The following quotes are by Jimmy Draper.

They are taken from Walking God’s Path, The Life & Ministry of Jimmy Draper by John Perry.

Bible Interpretation
“No one in his right mind wants to exercise some dictatorial authority over the legitimate bounds of interpretation. Bible-believing Christians have long differed as to the exact nature of the millennium, for example. Will Jesus Christ return before or after the Great Tribulation? Does man consist of two parts or three? Does man inherit his soul by natural generation, as he does his body, or does God create it immediately? Is God’s elective purpose for man conditional or unconditional? And the list goes on. Most Christians would agree that there is sufficient doubt about these matters that extreme dogmatism is inappropriate. Certainly these matters should not be allowed to become a barrier to fellowship and cooperative effort.” pg. 168

Benevolence
“When you pay a man not to work and care for him when he refuses to work you rob him of his pride and his self-respect. pg. 74

Change
“Change is not an option,” Brother Jimmy said in describing his ministry at Del City. “Change is inevitable. The best we can hope for is to manage change, not be victimized or marginalized by it. A good pastor keeps people from being threatened by change. A good pastor is a leader, not a driver. The people have to understand why changes are made.” pg. 110

Church
“The church is not an institution for the retention of the status quo. The church is not an institution that exists for its own enhancement or its own perpetuity. The church is an institution that is planted by God to be a witness to the saving gospel of the redemptive purposes of Almighty God through Jesus Christ. The challenge is for us to be used of God in those kinds of churches, and our blueprint is the Bible. We have a word to proclaim from God.” pg. 152-153

Evangelism
“It's important for us to understand that evangelism and truth are inseparable. Biblical evangelism requires divine truth. Divine truth requires revelation in language. Revelation in language requires the deposit of an infallible scripture. As soon as confidence is weakened in the integrity of our source material, evangelism is weakened to a corresponding degree. Without an authoritative scripture, the gospel is like a movie without a sound track, leaving us bewildered and uncertain about the future, and about the nature of the message and our salvation. There is no evangelism where His truth is not declared. That is the task of the church.” pg. 153

God's Will
“It's a mystical thing, like being saved. You feel God calling you to something different from the secular world, something of a spiritual nature. Baptists have a sense of God calling you; it's a plan God has for your life, not a vocational choice you make. I surrendered any right I had to be anything else and vowed to devote myself to the work of the Lord. pg. 40

Humility in Ministry
“To humble ourselves means to face the truth about ourselves. It means to be honest with ourselves. To humble ourselves means that we admit that the problem is with us. We as preachers particularly have become experts at what’s wrong with everybody else, and we’re always preaching and pointing our fingers, and we’re always coming to conclusions, and we’re always speaking a piece of our minds and drawing very strong conclusions about things we know very little about. You know, meeting people and praying with them has ruined some of my greatest prejudices, it really has. The truth is, the problem is with me. I am my greatest foe. It is in my heart that the battlefield is the strongest. It is in my soul and in my spirit that the temptation is the greatest…The greatest exercise that any of us could take would be to humble ourselves before God.” pg. 152

Liberal theology is… “man’s attempt to explain his concept of God rather than God’s self-disclosure and revelation to man. Repeatedly the Bible is pictured as being solely of human origin.” pg. 146

Politics
“Where two or more are gathered together, politics is inevitable.” pg. 2

Priesthood of the believer
“They are using the term, priesthood of the believer, to mean that an individual Baptist has the right to believe anything he wants to believe, and that no other Baptist has a right to say he is wrong, criticize him, or in any way interfere with his beliefs or with his teaching of those beliefs in our Baptist institutions. That, of course, is a complete distortion of the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer. According to Scripture, the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer teaches that all believers in Jesus Christ have immediate, direct access to the Father through Jesus Christ, the only Mediator, and that we do not need any other man, or any other being of any kind, to intercede for us. Those who misuse this term are invoking a doctrine that means a great deal in Baptist circles, making it apply to something to which it does not apply.” pg. 167

Relationships
“Almost all problems are people problems at their core, and that by supporting, encouraging, admonishing, equipping; rewarding – and occasionally replacing – people, virtually any problem could be solved.” pg. 216

Tradition
“If a program isn’t meaningful, change it or eliminate it.” pg. 85

Quotes By Jimmy Draper