Banners Unfurled grew out of the street ministry of Bro. Ken Lansing and his wife, Freida. This is a small look at their Beginnings!

Freida and I, Ken, were both saved as young people under the ministry of a man named Michael Pearl. Mike, who many people now know as the head of No Greater Joy Ministries, and author of the widely read and greatly used book, To Train Up a Child, was a young single man who was pastoring a church in Millington, Tennessee called Southside Baptist Church.

It was the Vietnam war era and there were thousands of young servicemen being trained in Millington, so under Bro. Mike Pearl´s ministry, the church began to sponsor a coffee house type ministry, with a band called the "Scarlet Thread". Shad Williams headed up the band and Mike would preach afterwards. Mike had attended Memphis College of Art, so as an artist, he frequently illustrated his sermons by drawing as he preached. Freida was saved as a result of this church ministry in 1969, although she had heard Mike preach at a servicemen´s center in downtown Memphis and at a Youth for Christ rally when she was seventeen. She had been raised in a strong Christian family and I had no real Christian background.

In 1970, I visited the church, as a drugged out hippie without hope and without God. I looked so bad that a man in the church said that if I messed with any of the girls there he would kill me!! Thankfully, though in November, 1970, I saw myself as a hell-deserving sinner and trusted Jesus Christ to save me. My life has never been the same. I began attending Mid South Bible College (now Victory University) since Mike had graduated from there. However, Freida and I married in April of 1972 and later both graduated from the Pensacola Bible Institute.

Mike influenced my life, not only in my salvation, but also in my believing that I should be an aggressive witness. Early on, he took us outside the church in witnessing endeavors which took place on the street where we preached to those in movie lines, or held meetings from the back of a flatbed truck. In 1971, I started going alone to the Highland Strip, which was a hangout for the Memphis State University students and various other young people. Although I got much more street preaching experience at the Bible institute, in a very real sense, the seed was planted in those early days under Mike's ministry.

In 1981 I created my first street preaching banner to use while I preached in festival crowd situations. This enabled me to get something above the crowd´s head that would still preach even when I couldn´t talk personally to people.

I have now preached and witnessed to tens of thousands of lost souls on Beale Street in Memphis, and trust that in eternity I´ll see the value of it all. But it all started in a little country church in Millington, Tennessee in 1970.

To God Be The Glory!