Mention “Reaching Today’s World for Jesus Christ,” which was the theme of the 2006 Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference, to Dick Lincoln, and his thoughts turn immediately to his own life.

That is why Lincoln, pastor of Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, began his message at the Pastors’ Conference in Greensboro on June 11 with a personal testimony — the story of a young man growing up without a commitment to, or even an interest in, Jesus.

“By the time I graduated from high school,” he told his audience, “I was tired of what I had become. I chose a college where it was not important who I knew or who knew me.” At that time, he said he was “a pagan more interested in partying than anything else.”

As he would discover, “Sin was my problem.”

For Lincoln, however, college would prove to be a turning point in his life. “My college roommate,” he said, “lived his faith, and for four years I watched him and saw the difference it made in his life.”

The Columbia pastor said that a church in that area had an effective outreach program — and selected his roommate’s name for visitation. “But when they came by, he wasn’t at home, so they invited me to come to church.”

Lincoln said he was thankful for “a godly roommate who was an example to me,” and then asked his audience, “What might God want you to try to reach one person like me — a person who can’t relate to your church and who might not be reached unless you make a change?”

In his sermon, Lincoln referred to 1 Corinthians 9:22 in which the apostle Paul says he became “all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”

Lincoln explained that, of course, Paul meant all things that were “within the parameters” of the Christian faith.

For the Columbia minister, it would turn out that “all things” would include a contemporary worship service at Shandon. “I didn’t like it,” he said, “and I didn’t think it would work here, but I had some godly people in my congregation who said that we should try it. I decided that I would never get these people to hush about it unless we tried it, and I figured it would fail and I would say, ‘I told you so.’”

To prevent personal embarrassment, however, Lincoln prayed that at least 300 people would attend the initial contemporary service. “There were 1,178 people in that room, and five of them accepted Christ,” he said. “Now, I can find a way to like it when nearly 1,200 people show up and five get saved.” Lincoln noted that “if I had known when I was 30 years old what I know now,” he would have had blended, contemporary, cowboy services, etc., because “I’d like to reach every type of person I could.”

Lincoln challenged the pastors to be “open and creative” or “some will not be saved,” adding, “How committed you are will make a difference in the size of heaven.”

He encouraged his audience not to “sell God short when you want to try something new to reach people.” He said that God can accomplish his work through “something that you’ve always been afraid to try.”

“Don’t be against what you simply don’t like,” he said to the pastors. “Somebody may come to Christ because you have enough tolerance to put up with something you don’t like.”