Ed Stetzer has released some alarming statistics on his blog today. Unfortunately, many have seen this coming. I am not nearly as concerned about the loss in membership; as Stetzer says “[it's] an inflated statistic anyway“, I am however concerned that for the 7th year in a row baptisms are declining. There can be only two reasons for a decline in baptisms:
1. God is no longer saving sinners to himself
2. God’s people are not sharing the gospel.
The only answer I believe, is that God’s people are refusing to share their faith. Friends, we have a much bigger problem in SBC life than declining membership, we have a problem of disobedience. The Great Commission is for every believer everywhere. If we love God with all our heart we will want to see His kingdom advance. If we love our neighbor as ourselves we will weep over their souls and do all that we can to make sure they know that without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, they are doomed for hell. May it never be!
1 Comment
April 23, 2008 at 9:42 am
The problem is that God’s people are not living the Gospel, they’re only pointing at it and telling everyone that there is one. They will not forsake their own ways, lives, lies and under/misunderstandings to be a truthful or faithful witness of the reality and power of God.
The first Church LIVED the Gospel, they didn’t just talk about it. They were willing martyrs for what they believed, willing to forsake all, willing to have their lives held up to ridicule, persecution, destruction, because they knew their God, they didn’t just hear about Him, and by their lives they showed not just that they believed, but what they believed. The state of things right now are the fruits of what it is that we, the Church believe (or rather, do not), not the evidence of what everyone else does not.
When the Church stops playing around at telling the truth or just pointing at it (soothsaying by any other name) and start living the truth unto God and not some humanist, warm-fuzzy sentimental perception of it, then and only then will you start seeing a turnaround.
God will not be mocked by the lukewarm, world-loving profession of His Church. An entire generation of Israelites died in the wilderness for these very same reasons ~ they did not believe, they did not receive. Yet God still had a people that He raised up to go in to the Promised Land instead of them. God can likewise raise up another generation to take our place and is doing so, even now. Israel is about to be grafted back in, and when that happens, the fruitless, unbelieving Church will be grafted out. Read Romans 11:13-25.
God gets real with you, when you get real with God. When you get real with God, then you will be the manifest witness that He purposed you to be, conformed to the likeness of HIS Christ, not your imagination of Him. He was THE manifest witness of the Word of God, the reality of God, the power of God, who fulfilled the end and purpose for which God sent Him forth. If we aren’t accomplishing the end to which we believe we have been sent forth, then perhaps it’s time we woke up and considered, MAYBE WE’RE DOING IT WRONG??!!!? Know this ~ No prostitute ever convinced a cheating husband of fidelity while sleeping with him. The Church will never convict nor convince the world of it’s sin, as long as it keeps sleeping with it, excusing it and justifying it, and it will never bring the knowledge of God’s judgments against it as long as it keeps doing the same. “Who are you O man, that judgest another, and knowest not that thou doest the same thing? [Romans 2:1]
Heads up, Church. The King of Glory draws nigh. The Day of the Lord is at hand, and it is the day of His vengeance.