1. Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

Lack of Growth

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by Salty, Jun 25, 2014.

  1. Salty

    Salty 20,000 Posts Club
    Administrator

    Joined:
    Apr 8, 2003
    Messages:
    38,982
    Likes Received:
    2,615
    Faith:
    Baptist
    Rev Mitchell had a good OP on why liberal churches are declining --

    Now lets talk about Evangelical churches - why do we see such churches stagnnt or even loosing members - and then some to the point of disbanding?

    Open for Discussion
     
  2. Reformed

    Reformed Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Dec 27, 2012
    Messages:
    4,960
    Likes Received:
    1,694
    Faith:
    Baptist
    Poor preaching and a general failure to meet true spiritual needs. Broad evangelicalism is afraid to hold people accountable. It is fails to be authentic. It refuses to to proclaim the offense of the cross.
     
  3. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Mar 19, 2012
    Messages:
    52,624
    Likes Received:
    2,742
    Faith:
    Baptist
    many people want to follow a Gospel and a jesus that will be "what's in it for me?"

    Want to have ease/comfort/pleasure, and NOT have to be serious or cross bearing!
     
  4. clark thompson

    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    May 27, 2013
    Messages:
    184
    Likes Received:
    2
    Faith:
    Baptist
    People have become lazy.
     
  5. KRJ

    KRJ New Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2014
    Messages:
    32
    Likes Received:
    0
    Sometimes (often?) because the pastor is a pastor (or shepherd) in name only. He is really more of an evangelist or teacher.

    Sitting under the gifted evangelist is like being in a tent revival and sitting under the gifted teacher is like being in a Bible college class. Both men are exciting for a bit but both can also be distant and aloof and have poor personal connections to their flock.

    A good pastor certainly can't be someone who can't "preach a lick." But if a sermon was a meal, there comes a time when members would rather just have a pretty good cook that can counsel couples and will visit people in the hospital than a chef who can't or wont.

    All that is just another way of saying that sometimes members leave because they feel their needs are not being met.
     
    #5 KRJ, Jun 27, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 27, 2014
  6. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Mar 25, 2010
    Messages:
    21,242
    Likes Received:
    2,305
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    :thumbs::wavey::thumbs:
     
  7. Jkdbuck76

    Jkdbuck76 Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jan 8, 2007
    Messages:
    2,322
    Likes Received:
    71
    This is our Pastor....he is a PASTOR. Some of our families got to see this when tragedy hit their lives. The man SHINES as an under-shepard.
     
  8. thisnumbersdisconnected

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2013
    Messages:
    8,448
    Likes Received:
    0
    I don't think churches close their doors solely because of "bad preaching" or division, though certainly many do close for those very reasons.

    Rural churches close almost exclusively because of an aging population. The young people I grew up with at my small country church, to a person, no longer live in the farming community in which it was centered. Most of us have moved to Kansas City, St. Joseph, or much father away. That church is still open, but just barely. Such is the case for the majority of the 1,000 SBC churches at least, that close every year.

    Urban churches are a different story. Most of them close for the same reason businesses close: Changing demographics, different cultures, evolving neighborhoods. The church I was saved in 21 years ago is on its death bed. It was a suburban church in the late 80s and early 90s, mostly a parenting white middle class population with young children to teens.

    The neighborhoods around it have since evolved into an ethnic diversity that is not the "traditional Southern Baptist" population. There are more blacks, more Hispanics, and several Koreans. The church now shares its space with a Korean Baptist congregation. There is a new AME church that opened a few blocks away, and the Catholic church across the street has seen a resurgence through Hispanic attendees after years of decline from the white suburban population it served previously.

    This is very typical not just of Southern Baptist churches in Kansas City, but other denominations as well. SBC churches are established in primarily middle to upper middle class neighborhoods, and over the last 30 years have enveloped a lot of the black conservative population as well. But they, too, move out to the edge of the metro as the neighborhoods around them become poorer, more ethnic and less stable -- and let me hasten to add I'm not equating ethnicity with instability. But as business and churches move outward, stability moves outward with them.

    We should be wary of iffy preaching, division in the body, and bad theology. But citing it as the sole cause of church membership decline would be a mistake. As I said in another thread, the Millennials are not "joiners" and as such contribute to declining church membership while sitting in the pews of a growing church. We should be cautious of reaching erroneous conclusions that lead us to attack the wrong problem.
     
    #8 thisnumbersdisconnected, Jun 28, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 28, 2014
Loading...