Featured Paul Washer

I've only heard him once, over here believe or not, preaching was sound, but I got the same 'feeling.'That may play into my response to this statement.

 

Washer is quick to admit that his critics charge him with everything from advocating a works based salvation to just plain arrogance. I have heard the man preach more than a few times and have always found him to be true to the Gospel and motivated by love. Yes. Love. He fears for men's souls.

Washer is not a pastor. He agrees that his style of preaching does not work from the pulpit on a weekly basis. He typically preaches at events and conferences. Any message of repentance that is not diluted is going to offend.

 

I don't think anyone is charging anything, merely expressing perceptions.

 

I didn't mention anyone by name. It's a "if the shoe fits wear it" sort of thing.

 

Which, as C4K said, is leaving a name unmentioned. Shoes don't fit 'nobodies.' They fit 'somebodies.' But we're only talking perceptions.

And by the way, "any message of repentance that is not diluted" can still be given in love, without offense. It's called "teaching."

 

Perceptions are opinions stated or not. For instance it is my "perception", from previous interaction, that you and I would disagree over something as benign as the weather. Is that good or bad? Neither. Just a statement of fact.

 

I have absolutely no right in the world to judge my brother's heart - none. I do however have the right to express my perception based on my limited experience. I do doubt the veracity of the statement in the OP but suspect it is a hyperbole rather than a lie.

I do also freely admit that perhaps it is my own lack of faith or dedication that has kept me from having an experience like that.

Hey, I am surprised that a holy God would even bother with me at all

 

God is indeed gracious to us.

I was not taking any specific person to task. It's just that opinions on Paul Washer vary from support to an almost visceral hatred. I hold more to the former position.

 

I hope I have not been perceived on the opposite side. I think Bro Washer has done much good. The thread was about the one experience and I admit I have difficulties with it.

 

Brother,

No harm, no foul.

Peace to you.

 

Actually, it's hyperbole. Not that we're nitpicking or anything.

If you want to make a statement of something we would disagree on, I'd suggest you start with Washer's condemnation of nearly every Baptist church in America for their outreach efforts, how they preach the gospel, how he seems convinced that most in churches today are unsaved. Half of what he says deals with that ridiculous viewpoint of allegedly failed evangelism. He is so adamant about this that he becomes irrational about it, and anyone who thinks he speaks truth when he says those things is just as irrational.

Now that is something I'm pretty sure we disagree on.

 

It's not just America. He said the same thing about the church in Ireland. We aren't doing our job and the smallness of the Irish church is evidence of it.

 

Fourteen percent of Europeans go to church. Though Gallup claims church attendance is declining, and is an all-time low in the U.S., real indications are that nearly 50% of Americans attend church on any given Sunday. So his assumptions about who is saved is not only way off, but arrogant as well. So why the disconnect in stats between Europe and America that might lead to your assumption that both are equal in their failure to evangelize?

Gallup is counting so-called mainstream "Orthodox Christian churches," whatever that means. The organization has never explained that definition. Reading between the lines in the statistics the polling firm regularly releases indicates they ignore Baptists and other and conservative evangelical churches as well as Pentecostal, charismatic and even virtually every rural church in America. Gallup also discounts the house church movement, which is gaining a foothold in the U.S. and accounts for nearly five percent of weekly church attendance. In other words, Gallup ignores a huge segment of the church-going American public. That's no way to conduct an accurate poll, and the numbers Gallup gets could perhaps be described as intentionally biased.

Washer is wrong in particular in attacking Baptist churches in this fashion, given that both polling firms find that, at least in SBC churches, the numbers are growing at a greater rate than in any other denomination in the world.

His condemnation is unwarranted and extremely short-sighted and biased. He feels that if evangelism isn't done his way, no one gets saved and all who claim to be saved in any other fashion really aren't. That's more of the same arrogance I spoke of earlier.

 

Here are a few stats for you bro, from: http://www.lifeway.com/Article/news-2012-southern-baptist-annual-church-profile-report

If my math is correct, the average attendance is about 38% of membership. Yes, everything is humming along just fine, no problems.:BangHead:

Here is some food for thought:

 

Here's a few for you, from the exact same article (funny how your cut-and-paste missed this paragraph, isn't it?):

Note that this membership attendance, not total attendance. The millennials are not a generation given to "joining." Attendance of both members and non-members at SBC churches is up by about the same percentage as membership attendance is shown as "down" in this article. Unfortunately, the numbers for baptisms in 2012 reflect, as your article said, the lowest point since 1948, but that is also true of every other conservative evangelical denomination in the U.S.

While that would appear to be the case, it jibes with overall church attendance nationwide, as reported by Pew Research for the year 2012:



Notice that those stats indicate well over a third of the U.S. population has attended church weekly for the last eleven years, and more than another third attend semi-regularly, monthly to at least once a year, meaning since 2003 at least 70% of Americans have attended church "regularly," and I believe we can safely presume that at least half of that second third attend at least twice a month, given that chart doesn't give a choice for more than once monthly. Why can we presume that? Because of this quote at the end of the article:

Times have changed. Work was once given a back seat by employers to church attendance and family time. Now we are seeing a return to the nineteenth century attitudes that the employees' time is the employer's, and working weekends, particularly Sundays, are seen as expectations by employers. There's your "declining attendance" and it's not due to disinterest, but fully one quarter of the population has work conflict, health or transportation issues that interfere with weekly church attendance.

All of which has little to do with Washer's failure to show grace and love in claiming so many Christians are "unsaved" when it is not his purview or position to make that call.

 

Your implying I was purposely being deceptive :laugh:.

This stat was not really relevant to your claim, but it is a good thing there were new churches started. However, how many were? (1) caused by healthy splits :thumbsup:, (2) caused by unhealthy splits :tear:, or (3) just straight up church plants to an unreached area :thumbsup:. So its great new churches were started, but that doesn't always mean that the existing churches are booming as well which you state in the previous post that I quoted.

A note on church plants. I live in the Bible belt, I've wondered for the past few years why in the world would anybody plant a church here, our area is saturated with Baptist churches. Yet there have been quite a few plants in my area in recent years. Some of which are reformed/Acts 29 type. However, I finally came to the conclusion that many (not all) of the established churches here are living for theirselves, some are on life support and will eventually close their doors when members die off and the money runs out, some should close their doors. They are not reaching out to the community and sadly many are nothing more than social clubs. But again, I live in the land of cultural Christianity and your experiences are likely different.

Here, you might like this.

http://sbcvoices.com/the-sbcs-60-year-decline-beyond-the-blame-game/

 

The link I provided says weekly worship attendance, I could be wrong, but I'm not seeing where they break it out between members and non-members. So it sounds like the number for actual members who don't attend would probably be even lower than the 38%. Regardless, if I only showed up to work 38% of the time I wouldn't have a job very long. If I told my wife, I'm only going to be 38% committed to you, I wouldn't be married very long either.

From this data you can also estimate that on average attenders gave $1,930 per year. How much more could we do "collectively" in reaching our local communities and the world for Christ if just 20% to 40% more of the "members" attended and financially supported. Yet we don't question them about why they are inactive. The FBI probably couldn't find many of these folks.

 

Look, I understand our society is constantly changing and there are many reasons why some folks can't attend every time the doors are open, I'm not saying that, but believers will desire to spend time with one another in fellowship and worship. I'm just not buying what your selling that work, transportation, etc. is the reason for the decline or the AWOL members.

You can keep the third that only shows up one to twenty four times a year. I'll ask the other third to be praying for me when I have cancer, or ask them for support if I suffer a job loss, etc.

As for the "Millennials" hopefully they will be as influential as this article predicts they might be. :thumbs:

 

He'd sure condemn us here in Japan then, where after 150 years of Protestant missions only 1% of the population claim Christianity, including Catholics and the cults.

You remember Jim Norton, who was a very zealous soul winner. A church he founded just had their 40th anniversary celebration. The pastor is a good, godly Japanese man and a soul winner, but they only have 12 members. I'm glad numbers are not how God evaluates His stewards!

 

And up here in the NE, nobody is church planting. The initiative is rather to convert the Catholic.