bible. I experience Him that way. I have committed my life to not just living for Him, but reaching everybody I can to bring them to faith in Christ.   “Also, I believe the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God, and I build my
life on the principles that I find in the pages of His Word. It changed my whole understanding of life and eternity. 

  “Early in the days when I was seeking the Lord’s direction and then making my commitment to ministry, I discovered that the Lord who created the universe wasn’t way off yonder in heaven, but living inside of me, and the same power that spoke life and the universe into existence was available for my living day by day. When I discovered that, my faith moved to an entirely different level, and life took on new meaning and new direction. I began to find that I was living in an experiential faith where God met with me daily and where His spirit filled my life, and the Word of God began to offer new understanding and directions. Through all of my ministry, God has been so gracious to give me great people to pastor, and every church I’ve pastored has been a growing church, and people have come from near and far to feed on the Word. I’ve tried my best to teach them that the God of glory is the God of life, and, when people open their life to Him, He brings the blessings that heaven has in store and makes available to us in our daily living.”   
  Jones believes that time is precious and that we are responsible to God to use that time wisely. “For a number of years, I preached two services on Sunday morning, and I taught Sunday School for a large auditorium class. I preached on Sunday night. I taught a Bible study for senior adults on Wednesday morning and taught my people on Wednesday night. I taught in our Bible institute for three hours every week. All of that was in addition to doing the other things of the pastorate. I have learned to use every minute. I had ‘Redeem the Time’ on every
clock in our church at one time. I believe that time is of the essence and that what we do we’ve got to do with our greatest intensity in order to utilize the preciousness of time that God has given to us.”

MKB, Publisher, The Christian View