Southern Baptists fight decline in membership

Do you mean to say that the Holy Spirit is not in Nashville?

I think the SBC leadership has had a lot to do with manipuilation in matters of the local church through conferences and information. You would be shocked at what pastors hear coming from SBC leadership through those volunteers who are involved at the state level. Not much biblical advice just expert opinions.

 

Not at all. In fact, I believe that God has blessed the work of the SBC. The SBC can provide resources, but it can't make a church grow or decline.

Ive been to some conferences, and have read a lot of SBC literatore on various topics. Some of it is good, some just average.

Aside from the merits of specific strategies, I'm usually wary of Church Growth materials. God grows his church..Our jobs are to plant and water.

 

Others have said that the leadership is not responsible for the decline in membership in individual churches. In one way that is true. However, the leadership of the SBC is responsible for the public face of the SBC. When that public face is associated with partisan politics, a narrow social agenda that focuses on abortion and gay marriage without due consideration to other social problems that require real attention such as poverty (especially the children of poverty), and public vendettas against denominational employees and pastors who do not toe the party line, can any one be surprised that churches do not want to be identified as Baptist and church members want to escape contentious denominational wrangling?

Here is a link to an article that appeared in yesterday's Tennessean that I think is relevant to this discussion.

Tim Reynolds

 

The problem is that the Holy Spirit does not work in the past. He is not a person to be put on a shelf, to take pride in, and preserved.

God has already given the resources, the Holy Spirit, His word, the vision and methodology. It is all outlined in His word. So why does the SBC needc to provide anything except laborers because the harvest is plentiful?

 

I agree with the first paragraph. There is a sense in which the second paragraph has merit, but it oversimplifies. Since the apostles and other writers put things down in writing , scholars, preachers and theologians have been putting things in writing for the benefit of other believers. Their writings were circulated and used as theological textbooks and teaching aids.

In the same way, Southern Baptist churches have joined together to provide written materials (books, Sunday School literature, music, etc.) that benefit many believers.

During a mission trip to Romania, our group took several thousand New Testaments in the Romanian language and gave them out. We took complete Bibles, concordances and commentaries for village pastors, in their language. Those are the kinds of resources I'm talking about that are highly valuable to the harvest laborers already in the field.

 

Yes, I believe the leadership of the SBC has had an adverse impact on local churches.

1) The seemingly never ending battle for control of the convention made members and non-members alike wonder what the SBC's real emphasis was, soul winning or power. Changes were forced on the convention in a mean-spirited and unChristian way. Many seminary professors and missionaries was fired for being unwilling to swear by the BF&M of 2000. Shades of King Henry the 8th.

2) The SBC has turned its back on traditional Baptist distinctives like Priesthood of the Believer and Soul Liberty to require acceptance of a specific creed in order to be in a leadership position. This new direction is making the SBC look more and more like the Catholic church.

3) The convention and its leadership has become hopelessly entangled with the Republican Party. In many churches its made painfully obvious that Democrats aren't welcome here. That cuts the number of potential persons to evangelize by 50% and causes some members to leave.

4) Related to item 3, the SBC was the ONLY major Christian religious body to support the invasion of Iraq. That war has proved, as many had forecast, to be a quagmire and a mistake much like Viet Nam. This is clear to non-members who associate support of that war with the convention.

 

Here is part of what SBC President Frank Page said in the Nashville, Tennessean article cited by Tim Reynolds in Post #23:

Page believes the 16.2 million-member convention faces the same challenges that bedeviled other Protestant denominations — lower birthrates, aging demographics and a culture increasingly hostile to Christianity. In response, churches tend to circle the wagons and hang on for dear life.

I think this is pretty accurate. And if so, how then, does a church fight against decline? What specifically should (or can) be done to reverse a church's decline and head toward growth? Something that will produce more than mere sheep-swapping?

Oh, don't get me wrong a church can grow if it's willing to do what will grow it. Conemporary praise music seems to work. Drums, praise teams, hot guitars, seem to work. A boot-scootin' worship service with country line dancing lessons afterward pulled 'em in big-time. Clown-led communion is a big hit.

Unfortunately, my aging, graying congregation probably won't want to go quite that far, and are content to hear the gospel preached, the traditional hymns sung in an fairly traditional worship hour. Boot-scootin' worship just doesn't appeal to them for some reason.

We could do better with our outreach, no question.

 

Heaven help us to know the difference between a church and a crowd.~ Dr. David Allen

 

My brother pastored an SBC church in a tough part of the west end of Louisville. The church was seriously in decline, on the verge of dying. He asked a former professor at Southern what he should do to bring the church back to life. The professor said:

Let the community know you love them. Let them know you want to help them though a difficult life. Finally, let them know that the only way to do this is through a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, the old time religion. But things need to be done in and for the community for this to happen. You need to get out in the community and show them that you care.

To me this is the secret, Don't push politics. Don't push the details of theology. Do exactly as Jesus said:

Mat 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Mat 22:38 This is the first and great commandment.
Mat 22:39 And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

The people that we really need to reach don't care about praise bands or contempory services. They're at their wits end. Some have contemplated suicide. They don't know how to hand on. WE have the answer.

 

I think you hit the nail on the head.

 

I have been down that road twice. One church got as low as ten people, no pastor and no building. The people were desperate to do something. I taught them to start Bible studies and make disciples. We saw God give the growth from amazing locations and the quality of people was incredible. Churches would pay big money for what we had. We were small and prayed twice a week to a big God and he answered in a big way. Today that church owns 20 acres and has its first building. I believe that when we met God in humility he hears us. He hears the poor man who has little just as well as the rich man who has a lot.

I have been in all kinds of churches that are doing very well. The one common denominator is love. They are real and love people. All of the fanfare will not keep people long.

A lot of times we declare the Bible to be the word of God but do we really believe God?