The Wrecking Ball that Brought Down FBC Jax: Blow Number 1, Homer Died

Before going any further, let's be clear about something.

First Baptist Jacksonville is not dead. The church still exists, it still has a significant ministry, and under Heath Lambert it has made the painful decisions necessary to get itself back onto solid financial footing.

But let's not kid ourselves about what happened either.

The First Baptist Jacksonville of the 1980s and 1990s, the church that was once one of the largest and most influential churches in America is gone.

This was once a church that drew enormous crowds into downtown Jacksonville every Sunday. It hosted one of the premier pastors' conferences in the country. Its pastors were nationally known Southern Baptist leaders. Its downtown campus sprawled across city blocks, and in 1993 it opened an approximately 11,000-seat Main Auditorium because, amazingly enough, they actually needed the seats.

Today, First Baptist isn't even close to being the largest church in metropolitan Jacksonville, much less one of the largest churches in America.

And perhaps nothing illustrates that decline better than what is happening right now to the Main Auditorium.

They're tearing the thing down.

For those of us who were actually sitting inside that building when it opened in 1993, that's difficult to comprehend. This isn't some 120-year-old sanctuary with rotting floorboards and bats living in the steeple. The building is barely more than 30 years old.

The auditorium isn't being demolished because First Baptist Jacksonville ceased to exist.

It is being demolished because the First Baptist Jacksonville that needed an 11,000-seat auditorium ceased to exist.

That's an important distinction.

And that's what I mean when I say the wrecking ball came twice.

The literal wrecking ball is arriving now. The figurative wrecking ball began swinging years ago as the church lost thousands of members, financial resources, national influence and ultimately much of the downtown campus that generations of First Baptist members sacrificed to build.

Heath Lambert eventually inherited the aftermath. To his credit, Lambert made some extraordinarily difficult decisions. He sold property, dramatically reduced the church's footprint and put First Baptist on a sustainable financial course.

But by then, the old First Baptist Jacksonville empire had already been decimated.

So while we're watching the Main Auditorium come down, I thought it might be interesting to go back through nearly two decades of Watchdog history and ask a rather obvious question:

How in the world did we get here?

How does one of America's great megachurches go from needing an 11,000-seat auditorium to watching that same auditorium demolished barely three decades after opening it?

It wasn't one thing.

The wrecking ball swung several times.

I'm going to look at what I believe were the five biggest blows.

And here is blow number one.

Blow #1: Homer Died, and Nobody Was Looking Out for First Baptist Anymore

It would be tempting for me to rewrite history and claim that First Baptist's problems began when church leadership stopped listening to ordinary members.

But longtime First Baptist members would laugh at that one.

Let's be honest.

Homer Lindsay wasn't exactly running a congregational democracy.

Homer ran First Baptist Jax.

Jerry Vines, Homer's co-pastor beginning in the mid-1980s, was the magnificent preacher in the pulpit. But Homer was the guy running the church.

Homer didn't spend his time traveling around the country building the Homer Lindsay Ministries brand. He wasn't constantly looking for the next conference, book deal or opportunity to expand his national profile. Homer was in Jacksonville. He knew what was happening at First Baptist because First Baptist was his life.

And let's not romanticize the governance structure either. The trustees weren't exactly sitting around a mahogany conference table carefully exercising independent oversight over Homer Lindsay.

Homer made the decisions. The trustees knew Homer made the decisions. The congregation knew Homer made the decisions. And Homer knew everybody knew Homer made the decisions.

That was First Baptist Jacksonville.

And Homer didn't particularly care for critics either. Homer would have hated this blog.

Years later, after Homer had died, Vines had retired and the Watchdog was in full swing, Vines returned to preach at the Pastors' Conference. During his sermon he talked about what he did with anonymous critical letters, and therefore presumably anonymous blogs.

He threw them away.

And, as I remember it, he joked that he would spit on them first.

The crowd loved it and giggled and clapped. 

So spare me any revisionist history about the golden age of First Baptist leadership carefully considering anonymous criticism, distributing member surveys and holding listening sessions.

[Revision after posting: I have to be fair to Heath Lambert - one of the aspects of his leadership when he was leading the church through the massive restructuring: huge personnel cuts, selling properties, etc., was he actually held town hall meetings where members could step up to an open microphone and ask questions or air grievances. That was absolutely unheard of in FBC Jax history! Imagine ANY mega church having an open microphone session, live streamed online and posted to YouTube!!  So it certainly was a different day under Heath's leadership as he led them through the darkest period of the church's history]

That wasn't First Baptist Jacksonville.

But there was one enormous difference between the Homer era and what followed.

Homer loved that church.

Whatever you think about his leadership style - and there was plenty to criticize for sure - Homer had a vision for First Baptist Jacksonville. He believed that enormous downtown campus existed to build the church and fulfill what he believed was the Great Commission.

He wasn't building a personal brand.

He wasn't using First Baptist to sell Homer Lindsay books transcripted from his sermons.

He didn't negotiate the intellectual rights to his sermons.

He wasn't selling cruises like "Sail the Danube with the Lindsays" or "Holy Land with Homer" trips

First Baptist wasn't a platform for Homer Lindsay Enterprises, LLC.

It was First Baptist Church of Jacksonville.

Then Homer died.

And in hindsight, I believe that may have been the first swing of the wrecking ball.

As Heath Lambert himself chronicled years later in his podcast series "What Happened at FBC Jax," the decline in membership and attendance began around 2000. Interesting timing.

Because First Baptist's problem wasn't simply that enormous authority had been concentrated in a few hands.

Let's be more accurate.

It had been concentrated largely in one hand: Homer's.

The problem was what happened when Homer disappeared but the system didn't.

First Baptist still had a congregation conditioned to trust its senior leadership. It still had enormous financial resources. It still had tremendous institutional prestige. It still had trustees accustomed to deferring to the senior pastor.

What it didn't have anymore was Homer Lindsay standing there making sure that First Baptist Jacksonville came first.

And slowly, in my view, other interests began creeping in.

I wrote about events such as "A Time to Stand With Israel," which I believed had precious little to do with the actual mission of First Baptist Jacksonville and looked much more like a fundraising enterprise taking advantage of the church's enormous platform.

My criticism of that event apparently didn't win me any Christmas cards from the powerful layman who helped coordinate it. In fact, I have long believed my criticism of that event helped seal my fate when it came to the extraordinary efforts eventually undertaken to discover the identity of the anonymous Watchdog blogger.

Then there was the once-great Pastors' Conference.

I watched something that had been a genuine ministry of First Baptist Jacksonville increasingly resemble a Christian marketing convention.

Products. Promotions. Celebrity preachers. Cruises with the pastor. Holy Land trips.

Apparently the Great Commission needed a travel agent.

Somewhere along the way, it seemed to me that the question changed.

The old question was:

"How can First Baptist use its resources and the sacrificial giving of its members, to accomplish its mission?"

Increasingly, the question seemed to become:

"How can this enormous audience and platform be used to advance the interests and opportunities (and pocketbook) of the senior pastor?"

And that distinction matters.

Homer Lindsay could be controlling. He could be stubborn. He could run the church with an iron fist.

But I never doubted whose interests Homer believed he was protecting.

First Baptist Jacksonville's.

Once Homer was gone, the church retained all the vulnerabilities of the system he had created: concentrated authority, tremendous institutional prestige, trustees accustomed to deferring to the senior pastor, and a congregation conditioned for decades to blindly trust the man behind the pulpit.

What it no longer had was Homer.

And perhaps that was the first swing of the wrecking ball.

The one hitting the Main Auditorium today is just a lot easier to see.

Wrecking Ball Blow #1.

Stay tuned.

We've got four more swings to go.

The Wrecking Ball Came Twice...

...the real demolition of FBC Jax occurred years ago when the first wrecking ball arrived. But now the literal wrecking ball is taking down the main auditorium to make way for a Publix and 11 stories of condominiums. 

A few weeks ago I stopped by the old First Baptist Jacksonville auditorium, where demolition is underway. I've included some of my own photos from a few weeks ago, and some more recent ones that were in the newspaper this week after more demolition has occurred (credited to David Bauerlein and Florida Times Union)

I'll admit, it was a little emotional.

My young family and I were there when this building opened in 1993. At the time, it represented an exciting new chapter in the church's history, and over the next three decades countless worship services, concerts, weddings, funerals, and other significant moments took place inside its walls. For many of us, there are a lot of memories attached to this place.

That's why it's hard to see a building that's only about thirty years old already facing demolition.

The sad reality is that it didn't have to end this way. As downtown Jacksonville experiences a remarkable resurgence, with new residential development, major investment around the Jaguars stadium, and renewed interest in urban living; FBC Jax could have remained an important part of that story.

Instead, years of financial mismanagement, institutional arrogance, and pastors and their sycophants more interested in enriching themselves and their families, left the church with impossible decisions. By the time Heath Lambert became senior pastor, there really were no easy options left. Selling portions of the downtown campus, including this auditorium, wasn't a visionary choice as much as it was a necessary one to deal with the financial realities he inherited.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some photos, memories, and reflections as this chapter in First Baptist Jacksonville's history comes to a close. Kudos to the current FBC Jax pastor, Heath Lambert, for doing what was necessary to save the church from the years of mismanagement that led to the arrival of the second wrecking ball.

The Great Myth of “I’ll Be Happy When This Is Over”

The Watchdog is turning 62 this year, which means two things are now undeniably true:

1. I’ve spent a lot of years confidently believing things that turned out not to be true.

2. I now recognize just how stubborn I was about letting go of them.

For most of my adult life, I believed in what I now recognize as a complete fairy tale: Once I get past this season of trouble, then I’ll be happy. You know the story. Just get through this financial stress. Just get past this conflict. Just survive this season. Then, finally, peace, joy, happiness, a hammock, and maybe a gentle breeze.

Spoiler alert: that day never comes.

Trouble never really leaves. It recedes for a while, then comes back from a different direction. Different decade, different problem. Same reality.

When you’re young, the trouble feels dramatic and urgent. When you’re middle-aged, it’s heavier and more complicated. When you’re older, it’s maybe more tame but more relentless. Some troubles are big. Some are long. Some are short. But even the short ones have a nasty habit of being replaced by something else waiting just around the corner.

I honestly thought, well into adulthood, that someday trouble would finally be behind me. As if life were a math problem you eventually solve and then close the book.

Turns out, life is not a math problem. It’s a recurring quiz.

And here’s a verse that finally wrecked my illusion, even though I’d heard it my whole life:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
James 1:2–3

Notice what that verse does not say. It does not say, “Be joyful after the trial.” It does not say, “Hang on until happiness arrives later.” It says consider it joy when you face trials. Not because the trouble is good, but because trouble is unavoidable, and how you respond to it is where maturity is forged.

That realization took me nearly 60 years to grasp, I mean to really understand it. I suppose when you hit 60, you start to see the end in sight and part of this has caused me to realize this about trouble. When I shared this hard-earned insight with my wife, she simply said, “I’ve always known that.” And of course she had. Same truth, same destination, she just didn’t need decades to figure out that trouble isn’t a detour in life; it’s the road.

That’s not Christian fluff. That’s ancient, hard-earned wisdom.

Some of my preachers tried to tell me this for years. I distinctly remember Homer Lindsey coming back again and again to one simple idea: thankfulness. He leaned heavily on this verse:

“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
1 Thessalonians 5:18

Notice the precision of the language. It doesn’t say give thanks for all circumstances. It says in all circumstances. That’s not denial. That’s discipline. That’s learning how to live without postponing gratitude until life finally behaves itself.

Paul says something similar from a much more personal angle:

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances…whether living in plenty or in want.”
Philippians 4:11–12

Contentment, according to Paul, was something learned over time. In my wife’s case, though, it really does seem to be part of who she is. Through ups and downs, through seasons of real difficulty, she has consistently been content in a way that never depended on circumstances cooperating. I lived right next to that example for decades, and somehow still managed to miss the lesson.

Recently, I found myself having a conversation with one of my adult children who is going through a genuinely difficult and emotionally painful season. And I had to admit something that surprised even me: that it wasn’t until I was about 60 years old that I finally learned this lesson. I told them that when trouble comes, even severe trouble, you eventually have to accept that this is part of life, and that waiting for it to end before allowing yourself joy is a losing strategy. You have to enjoy the journey somehow. You have to appreciate what you have now. I had to admit to my adult child that I lived most of my life not realizing that I was actually in the best years of my life, and was stupidly waiting for a better time to come!

I also told them something else that felt important to say out loud. While I may not be facing severe trouble at this exact moment, I know full well that something is always waiting around the corner. Jerry Vines always said "you're either in a storm, coming out of a storm, or about to go into a storm". I could get sick. My wife could get sick. Our elderly parents could get sick. Life has no shortage of ways to remind you that control is an illusion. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make you wise; it just delays the lesson.

That conversation is part of why I’m writing this.

What Homer was really saying, and what I was too stubborn to learn was this: If you wait for trouble to leave before you allow yourself to be happy, you will die waiting.

Money won’t save you from this. People love to believe that financial success is a force field against trouble. It’s not. Money simply upgrades the class of problems you get. A lack of money causes trouble. Having money causes a different kind of trouble. Lose it? Trouble. Manage it? Trouble. Protect it? Trouble. Argue about it? Trouble.

Pick your poison.

Health issues don’t wait for your bank account. Family conflict doesn’t care about your retirement plan. Aging doesn’t pause because you finally got things “figured out.”

Another verse says it even more bluntly when Jesus himself said:

“In this world you will have trouble.”
John 16:33

Not might. Not occasionally. Will.

The lie we tell ourselves is that happiness is the absence of trouble. It isn’t. Happiness, real happiness, is learning to live inside the trouble without being owned by it.

I no longer wait for the storm to pass before I allow myself peace. I don’t postpone joy until the next chapter. I don’t tell myself, Just get through this, then you can breathe. Because there is always another “this.”

The secret, if you want to call it that, that my wife has always known is learning to be content, grateful, and even joyful while life is doing what life has always done: being hard.

I’m thankful I finally learned that. Late, yes. But better late than still believing the lie at 80.

Trouble isn’t leaving. That’s okay.

I don’t need it to.

Magical Thinking, Flashbangs, Lost Fingers, and the New Fundamentalists

If you’re trying to make sense of the increasingly unhinged behavior surrounding ICE protests; blocking vehicles, wrestling armed agents, biting fingers, smashing taillights, charging officers with cars; and you’re doing it through a political lens alone, you’re going to miss the point entirely. What you’re watching isn’t political activism gone a little too far. It’s fundamentalism. And once you understand how fundamentalists actually think, the behavior stops being surprising and starts being tragically predictable.

Fundamentalists don’t live in reality the way normal adults do. They live in a story. A script. A moral drama where the outcome is already decided because they are convinced they are on the “right side of history,” or more dangerously, the “right side of God.” Reality, consequences, physics, and law enforcement procedures are just inconvenient details that are supposed to bend at the climax of the movie.

That’s why you see protesters reacting to flashbangs - such as the protestor in the viral video has her finger blown off - like they’re props in an action film. Somewhere in their brains, this isn’t a controlled explosive used by law enforcement for crowd control; it’s a grenade from a movie scene where the hero scoops it up, throws it back at just the right moment, and watches the bad guy get his comeuppance while the crowd cheers. They are genuinely surprised when the real world doesn’t follow the screenplay and they're missing half their finger in the freezing cold.

But that delusion isn’t new. I’ve seen it before. I lived around it for years in religious fundamentalism.

Religious fundamentalists routinely make life-altering decisions based on the belief that reality will be overridden by divine intervention. They’re told explicitly that if they tithe ten percent, God will protect their finances. Your refrigerator won’t break. Your roof won’t leak. Your kid won’t wreck their car. You're robbing God and inviting his curses. And if those bad things do happen? Well, you must not have tithed correctly, faithfully, or joyfully enough, or whatever.

It’s magical thinking dressed up as faith.

And while many church members quietly roll their eyes and tolerate that nonsense from their man of God, the mental framework is still there: make irrational decisions now, because a higher power will sort out the consequences later. Don’t plan. Don’t assess risk. Don’t question the premise. Don't use common sense and history as your guide to measure their words. Just act and trust the system to reward your obedience. I’ve seen this up close: people I care about, steeped in religious fundamentalism, making disastrous life decisions because they were convinced they had no choice, that obedience to God required it, armed with Bible verses and reinforced by other believers who eagerly sanctified the damage.

Now swap out God for ideology, preachers for activists and left-wing politicians, and tithing sermons for viral talking points, and you have the modern ICE protester.

They honestly believe that law enforcement will somehow stop behaving like law enforcement because their cause is righteous enough. They block vehicles as if federal agents will politely reverse course. They grab officers as if guns are just decorative accessories. They kick patrol cars, bite agents, charge with weapons on them, spit on them, and seem genuinely shocked when the situation escalates exactly the way it always does and always has for decades.

In their minds, they aren’t obstructing federal law enforcement; they’re playing the hero. They imagine the scene ending with the bad guys exposed, the crowd applauding, and history vindicating them. What they don’t imagine, because fundamentalists never do, is the part where reality asserts itself and people get seriously injured or killed.

This is the same mindset that convinces a church member to give away money they can’t afford to lose because “God will work it out.” and they must do it to show obedience. It’s the same mindset that convinces a protester that running a car toward armed agents is a symbolic act or a heroic act, instead of a potentially fatal one. The belief system differs, but the brain wiring is identical.

Fundamentalism always disconnects people from consequences. It trains them to believe outcomes are certain because their cause is pure. And when that belief collides with the real world: with laws, weapons, physics, and human reactions and predictable human behavior, the result is chaos.

That’s why none of this can be explained by “passion” or “anger” alone. Plenty of people are passionate without being delusional. What you’re watching is what happens when adults are taught over and over that thinking is optional and obedience to the narrative is everything.

And here’s the cruel irony: the same people who mock religious believers for trusting invisible forces are now trusting an invisible moral force to suspend reality on their behalf.

It never does.

Fundamentalism always promises a miracle. Reality always collects the bill.

The Church of Outrage and Its Willing Martyrs

Watching recent videos of protesters screaming at federal officers: “Shoot me, shoot me, you cowards”, brought a realization into focus that had been forming for a while. Not about immigration policy. Not about ICE tactics. About fundamentalism. Specifically, how dangerous it gets when people are duped to believe things with religious-level certainty that they cannot possibly know to be true, or that are outright falsehoods.

And yes, I say that as someone who used to be a card-carrying religious fundamentalist. I raised my family in it. I lived it at First Baptist Jacksonville. I believed deeply, sincerely, and confidently. I made decisions, sometimes big ones, based on convictions that I assumed were true because I was told they were true, wanted them to be true because there was a bible verse attached, and I had very convincing and maybe even sincere pastors confirming by beliefs.

Here’s the uncomfortable realization: the modern left has created its own version of religious fundamentalism, and the parallels are eerie.

These protesters didn’t wake up one morning and decide, “I think I’ll charge federal officers today.” They’ve been catechized. Indoctrinated. Told over and over by their "preachers" that ICE is the modern Gestapo, that federal agents are essentially Hitler’s stormtroopers, and that mass roundups are happening indiscriminately, with no law, no process, no restraint. Say it often enough. Say it loudly enough. Wrap it in moral outrage. Eventually, people believe it.

That’s fundamentalism. And the preachers are the leftist politicians in Minnesota and Congress and their allies in legacy media.

When you believe something absolutely, without evidence, without nuance, without the ability to question, you stop thinking. You train your brain to believe things that aren't true that you wish were true, or that must be true to maintain your belief structure. You start acting. And that’s where things get dangerous.

Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with having strong convictions. There is nothing wrong with opposing immigration policy. There is nothing wrong with thinking ICE is heavy-handed, misguided, or even wrong. Adults can disagree about policy. That’s normal. That’s healthy.

What’s not healthy is believing, without proof, contrary to available evidence, that ICE agents are literal Nazis, and then acting as if that belief justifies screaming in their faces, physically interfering with them, resisting arrest, or, in some cases, bringing weapons into the mix. At that point, you’re not protesting policy; you’re role-playing a dystopian fantasy that someone else wrote for you.

I recognize this because I’ve seen it before; just with a different flag and different slogans.

Religious fundamentalists do this all the time. I've seen it happen to people I love. They make objectively bad life decisions because they’re convinced “God will work it out.” No planning. No wisdom. Ignoring evidence, ignoring "common knowledge" of human behavior. They seek out confirmation and ratification from fellow believers. Just blind confidence that the universe will bend around their beliefs. When it doesn’t, they’re shocked. Offended. Angry. Someone else must be to blame, and they're left to pick up the pieces and make sense of what happened to them.

Now watch the left-wing version unfold in real time.

Religious fundamentalism has always followed a predictable structure, and that’s exactly why it’s so easy to spot once you’ve lived inside it. There are the preachers, the authoritative voices who tell you what is true and what must never be questioned. There are the elders and enforcers, the ones with institutional power who decide who’s in and who’s out. There are the faithful, repeating the approved language, and the converts, freshly awakened and often the most zealous of all. There are the slogans; short, emotionally loaded phrases that substitute for thinking. There are the sacred beliefs, declared to be rock-solid facts even when they rest on little more than repetition and moral intimidation. And, of course, there are the heretics; anyone who questions the narrative is treated as dangerous, immoral, or evil. Strip away the Bible verses and replace them with activist talking points, trade pastors for politicians and influencers, and swap altar calls for TikTok videos, and you’re looking at the exact same religious system. Different scripture. Same unquestioned certainty. Same demand for obedience.

Truth is federal officers are executing lawful duties. You may hate the law. You may hate the policy. But they are not freelance vigilantes. When protesters physically interfere with law enforcement, wrestling, resisting, blocking vehicles, screaming provocations, they’re not engaging in civil disobedience. They’re gambling with reality. And reality doesn’t care how righteous you feel. You won't find me in any circumstance wrestling one of our JSO officers, as I know where that will lead.

What, exactly, do they think is going to happen when you rush armed officers? That they’ll drop their badges, join hands, and sing protest songs? That the law will suddenly evaporate because you feel strongly enough?

This is what happens when moral certainty replaces critical thinking.

And here’s where the irony gets rich.

The only modern president who actually sent armed federal agents to seize a terrified child at gunpoint on live television, was Bill Clinton, during the seizure of Elian González. A five-year-old. Guns drawn. Door kicked in. Photo for the history books. That is not what is happening today in Minnesota, but the leftist faithful are told it is.

Funny how that part of history never seems to make the protest posters.

Instead, we get hyperventilated analogies, historical illiteracy, and the moral equivalent of speaking in tongues, lots of noise, zero clarity. Political "preachers" jazzing up the religious leftist faithful into making really bad choices.

I’m not defending ICE as flawless. I’m not sanctifying federal power. I’m pointing out something far more unsettling: when people are trained to believe lies with absolute conviction, they will eventually act on them. And when that happens, whether in churches or on the streets, people get hurt.

Fundamentalism isn’t confined to pews anymore. It just changed costumes.

And that should worry all of us.