Featured A Baptist Church on every corner -you weren't kidding!

Yep, lots of places like that.

Which is why it's rather amazing when stalker-type people can get away with attending the same one as their victims when they obviously very purposely chose to attend a particular Baptist church when there are tons.

Anyhoooo...I find it pretty dumb when churches do that. Why do we need churches of the same denomination in mass numbers all next to each other? It makes no sense, no sense of community since there's no reason to work out problems when one can so easily just run to another one.

Kinda like divorce. Once it became more of an option, more people started divorcing.

Craziness I tell ya!

 

They call it the Bible Belt on purpose.

In Minnesota/Wisconsin, a two-state SBC convention, there are about 190 congregations currently with the largest around 300 in membership. In Louisville, Kentucky (Jefferson County) there are about 160 congregations, and some of them are above 3500 in membership.

One county certainly has more members and almost as many churches as a TWO STATE area farther north. Yet, few if any resources make it to the pioneed territory where evangelical churches that preach and live the gospel are desperately needed!

 

Where I graduated from high school in the Pacific NW the churches were weak and not one person ever told me about the gospel. Today in that same area are some excellent churches that are reaching people. They are vibrant dynamic churches that are rapidly growing. They are giving people the straight stuff. No PDC or H/W gospel. The denominational churches are dying while God is raising up some that are doing very well. It is exciting to see.

 

Kinda like the RCC's up here....thats called presence. Any wonder Thinking Stuff flipped! Now he is one with the community.

 

One of the major differences between RCC and mainline Protestant denominations and the evangelical baptistic type churches is a parish mindset.

The RCC and MLP churches see that A church in A community means that the community is "churched." That is largely because of their magisterial view of church/state, where the partnership effectively extends to all aspects of community life, regardless of a regenerate congregation, for the "priest" and the "presence" of the visible church is what is actually critical to meet God's standards (they say).

Meanwhile the evangelical baptistic churches see their community as the regenerate believers in any given local, which may require multiple congregations in order to reach each PERSON with the gospel. They disavow any church/state tie and so work on a more individualistic polity.

This plays out most in those communities that are given to one type or another. In the north, parish mindset rules, and even if one starts a new evangelical baptistic congregation, the word from the citizens of the community are often, "show us who you are, where you have your building, and what you do in our community, then perhaps we will "check you out" some day. They generally have no cognition of the need for a saving gospel, for the "presence" of a church is enough. That worldview typically pervades the thinking of the people where that worldview is most prevelant. Vice-versa for the opposite worldview, where a regenerate membership is the church. Planting one in the other region often promotes interesting issues to say the least -- and is something that someone from an area where the opposing worldview is predominante will hardly ever understand, hence the Bible belt directives for starting new baptistic congregations that hardly ever work once removed from that area.

 

I understand all that but if your looking for a "Belonging System" ...a place with community, a growing place that you could be a part of, & your family is mostly Catholic (maybe you have a history of family being from RCC) then it becomes far easier to cave into them. Of course you know I'm different....some folks have even sited "difficult" :laugh:

 

My experience in growing up and being a member of an SBC church leads me to believe the following.

There are so many SBC churches, I can't speak for other Baptists, is that whenever members find they have a disagreement a bunch leaves that church and begins another one. I call it the Baptist "divide and conquer syndrome".

Yes, there are mission churches that were begun without a church splitting. I go to one such church. But my guess is there are more Baptist churches that started from splits than not. I hope I am wrong on that one.

 

There are lots of Baptist churches down here. And too many of them have no impact at all on the community. Unfortunately, many of them are filled with retirees who have come here to retire from church also. There are also many churches filled from january thru April but are deserted during the other 8 months.

In many ways it's as godless as the greater NYC area.

 

Is there a Primitive Baptist presence down there....I know I could find several RB's ....one in Tampa.

 

When I pastored in AZ I saw the same thing. I used to call an elderly lady each day to make sure she was okay. She had come to know Christ later in life and was not very well educated but a gem of a lady. In her earlier years she helped in any way that she could. It seemed that somehow the church had forgotten her. One time my wife and I were visiting her and noticed that her house had not been cleaned. I got a bright idea. I had heard the complaints about the lady in charge of the kitchen at church and how meticulous she was. So I asked her if she would take on the task of helping the elderly lady. She recruited three other ladies who were over 80 to help clean her home. That home was like new inside when they got done. They had done a great job. The elderly lady was almost ecstatic because her home was clean and she felt proud to be there. One of the younger ladies started a ministry of checking on each elderly lady in the church. God used that ministry to bring others to church when they found out what was happening. People in the community found out how much a small group of ladies cared and non-Christians started coming. So many started coming that we had to obtain additional parking for the church. I received a phone call from a couple almost 200 miles away expressing thanks because they were glad that woman was being cared for. They knew her when they were in their youth.

Such a little thing as a lady who couldn't get around and some ladies cleaning her home produced a God size impact. When those four ladies came to church on Sunday they expressed thanks for letting them serve in that way. What I saw was some ladies who had no ministry and now they did. Too many older people feel left out and useless because the church fails to recognize the time they have to give and wisdom from living life. It is not just about a particular age group but about everyone working to reach a community. Why should anyone be disqualified because of their age. If they can breathe they can be useful. God has not seen fit to make them useless. Years ago I used to meet with a man who was about 90 who could hardly walk just so I could feel his passion for Christ and learn from him. He has long since died but the picture I have of him will last me a lifetime.

God will do in us and through us what we cannot.

 

I am not sure what you all mean by Protestant churches having one church per community. I live in a county of about 60,000, with the main town being about 23,000. There are seven Presbyterian churches, ten Methodist churches, three Lutheran, one Episcopal church, twelve Churches of Christ, and numerous Pentecostal, holiness type churches. There are dozens of Baptist churches in our county of different types, mostly SBC. In addition, there are four Catholic churches. Outside the Christian community, we have a Jewish temple, Jehovah Witness, and Mormon worship center.

I would think the number of churches should be based on what is needed to spread the Gospel. In all honesty, there are probably too many Baptist churches in our community. (McCracken County, KY) Swapping church members serves no purpose.

 

You have to back up to see what I'm talking about. And, note, I'm speaking of two specific branches of the church in this nature -- RCC and mainline Protestant. You may need to look up mainline Protestant to understand what I am saying.

Then, if one backs up to an earlier day when those congregations were established, what one would see is ONE per community. Since then, the communities have grown and merged, giving the appearance of multiples in a given area. With large cities, like New York for instance, the RCC and others would fund one church per parish, which was divided up according to population centers, and then they would install a bishop or archbishop over the group of parish congregations to oversee that city church. They are all still considered one dioces (one church).

They (RCC and MLP) also see all others -- Baptist, etc. -- as interlopers and mostly unwanted.

 

I thought all Baptists were primitive:tonofbricks:

Not sure about how many there are, but i gooogled "primitive baptist churches in tampa" and saw a few.

 

1000 dead churches would not do the job. It does not take very many alive churches to have a great impact. Faith like a mustard seed. So I would not think it is so much the number of the churches but God's power being exhibited in each church that makes the difference.

Then send the people north and west.

 

That is not the point. It is not always necessary to play word games when the meaning is obvious. There needs to be enough New Testement churches that are alive to spread the Gospel effectively without tripping over each other.

As far as sending people north and west, I do not know why you chose those two directions, but we did send a team I went on last summer to eastern Kentucky where the need is great and the people are impoverished, physically and spiritually. As far as who has the power to decide within a group of churches about who goes and where, that would be the church leadership, which I assume you are one.

 

My point is that it is not the number of churches but the people and their effectiveness. Years ago I went to a church that was about 6,000 and I have gone to churches less than 50. Would one large church do the job or would it be better to have several small churches? I do not think there is a standard answer to that in which we could determine how many churches would be needed for each community. Communities are very different.

I picked those areas because I grew up on the west coast and in the town where my family lived I cannot think of one evangelistic church that existed in the town of 6,000 at that time.

You are right in that there are needs throughout America. My opinion is that the need will get even greater.

 

There are three main unevangelized areas within the United States, the northeast, the northwest, and the midwest Great Lakes region. In all of those areas there are wide-spanning regions where the populace is less than 3% evangelized.

I know best my own home state and Convention, and there 2/3 of the COUNTIES have no Southern Baptist work. 1/3 of the COUNTIES have no evangelical presence whatsoever.

We send missionaries overseas to places that are FAR more evangelized than that!

Canada and Mexico are both worse! There are less Baptist churches in Canada of all stripes than there are in Jefferson County Kentucky (Louisville) and Louisville is not even close to the actual Bible Belt where the REAL population of churches exist.

 

I know in the city of Madison, SBCs are few and far between, and most are small. That is where my son lives.