Messages by Roland Brown

Roland J. Brown was a Baptist pastor on the south side of Chicago for nearly sixteen years before leaving the pastorate to devote the rest of his life to teaching prayer and ministering to the sick. He became known at Camps Farthest Out for his direct, practical teaching and for the many stories he told of answered prayer and healing. His message was simple: take Jesus at His word, obey Him, and live in the reality of His kingdom.

Too Young to Be Baptized

Brown was converted when he was eight years old. Two of his older sisters had joined the church, and he wanted to be baptized with them. His parents and the minister decided he was too young, however, and he was not baptized. When he was fourteen, the subject came up again. By then Brown had become so convinced that his earlier profession of faith had been dismissed because of his age that he refused to be baptized. “If I wasn’t good enough to be baptized when I was eight, I’m not good enough now that I’m fourteen.”

The minister tried to persuade him simply to give his heart to Jesus, but Brown took that as an insult to something he had already settled years earlier. He stayed away from church for about a year and a half. Eventually, another boy his own age elbowed him in the ribs and told him to go forward. Brown did, and he later looked back on the experience as an important lesson in obedience. He described a remarkable experience associated with his baptism and remembered walking home afterward and thinking that he had never seen snow so white.

Parkside, Where Pastors Did Not Stay

Brown entered the ministry without the conventional theological education normally expected of a Baptist pastor. He had preached during eight summers while a settled minister was away, but he had not completed college and had no theology degree. He eventually became pastor of Parkside Baptist Church on the south side of Chicago. Friends warned him about taking the church because Parkside had gone through pastors rapidly, with some staying only about eighteen months. Brown accepted the pastorate anyway. He wanted to go where people needed Jesus. He remained at Parkside for nearly sixteen years, and the church became an important center of prayer and healing ministry.

Twenty Minutes to Convince Him It Was Sin

About two years into his pastorate, Brown became troubled by what he felt was a lack of spiritual growth in his congregation. He shut himself away with an open Bible and asked God what was wrong. The answer began with Brown himself. God brought to his attention an unkind way he had spoken to his wife and his impatience with their baby. Brown recognized that his own behavior was sin. “It took God about twenty minutes, maybe more than that, to convince me that speaking up like I did, unkindly as I did, was sin.” Then one word in 1 John 1:9 caught his attention: all.

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, KJV). “That word became the turning point in my spiritual life. It became the turning point in my ministry.”

Brown came to see the work of Christ on the cross in very personal terms. He repeatedly returned to the truth that Christ “became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, KJV). He believed that Christ had dealt completely with the problem of sin and had opened the way for people to live in a new relationship with God. The change in Brown’s own life affected his entire ministry. Prayer became central to Parkside Baptist, and the church eventually had seventeen prayer groups.

Taking Jesus at His Word

Brown had been praying for more than twenty years for the gift of healing without seeing the results he was seeking. He knew the promises of Jesus, but he had continued to regard healing as something beyond his own ministry. Eventually, he made a simple decision: he would take Jesus at His word. One passage in particular would not let him go: “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do” (John 14:12, KJV).

Brown decided that Jesus meant exactly what He said. He would begin praying for the sick—not because he considered himself to possess some special ability, but because Jesus had told His followers to do the works that He did. He refused to use the deity of Christ as a reason for dismissing Jesus’ commands as something that applied only to the Son of God.

“I can’t bring myself to the point to believe that Jesus ever cheated.” Brown studied the way Jesus ministered and paid particular attention to His words in John 5, where Jesus described doing what He saw the Father doing. Brown believed that Christians could learn to live in the same dependence upon God by keeping their eyes on Jesus. “It’s awfully easy to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, and when you’re watching Jesus you are watching God.”

From that point, Brown’s ministry changed. He began seeing healings and accumulated a lifetime of stories about people who had been helped through prayer. One case involved a man who suffered a stroke at nine o’clock one morning. By nine that evening, the man’s wife told Brown that her husband had not moved for twelve hours. Two days later, Brown said, the man was up and about and in better health than he had been before the stroke. Brown always directed attention away from the minister and back to Christ. “I believe that Jesus died for our sicknesses just as much as he died for our sins.”

In 1948, Starr Daily published Recovery, a book about the healing ministry at Brown’s church. Daily lived with the Brown family while writing it and worked through the records of the church’s healing ministry. Camps Farthest Out had already become part of Brown’s life long before his healing ministry developed. He attended his first Camp Farthest Out in 1935, when the camps lasted two weeks.

“As It Is in Heaven”

He listened to Glenn Clark for three days and decided to give him one more day. Brown was waiting to hear Clark speak about the atonement and was prepared to leave if he did not. Clark never gave Brown the message he was waiting for, but Brown stayed anyway. By the end of the camp, he had begun to see the Christian life differently. When he returned home, he preached on the words “as it is in heaven.” For two weeks at camp, he had not heard an unkind word spoken.

He bought Clark’s The Soul’s Sincere Desire, and its chapter on the lost art of Jesus led Brown into a deeper study of the life and ministry of Christ. From then on, Camps Farthest Out became an important part of his ministry. Brown’s teaching on prayer centered on what he called the “kingdom plane.” He believed prayer became effective when a person was living in Christ and walking in obedience to Him.

Prayer on the Kingdom Plane

“Prayer is not very effective when we’re over here on the worldly plane. Prayer is effective when we’re on the kingdom plane. When we’re in Christ.” For Brown, this was not a formula for getting God to answer prayer. It was a way of life. “I’m challenging you to accept Jesus as your Lord just as much as your Savior.”

He read the Sermon on the Mount as a continuous teaching. The command to ask, seek, and knock in Matthew 7 came after Jesus’ teaching on the kind of life His followers were to live in Matthew 5 and 6. Brown therefore believed that the conditions surrounding answered prayer were found throughout Jesus’ teaching. “In none of the promises that Jesus makes pertaining to prayer are conditions omitted.” Forgiveness was especially important to him. Brown repeatedly connected Jesus’ teaching about agreement in prayer with His teaching about forgiveness. He believed that Christians could not separate a life of prayer from a life of continually forgiving others.

“God’s entire plan of world and individual redemption is based on unending loving and forgiving.”

Giving Up the Salary and the City

On April 1, 1948, Brown left Parkside Baptist Church. The congregation spent three months trying to persuade him to remain, but he went forward with his decision. He gave up his salary, his church, and the city where he had lived for thirty-three years.

From then on, his ministry was devoted to teaching prayer and helping others learn to live in Christ. He and his wife, Marcia, conducted schools of prayer for many years. In 1977, Brown held one of those schools at the Methodist church in Correctionville, Iowa, where Rev. Matt W. Leach was pastor.

His ministry eventually extended around the world. Brown traveled to England for six consecutive years and ultimately made ten trips there. He and Marcia also traveled to Australia nine times, helping establish and strengthen Camps Farthest Out ministries there. Brown frequently used the expression “going all the way with Jesus.” He also returned again and again to Jesus’ commandment: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34, KJV). For Brown, the little word as was crucial. Christians were not simply told to love one another; they were told to love one another in the same way Christ loved them.

Marcia traveled with Brown and became a Camps Farthest Out speaker in her own right. Their son, Roland J. Brown Jr., became a scientist and was eventually ordained as a Baptist minister. Brown spoke at twenty-six Camps Farthest Out between 1952 and 1980, appearing at camps in the United States, Britain, Germany, Australia, and elsewhere. His ministry was characterized by the same directness that had marked his early preaching. Glenn Clark once captured that quality when introducing Brown at a camp in Japan: “When Roland got up, he’s just one of these rash, brash Baptists, he butted right in and talked about Jesus.”

Brown spent his life doing exactly that. He talked about Jesus—about His promises, His authority, His healing ministry, His command to love, and the life of obedience that follows when a person accepts Him not only as Savior, but as Lord.