Recently one of my good friends, Dr. Dale Connally, a.k.a, The Fly Doctor, sent me an article. Dale is one of our writers for OO, and he helps me lead our fly fishing conferences. That's him smiling to the right because of a big fish he caught at one of our men's events in New Mexico.
Dale is a professor at Baylor University, and given that the article he emailed me was about Southern Baptists (of which we both are), I read it. Dale and I always seem to land on discussions that are about our family -Southern Baptists - and I enjoy the dialogue. We fix all the denomination's problems and challenges in only a short few minutes because we are so talented in doing that sort of thing.
The article was written by a lady at the Dallas Morning News. As usual, our denomination is officially getting together this month, so it creates a media frenzy, and writers, such as this lady, love to hammer us because we are a big, a very big, and easy target at times. Especially for those who do not care to understand the gospel at its core, or even the church, but would rather lob in sniper rounds from secular corporate towers miles away.
Her main point was simple and unoriginal, for it has been proclaimed before on many occasions. To quote Christine Wicker, she said “What Baptist leaders have known for years is finally public: The Southern Baptist Convention is a denomination in decline. Half of the SBC's 43,000 churches will have shut their doors by 2030 if current trends continue.” She went on to say, “What all this means is that we were duped. All the hype proclaiming an evangelical resurgence was merely that – hype. A furious shout from a faith losing its grip, manipulation by a relatively small group of dedicated, focused, political power-seekers.”
Christine is right. The SBC is in decline. No big secret. Our own leaders have been screaming that for years. However, I want to toss out this little truth: so is most of all evangelicalism as I know it. Decline doesn’t just apply to my tribe, it applies to the church in general in our nation.
Her article got me to thinking about our plight as a church in a world that is changing at warp speed. Here’s my observations:
Observation #1: We were duped, yes, but we duped ourselves. We duped ourselves when as evangelicals we thought we could force reform of behaviors and attitudes as a way to steer the Church back to God. I'm a full on conservative, but I believe what happened was that we told the churches that just by adopting a line of "conservative" thinking that it would result in spiritual transformation. We duped ourselves there. It’s just a substitute for real discipleship. Look, I’ve been a leader in the church world for over 18 years now, and while that is not a lot of time in comparison to others ahead of me, it does at least give me a track record of time to observe the fact that what evangelical churches are calling “discipleship” is really behavior modification.
For some reason, whether knowingly or not, most of the evangelical world has traded the pursuit of authentic discipleship for simple changes in behavior. It is especially true in the Baptist world. If a man doesn’t drink, smoke, cuss, then he’s a good fella. If he comes to church, doesn’t drink, smoke, cuss, gives a tithe, and serves on a committee, then we’ll make him a deacon! Let me ask you this … what does any of that have to do with actually being saved to the point that you follow Christ to change the world? See, you can come to church, give a tithe, serve on a committee, and not drink, smoke, or cuss, and be lost as last year’s Easter egg. Those are behaviors that accompany salvation, but they are not necessarily indicators of a life that has been actually changed by Jesus.
Ask any person in an evangelical church to define for you what real discipleship is … and take note of the answers you get. I’ll bet you a dollar many of them are behavior based. Why? Because we don’t know how else to define it. When our evangelical churches stop the madness, fall on our face before God, and ask Him to change us from the inside out, we’ll stop duping ourselves. Moral reform does not last. Spiritual transformation does. And spiritual transformation in us changes others around us.
Lost people have a greater desire than seeing a change in their behavior. They want change that lasts because it is change of heart. They don’t want more church. And church goers, not transformed believers, is what they are often seeing. Until we understand that, and help non-believers achieve it, then nothing will change.
Remedy??? The church must return to the fundamental truth that spiritual formation, reformation, reform, resurgance, revival, or whatever you choose to call it only comes through a deeper relationship with Christ. Just because we have "Sunday School" or "Discipleship Classes" doesn't mean discipleship is being done. Jesus did not subscribe to the denspentation of information about God as the answer for discipleship. He embodied it and showed us that the way people change is in relational discipleship methods that promote personal growth in Christ.
Observation #2:The sooner we come to grips with the fact that most people in our community could not care less about us - the sooner we’ll start seeing lives changed for Christ. I promise you, this is at the heart of the problem evangelicals face today. We actually believe that what we do under the steeple matters to those outside of its shadow. It’s sad, it’s comical, but it’s oh so true. I’ll prove it to you.
For years now, churches and denominations have been spending unbelievable amounts of dollars to help leaders, as Reggie McNeal puts it, to “do church” better. And we have. We are better at doing church than we’ve ever been. So where’s the payoff? The payoff is in the fact that we now are modern, media savvy, well oiled cultures that serve our own value systems well. Still … it doesn’t mean jack to the world outside the steeple. Do you honestly think that people in your community care that you have a super duper children’s ministry? Do you honestly think that people in your community care that your worship has great flare? Do you honestly think that the people in your community value your value system?
The problem is that so many Christians actually think that what is going on in the church actually matters to the community.
People … hear me … those outside your church do not care about your values – and worse – they don’t even feel guilty about it! Literally, in most cases, they don’t know even know the name of your church or where it is located, but they probably drive by it several times a month if not every day!
Churches cannot bring themselves to even fathom that they might be the ones to blame for the lack of impact. We always point to "those lost people" as being the bad ones who just don't get it. Yet we have isolated ourselves to the point that we really don't even know who "those people" are anymore.
Churches have created their own little communities.
So tame, so nice, so predictable.
And now we are paying for it.
Please understand this: God never wants us to confuse success with significance. Just look at the Church @ Ephesus in Revelation 2 as a case study. They were a highly successful church. Even Jesus admitted it. “I know (about) your hard work.” He was telling them that they were really getting after it in the church … but He was also telling them that their hard work was getting them nowhere because they had no real love for God fueling it. It was congregationally successful, but it wasn’t Kingdom significant.
Success and significance are two completely different things. When churches start realizing that the community is not listening and doesn’t even want to, then those same churches will invent anointed ways to penetrate the culture with a message that Jesus is the only way for life to make sense, both here and after.
Want to see a masterpiece on this issue? It’s not for sissys. Read Reggie McNeal’s book The Present Future.
Observation #3:Churches that are getting it done are doing it by empowering people to be missionaries to their own identity niche. If there is one thing that leading Outdoor Ministry Network has done for me, it is in that I’ve seen what happens when ministry is birthed out of pre-existing passion.
Here’s where I missed it for so many years.
I’d stand in a pulpit and tell people about a wonderful new ministry opportunity packaged in this new, sure bet, ministry concept we are launching. Only to be in deep need of depression medication a few months later because few were buying in. I’d done all the homework, had all the meetings to secure individual buy in, checked it off with all the committees, but would often see little result. Why? It’s actually so simple. You cannot adopt another person’s passion! Passion must come from within; it cannot be handed down. It can be somewhat contagious, but for passion to really fuel change, it must fully reside in the heart of the person.
This is why outdoor ministry works so well. What the church is in effect telling the men who hunt and fish is that they have a full license to purse their passion for the outdoors … but they are commissioned to do it with a missionary mindset.
When people are empowered to be a minister and missionary to their niche of life, then your church will start seeing real community impact. What it will take from your church is a willingness to support it … and that starts with giving these passionate people hard dollars! Trust me on that one.
Remedy??? I am 100% convinced that the future of evangelism is in the "niche." Again, let's look at what is happening with Outdoor Ministry Network and our work with churches. We help churches across this nation by helping Christian men who love to hunt and fish reach other outdoorsmen for Christ. Why does it work? Because the Christian men in your congregation are ... wait for it ... a bridge to a lost community!
Yet the only way your church is going to get across that bridge to that lost community is through a man by whom they respect as one of their own (an outdoorsman, or a skater, or a mechanic, or stay at home mom). They work and deal with their own crowd every day because it is their identity niche.
What this mean is that churches must start funding people in their congregations who are trusted within a niche community as missionaries who can create inroads to these folks - no different than what we are doing in international missions. Instead of doing all we can to get people to come to our church, we must fuel in every way necessary, efforts that get to non-believers where they are. Wow. That sounds like something I heard in Matthew 28:19 about "go and tell" instead of "hey yall come on over here and hear."
Observation #4:Pastors are at the end of their rope. Oh man do I see this all the time. Regardless of age or tenure, it comes out in more ways than I care to mention. You know what I see in a lot of pastors. A quiet anger. At the very least a real sense of disillusionment. Unless you don’t know, anger is a cancer, and it will spread throughout the whole person over time if it isn’t deal with in real ways. Moreover, what goes on inside the pastor will ultimately affect the congregation. Remember that.
Why do I encounter so many frustrated pastors? That’s easy. They were duped, too. Not by God, but by people. They got into ministry because God called them (at least we pray they were called). They also thought that people actually wanted to change the world for Christ because they had been radically changed themselves. What they ended up doing is managing life for a bunch of Christians instead of mobilizing a host of missionaries.
Pastors went into ministry seeking perpetual pentecost, and instead of fanning the fires of God they are constantly putting out fires to keep the church from splitting. What happened? Where did Pentecost go? I had a seminary professor one time say this, “Never make what was normal in the book of Acts as normal for today.” Holy smoke! He really believed that. So right out of the gate students preparing for ministry were being taught, in that classroom, not to expect much. Where did Pentecost go? I’m not just talking about tongues and wonders. Though that’s a part of it. What happened to the bold spirit that Pentecost produced? We’ve given it back and exchanged it for anything that is ultimately less risky!
I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been on the trout stream, in a deer stand, chasing turkeys, or just having lunch with pastors as I’ve listened to them tell me how absolutely fed up they are with their congregation’s constant complaining about every imaginable thing behind the stained glass walls. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve tried to encourage pastors who feel as if the church is looking to them … actually even expecting them … to pull their church out of the ditch. The answer is not in the pastor. It’s in the people. He’s just one man. Yes, he’s the leader, but he’s just one man.
Observation #5: Christine Wicker was right when she said “unless God provides a miracle, the trends will continue.”
I don’t have all the answers, I’m still asking some questions. I hope I'm asking the right questions, because the ones we've been using to determine how to do church in America have obviously been the wrong questions - at least that is what it seems from the results we are now seeing in our nation.
Perhaps my wife, Michelle, said it best, “No matter how you do church today, no matter what style of church is preferred, you have to admit that what we are doing just isn’t working.”
The church everywhere on every level is not broken. People are still being won to Christ in churches today. We do see people being changed for Christ. We do see some community impact, at least on some level in some churches.
Yet can we all at least agree that it is in no way representative of anything great or substantial when compared to our evangelical history?
The great news is that God can still do miracles. You bet. He does it every day. In order for the tide to shift a miracle must be done, and it must first start in you and in me.
- Jason Cruise
