Blog Archive

So you can see what’s been going on around our house lately…

Greg Alford posted some of his thoughts on the need for direct church communication with our missionaries. I think he brings up a great point. People are much more willing to pray for and support financially someone they have some personal contact with.

I would love for our church to partner with a specific missionary: be able to hear, maybe on a monthly basis, from him/her/them. It would give us a tanigible connection with that missionary and the IMB as a whole.

This would be good for the IMB as churches sense a fuller connection with the missions work around the world. It would also be good for churches to “put a face” to “our missionaries.”

In the past two years we have seen a slight decline in membership numbers for the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole. There have been some who have pointed to this fact as a demonstration of our ineffectiveness in reaching our culture. One or two others have suggested its simply a result of changing demographics – implying there’s really nothing to be worried about. (Ironically, the ‘no worries’ people seem to also be the people who are pretty much comfortable with the SBC as it currently exists.)

For the record, I’m of those who believe that declining numbers likely indicate there’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Declining baptisms worries me more than declining membership, but I think both indicate we may not be as effective as we need to be.

I would offer up one example, however, that may point to why declining membership numbers may not tell the whole story.

When I arrived at this church as pastor, I received a couple different membership lists. They were 90% alike, but each one seemed to have a few people that the others didn’t have. Within the first few months I was here, I combined the lists, went through with a few church members to remove anyone that had passed away, and so came up with what I believe to be a pretty accurate membership list. 79 members were on that list. We’ve had two join since that time so we’re currently at 81 members.

Then I received our annual church profile for 2008. It listed our membership from 2007 as being 151! I have no idea where that number came from, I assume in the past the number may have been correct and it just kept getting carried over without ever being updated.

When I sent in our accurate numbers in 2008, it appeard that our membership had declined by 47%, or 72 members in just one year. It takes a lot of churches growing by 2 or 3 or even 10 members to make up for a kind of decline like that.

With the resolution on regenerate church membership that passed in 2007, plus the growing influence of 9Marks, and a refocus on what church and church membership should look like, I really wouldn’t be surpised if there were a good number of churches who have done something similar to what happened here at our church. If just 100 churches made this kind of effort to return to accuracy, and our church is typical, that would alone account for a decline of over 7,000 members.

We all know that the numbers of people truly involved in our churches is far lower than the 16 million we claim. The ultimate result of that, if we are serious about honestly and transparently reporting our numbers, is a necessary reduction in membership numbers. I say our membership numbers must decline. And while we return to accurate numbers reporting, lets be honest with ourselves that we are not reaching the people in our culture the way we may have in the past. Declining baptism numbers tell that story better than membership numbers.

Al Mohler’s latest blog post takes direct aim at one of the most common misunderstandings of the gospel… especially among those of us in the ‘Bible belt’ saturated with a cultural ‘christianity’.

It’s called Why Moralism Is Not the Gospel – And Why So Many Christians Think It Is. Mohler says:

Sadly, this false gospel is particularly attractive to those who believe themselves to be evangelicals motivated by a biblical impulse. Far too many believers and their churches succumb to the logic of moralism and reduce the Gospel to a message of moral improvement. In other words, we communicate to lost persons the message that what God desires for them and demands of them is to get their lives straight.

And about the witness of the church:

The deadly danger of moralism has been a constant temptation to the church and an ever-convenient substitute for the Gospel. Clearly, millions of our neighbors believe that moralism is our message. Nothing less than the boldest preaching of the Gospel will suffice to correct this impression and to lead sinners to salvation in Christ.

Hell will be highly populated with those who were “raised right.” The citizens of heaven will be those who, by the sheer grace and mercy of God, are there solely because of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Satan will be pleased to populate hell with people who lived my a set of cultural do’s and don’t, always thinking they were pleasing God, be never understanding the message of salvation through Jesus.

Les Puryear is a small church pastor in North Carolina. I like Les a lot, from what I know of him. I met him briefly at last year’s North Carolina Baptist Convention and I follow his blog regularly. (There’s a link to his blog in my blogroll to the left.)

Les posted about a comment Dr. Mohler made at yesterday’s GCR Task Force meeting. He (and several questioners present at the event) asked why there was not more small church representation on the Task Force. I pointed out that I’m pretty happy with the Task Force as it stands. My specific comment was that I wanted the “best and brightest” on the Task Force.

Les and several of the other commenters took special exception to what I said. Les followed it up with another post today you can see here.

I agree with Les a lot of the time. And I see where he’s coming from here in some respects. But I still think God gifts some people in greater ways for leadership and vision. I realize those people are not always in big churches. And being in a small church doesn’t mean that you’re not one of those people. But pastors in large churches have had the opportunity to demonstrate exceptional leadership and therefore inspire a certain amount of confidence for a job like the GCR Task Force.

It’s easy to fall into the stereotype here. Large church pastors feel superior to small church pastors. Small church pastors look at large church pastors have ‘sold out’ on genuine ministry. I think both of those attitudes are wrong and divisive.

There’s no conspiracy. There are some very practical reasons large church pastors often get named to things like this. My point is that I want Johnny Hunt to appoint the people he feels will do the best job on the GCR Task Force, regardless of church size or other criteria.

Here’s where I agree with Les: I certainly agree that SBC leaders should be more aware of the discrepancy in appointments. I’d love to see us work together to have a more balanced representation: pastors, SBC leaders, president, everyone involved. But let’s avoid making it sound like we’re seeing purposeful discrimination. And remember there may be important occasions (GCR Task Force is a perfect example) where having the right people is more important than equal representation.

Mohler, President of Southern Seminary, has been working hard over the last few days. These are a few resources all informed Southern Baptists should be aware of.

Yesterday, Mohler gave a presidential address at the seminary on what the SBC must be in the future if we are to have any real impact. The message is available here for video and here for audio. Take some time and listen to this prophetic call. You can also watch or listen below.Audio

Also, Mohler has recently picked up a blog called Conventional Thinking. It is dedicated to current issues facing the SBC. I expect it to be a great resource especially over the next year as the GCR Task Force continues its work. (Mohler is a member of the GCR Task Force.) We Southern Baptists desperately need some voices like Mohler right now.

If you’ve never heard of David Platt, first read this recent interview in Christianity Today about him and his church, The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham.

After that, please go and listen to or watch some of his sermons. I dare say you won’t be disappointed and may find your new favorite preacher.

Dr. Chuck Lawless, professor of evangelism at THE Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has another great post over at his blog called “Questions about the Great Commission Resurgence or ‘Reflections on Lostness’”. Here’s a selection of some of the questions he asks us to think about:

Does anybody even think about death and judgment and eternity?
When did Christians become more known for what we are against than for what we affirm?
How many non-believers ever have anyone praying for them?
Is it possible that I’ve sometimes been more uncomfortable around non-believers than they are around me?

That’s just a few. There’s plenty more so hop over there and take a look. There are some real issues we need to think through on our way to figuring out how we can best impact our culture and world with the gospel.

Mark Regnerus writes for this month’s edition of Christianity Today on The Case for Early Marriage. I recommend taking a look at the article. It challenges some of our ingrained thinking on the issue of marriage – I think from a biblically informed view of what marriage and human sexuality.

The world has plenty to say on why marriage needs to be postponed until at least the mid-twenties. We need some loud voices in the Christian community that will say marriage is good and it doesn’t need to wait until ‘after college’ or until we’ve ‘figured out who we are’.

Marriage and the family (meaning kids, and lots of them) are part of God’s good plan, not the burden our world would teach us.