What can be done to stop the decline of the Southern Baptist Convention? That is the question raised in this post from the Tennessean.com. I’ve read some good points on a few other blogs, but wanted to offer a few observations here.
The Conservative Resurgence was God’s work, even if it was accomplished by less than perfect leaders. Even if the results haven’t been all we hoped. When people turn back to God’s Word it is his work. Have we gone far enough? Maybe not. Giving verbal agreement to inerrancy is a good start, but we also need to look to the Bible as sufficient for our faith & practice. From my experience that is not the reality in most SBC churches.
“The power of demographics” should be appreciated, but if our churches truly preach the Gospel their is a stronger power at work. (Consider Romans 1:16)
The claim that the SBC has “placed controls on local churches” is confusing. If the sociologist means the denomination pressures and influence churches then he might have a point. It seems that actual controls would be more of an issue for church planters.
Ed Stetzer calls for “a grass-roots evangelism revival” in the churches. While that is true, it’s a little like saying sick people need to get better. What is the real problem, what really keeps regular Southern Baptists from spreading the Gospel? If we lack skills and information, then a denominational training program might help. But what if the problem is spiritual? Maybe we really do hate our neighbors. Maybe we really don’t believe in Jesus like we claim. “Innovative practices” can’t overcome these problems – if we don’t love God & neighbor then someone needs to come and give us the gospel!
The whole baptism to membership ratios are nonsense. Why do I say that? Everyone knows Southern Baptists do not practice church membership, they mainly keep a lists of people who historically claimed membership. The number of members has no correlation with church attendance or baptisms. Run it through your statistics programs – these reported numbers do not mean anything. Plus, baptism is practiced with little consistency. Teens get baptized when the re-dedicate, even when they were baptized in kindergarten. Not to mention the cross-denominational baptisms. It’s all tied back to recovering the practice of regenerate church membership. (Which would cut us down from 16 million to around 5 million members!)
Perhaps the SBC will finally wake up to the fact that programs and activity do not equal ministry. I have seen numerous programs (Through Every Door, F.A.I.T.H) that appear to be little more than attempts to adapt techniques used to sell cars to evangelisim. Further, perhaps more SBC churches will adopt a “go and tell” mentality rather than “come and see” and focus on sharing the gospel with lost people rather than stealing sheep from other churches.
Joe Blackmons last blog post..Book Review: The Holman QuickSource Guide to Understanding Jesus
Just to make it clear, my above comment does not cover every specific case in the SBC but is a generalization. I’m aware there are SBC churches that are very much “go and tell” rather than “come and see”. Also, I’m sure there were people associated with the programs I mentioned that were not attempting to modify a used-car salesman approach to evangelisim.
Joe Blackmons last blog post..Book Review: The Holman QuickSource Guide to Understanding Jesus
Tony, major props to you for speaking the unspeakable: “Maybe we really do hate our neighbors (or at the very least, we don’t really love them). Maybe we really don’t believe in Jesus like we claim. “Innovative practices” can’t overcome these problems – if we don’t love God & neighbor then someone needs to come and give us the gospel!”
The cold, hard truth is that people who are in love with Jesus and full of the Holy Spirit don’t have to be flogged like a mule in order for them to reach out to others to share the Good News. And I’m not pointing any fingers, because my heart isn’t burning with fervor like it should either. So the problem is not methodology or theology, the problem is cardiology–something’s wrong with our hearts. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting the quote from Ed Stetzer, but as you say, I don’t think we need a “grassroots evangelism revival,” we just need a grassroots revival, PERIOD. Until that happens, all the outreach/evangelism/impacting-the-culture programs in the world will accomplish little.
But is the Church (not just Southern Baptists) willing to fall on our collective faces and cry out for revival? Are we so busy with our lives, not to mention all the busy-ness we have going on in our churches, that we simply don’t have time to repent?
“Perhaps the SBC will finally wake up to the fact that programs and activity do not equal ministry.”
Perfectly said…
Jay,
I think part of the problem is methodology. Our methodology breeds selfish hearts. “Feed me, Feed me!”
Matt Svobodas last blog post..Russell Moore on “Why I Hate Sanctity of Human Life Sunday”
Matt – I’m going to slightly disagree with you on the ‘feed me’ remark. We do need to be fed and we need to be fed on the Word of God. The problem is with what is being fed. Too often the message from the pulpit, something many pastors call expository preaching, is really a sermon using a text that is sort of utilized to preach a specific message the pastor decides the congregation needs to hear about living the Christian life.
What needs to be coming from pulpits is not a message about man, but a message about God. The Bible is the revelation of God to us – it tells us about Him. Yes, it is good for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and training in righteousness – but the purpose is for us to become Christlike and that requires that we first know God. Then, after we come to know God, we come to know Him better, and better, and better. The more we know Him, the more we become in awe of who He is and what He has done for us. The more we know Him, the more we will love Him. The more we love Him, the more our hearts will desire to serve Him and obey Him.
Jesus commands us to love God with ALL of our heart, soul, mind, and strength – to give Him all of us, we have to die to ourselves, something else that the Bible teaches. I can’t love God will all of myself if I don’t hardly know Him. The Bible is a treasure chest of information about God and Christ. Unfortunately, I don’t think God is the message on Sunday mornings anymore – I think man is, at least that’s what I see from where I sit.
I’ve always been taught to never bring up a problem without offering a solution – it doesn’t have to be accepted, it doesn’t have to be agreed to, but it ought to be offered. So here’s what I see is missing in the preaching and teaching that is going on in SB churches and SB life.
When you preach/teach on a passage in the Bible start be bringing your audience into the events of the day when it was written. Tell them what it was like for the original audience, what were their circumstances when they heard the message. Then tell them the message the original audience would have heard, why it would have been important for them and how they were expected to respond. Do something to make a connection between the original audience and the current audience- pull them into the story, get them to see why this story matters, why it’s in the Bible. Then bring it forward to today and communicate the message that applies to them, teach them the principle that comes out of this message. Don’t get very specific with it – everyone in the audience are at different stages in their walk and are dealing with different things in their life. Let the Spirit show them how this particular principle applies to this situation. I can’t tell you how often I hear a specific message that doesn’t apply to me and I just shake my head and tune out.
If the message is about serving, and as it goes in most churches, the minority of the people are doing the majority of the work, don’t berate the entire congregation about serving! Just preach the message, the principle about serving and let each person evaluate how it applies to them. In other words, preach about the responsibility, the necessity, the joy, the rewards, the blessings, etc. that comes with serving – but don’t stand there and tell everyone they aren’t doing enough because some are doing far more than they ought to be doing!
Ok, I think I got a little carried away. I think I communicated that I am frustrated with the church in general. Let me simplify this – more Jesus is needed in our preaching and teaching and less specifics are needed about applying things to our daily life. One person may need to hear that they don’t do enough or any evangelism, but another person may be sitting there and saying, “not again, not another sermon about how I’m not doing enough.” Or, the person who isn’t evangelizing, may not even realize you are speaking to them and they are saying the same thing, “not again, please not again.”
Don’t point to man and tell him what he is or isn’t doing – point to the Bible and what it teaches and let the Spirit convict the hearer.
One more thing – for those who actually take time to read and interact with what I wrote, please don’t pick apart my words – I know I probably didn’t choose the best words at times. Please, please, please, interact with the concepts I’m trying to convey. And remember, this is just one person’s perspective – I think we can all agree there is a lot wrong with the church because it’s full of sinners. And I can actually write a whole lot on my view of that attitude in the church – suffice it to say, yes we are sinners, but we are called to exhort each other to proper behavior, not excuse it because of our sinful nature!
God Bless and thanks for the opportunity to vent some of my frustration.
Trish
@Trish: Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I really appreciate your spirit of “offering a solution” – that attitude would go a long way to address SBC issues it were universal.
It’s interesting that you mentioned service, that was exactly what I preached on yesterday. I tried to balance encouragement with the reality that all of use are selfish and need Christ’s service (the cross) to make our service acceptable to God. See Mark 10:45 and context.
I’ve almost given up thinking there is a single problem at the root of SBC decline. We are a diverse denomination in what makes us strong – and what makes us weak. I think living like ransomed sinners with heart devoted fully to God is where we all need to begin.
Matt, I think we have to ask ourselves, if methodology is partly to blame, where did the faulty methodology spring from in the first place? And that brings us right back to the heart issue. Ultimately, I’m convinced, our methodology is a result of where our hearts are, rather than the other way around. But be that as it may, without question it becomes a vicious circle whereby one issue feeds on the other and it just gets worse and worse. The only solution is the break the cycle, and I don’t think changing methodology in and of itself is enough to accomplish that, I believe it will take a heartfelt, repentance-driven revival.
@Tony,
If, I understand you right, then you didn’t focus your message on the application of everyone’s responsiblity to serve, but instead had a more Christ focused message that involved the principle of service – would that be correct? If so, then that’s closer to what I’m trying to explain.
I don’t have time to find the link to the website right now, but last fall I heard a message that was given at the NANC conference. It was really good and what I got out of his message was that people/couples have problems living out the Christian life because we tend to focus too much on solving specific problems only to have another problem crop up later that also needs to be solved. When he switched his counseling to teach more about Jesus, what He has done for us, who He is, etc., the focus of the counselees shifted to Christ and how to live like Him and away from solving ‘their’ problems. If I remember correctly, he was trying to communicate that there are always problems to solve, but if we focus on Jesus the problems fade into the background.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I certainly see this in my life and long to hear, learn, and experience more of Jesus. Man is a bottomless pit of sin, you can’t fix that, except with Jesus.
Thanks Tony for providing a forum to express my thoughts and feelings – this is quite helpful for me personally. I see where I need to live my own beliefs better, starting right now!
Blessings,
Trish
Yes, I think everyone comes back to issues of the heart. But that does not mean that we dont have to address the problems with our ‘feed me’ mentality. And I do think Trish is right that it isnt just a feed me problem, but it is a problem with what our pastors are feeding their people. Nonetheless, the American Church is a feed me, consumeristic church and the selfishness and laziness of that mentality must be squashed.
Matt Svobodas last blog post..Russell Moore on “Why I Hate Sanctity of Human Life Sunday”
Only a repentance-driven revival can squash selfishness and laziness. Preaching at or about these issues won’t suffice. As Trish so eloquently put it, trying to deal with the “problems” per se, isn’t the answer, the focus has to be on getting back to a heartfelt relationship with Jesus. When that happens, the selfishness and laziness will begin to lessen.
Jay,
There is nothing that you said that I disagree with. My point is that even when we clear up the heart issue we have to deal with our methodology. Just because our hearts are right doesnt mean we get everythnig else right.
Matt Svobodas last blog post..Russell Moore on “Why I Hate Sanctity of Human Life Sunday”
Think of the seeker-sensitive movement. I personally feel that Hybels and Warren have their hearts in the right place, but that does not mean that there methodology is correct.
Ah, well, I don’t think I want to get started down THAT road. But in any case, I suppose you and I will have to agree to disagree–gently–on the importance of methodology. I don’t think methodology is as important as we make it out to be sometimes. I don’t think there’s any one particular methodology that’s ALWAYS right in every situation. The end result is what matters, and for every method we can point to as an example of the “right” way to do things, I have no doubt we can find someone who’s using that methodology and making a total mess of things. On the other hand, there are also folks who are using methods we might look askance at, yet they are accomplishing the Great Commission with it.
Tony,
Good post. I particularly appreciated this: “Maybe we really do hate our neighbors. Maybe we really don’t believe in Jesus like we claim. “Innovative practices” can’t overcome these problems – if we don’t love God & neighbor then someone needs to come and give us the gospel!”
and this: “It’s all tied back to recovering the practice of regenerate church membership.”
I will also say that nowhere have I seen a Christian group/denomination be so focused on numbers than the Southern Baptist Convention. It is really nauseating. I think the focus on numbers breeds a “high numbers equals success ministry” attitude.
Instead, faithfulness equals success should be the attitude. With a focus on faithfulness, regenerate church membership would be in the crosshairs as a point of emphasis. As it is, it sort of a last resort in many people’s minds within the SBC it seems.
Garrett Wishalls last blog post..Accountability is not that hard
Service is the natural outflow of a heart devoted to God. Until the Word of God reaches the heart, and human spirit, there can be no service acceptable to God.
The Word must reach the Heart, then it will affect one’s life and walk
Two things are required to reverse the trend downward and that is the right theology coupled with the right presence. But by right theology I do not mean that where the big I is right and every one else is wrong. That hardly wins the say any where. I mean the theology which produces humility in the possessor and persuader as well as in those that individual is seeking to win and influence for the good. Even so the presence is needed in conjunction with the message. Jesus said, Jn8:32, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” and, Jn.8:36, “if the Son of Man shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” The truth is the right theology and the Son of Man is the presence who makes everything work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
Dr. James Willinghams last blog post..The Climax of the Reformation