Tue 30 Jan 2007
Where Are All The Baptists? (Are Some Churches Getting the Gospel Wrong)
Posted by Brent under Christian Living , The Church
My first semester at (the) Southern Baptist Theological Seminary presented me with a particular frustration. I came from a non-denominational Reformed Baptist perspective rather than a Southern Baptist perspective. But it quickly became apparent that when Southern Baptists used the term “Baptist,” they meant Southern Baptist rather than any sort of affirmation of a theological conviction to Credo-(believer’s) baptism.
In some sense, this is understandable. After all, the Southern Baptist Convention is (or at least claims to be) America’s largest denomination. Yet, it doesn’t take long at all to realize that the modern incarnation of the Southern Baptist Convention bears little similarity with the larger historical “Baptist” identity.
The most recent edition of the Southern Baptist Texan surprisingly attacks this very issue. At the “Baptist Distinctives” series held at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth September 28-29, 2006, John Hammett, professor of systematic theology at Southwestern said “The Baptist mark of the church” is the principle of a regenerate church membership. The article notes that “Hammett and others lament that Baptist churches in the last two centuries have largely lost their claim to being believer’s churches.”
Elsewhere, Jim Elliff has argued that Southern Baptists are in fact “An Unregenerate Denomination” (which I commented on here in 2005). As Elliff has noted, there are more missing Southern Baptists than there are present on any given Sunday morning. While the denomination claims over 16 million members, on any given Sunday, there are only 6 million in attendance. There are almost double the church members missing than worshipping. This doesn’t bode well for the doctrine of a “believer’s church,” does it?
I am theologically convicted that believer’s baptism by immersion is the biblical mandate. But I am, perhaps more importantly also convinced that Scripture presents the idea of a regenerate Church. No, we will not suceed this side of eternity, but that does not lower the theological significance. The Southern Baptists are not the only denomination in such trouble, but it ought to be the most public because their very claim to be “Baptist” means that they claim to hold to the doctrine of regenerate church membership.
Far too many look to the world rather than to the Scriptures for advice on how to “do church.” We’re told that mere numbers equal success while the Bible says that it’s not just those who are present but those who are living as disciples. The plight of the Southern Baptist Convention ought to remind us all of just how seriously Scripture takes the Gospel and just how lightly many of us take the same Gospel.
The Bible presents salvation as being rescued from slavery (Romans 6:15-23), being delivered from the domain of darkness into the Kingdom of Christ (Colossians 1:13), beign born again (John 3) and being raised from the dead (Ephesians 2:1-10)! It is understood to be a clear turning from sin to righteousness, which the Bible calls repentance (Matthew 3:8, etc.) and that believers will then bear the fruit of repentance (Matthew 3:8, John 14:15). The Bible does not present the category of an unrepentant believer, yet that is exactly what we claim many of our churches are made of.
In contrast, we have come to present the Gospel merely as “believing” that Christ died for our sins. We have robbed the Gospel of its full claim on our lives and we have, perhaps unintentionally, taught people that if you believe, your life doesn’t absolutely have to change. To put it bluntly, many churches have gotten the Gospel wrong. Or, if they haven’t gotten it wrong, they have not presented it completely. While we cannot know for certain, it is reasonable to believe that many of those missing 10 million Southern Baptists were at some time given the assurance that because they claimed at one time to believe something, their souls were secure. Granted, many of the missing may be in other churches, but the problem does not disappear.
While it is true that we cannot be saved by works, it is also true that we will not be saved without them. Churches must do better at communicating the true force of the Gospel. It is about a supernaturally changed heart that will obey and struggle to put sin to death. John calls the faith of those who claim Christ without following Christ into question. Consider 1 John 1:5-10:
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Elsewhere, Jesus says that if we love Him, we will keep His commandments (John 14:15). In other words, Jesus’ disciples will live as His disciples and the 10 million “missing” Southern Baptists shows us that many of us have not only misapplied baptism but the Gospel itself.
- Read my post “SBC RIP?”
- Read Jim Elliff’s article “Southern Baptists An Unregenerate Denomination”
- Read A String of Pearls Unstrung: A Theological Journey Into Believer’s Baptism by Fred Malone
- Read Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace by Paul K. Jewett
- Visit the Southern Baptists of Texas website
on 30 Jan 2007 at 3:02 pm 1.Bryan Riley said …
What is baptism from your perspective? How would you define it and its significance/impact on the one who is baptized?
on 30 Jan 2007 at 3:19 pm 2.Josh said …
Good points. It’s a tough situation right now.
Tell you what, try telling any Southern Baptist Pastor you might meet that he’s lost the Gospel and see what he says. Explain to him that the SBC is an unregenerate denomination and watch that vein in his neck start to pulse.
Not really, but most folks don’t know there’s a problem. They are content to fill a pew and do their duty.
Josh
“…the word of God is not bound.”
–2 Timothy 2:9
on 30 Jan 2007 at 9:54 pm 3.Brent said …
Bryan, I like Tom Schreiner’s use of the New Hampsire Confession in his recent interview with Justin Taylor:
The act of baptism does not save, but it is commanded.
on 31 Jan 2007 at 10:47 am 4.proverbs31 said …
I agree with you. I did grow up Southern Baptist and I remember the plaque in the hall that showed the member count and the attendance count for the morning, I remember there was always 50-75% of the membership in attendance each Sunday. Like you said, though, I’m sure this is not a SB unique issue. We often see reports that high numbers of Americans claim to be Christians when polled yet we know that those numbers aren’t verified by actual church attendance on Sunday morning.
I have several family members who claim to be Christians and yet from their actions to their words to the desires of their heart it is not obvious. Yet they believe themselves to be Christians because of a prayer they prayed and a belief that God exists. Trying to tell them they aren’t living like a believer is a difficult and complicated task.
So I guess the bigger question here is not “Are there people who think they are saved but aren’t living like it because they weren’t taught the full extent of the gospel?” (because it seems to me it’s pretty obvious that there are), but rather “So, what do we do about it? How do we teach and witness to those within our sphere of influence that believe they don’t need our help?”
Any thoughts?
on 31 Jan 2007 at 12:50 pm 5.GUNNY HARTMAN said …
We talked about this last month at our Lone Star Founders Fraternal meeting.
It was a good meeting. Had Brent been there, it would have been great.
I shared some great comments by Dr. Paige Patterson, presently the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (but then president at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary).
I’ll share some of those here:
It is easier to get into a church than it is to join the Rotary Club. It is more difficult to be disciplined by a church than it is to be disciplined by the Lions Club. If you’re a member of the Lions Club (if I understand it correctly) and you miss four weeks in a row, you’re out. If you’re out of town for four weeks in a row, you better find a Lions Club in that city wherever you are and attend or you’re going to be out. So, the sad state of affairs that exists in many of our churches now is church membership is meaningless. Therefore there is nothing appealing to the people on the block as they look at the church members who live there. They look no different than the others.
Regrettably I have to believe that anytime you stand up and face a congregation these days in the average church you’re looking at 30-40% that have never been born again and are not genuinely saved. I’m talking about in Baptist churches where we supposedly emphasize nothing in the world but regeneration. Lord knows what it is in some others, but I think that’s true of us and I think it’s because we have been very careless. We’ve been more concerned about numbers to report to the denominational press than we have been about genuine conversion. So, yes, I’m very concerned about it. Matter of fact, I’ve got to where, going into churches, I preach hardly anything else but the new birth anymore from one of 18-20 passages that I work from, just because I’m so concerned about that. So, yes, I do share your concern about that. It can’t be any other way for us to have as much of the world in the pew as we presently have.
It is true that church discipline is a major part of assuring that we have a redeemed church membership. However, it is also true that in the handling of people when they initially come forward. I’ve come to believe, for example, that in an evangelistic invitation most people who come forward have not yet really made a commitment of their lives to Christ. They are coming forward out of an honest interest. Usually that is true, but I think if you put them down on the front pew and give them a card to fill out that you have probably done a tremendous disfavor to them if that’s the sum total of what you’re going to do. I think those people need to be taken and counseled very carefully and walked with until there is some evidence that a genuine conversion has taken place. If I were counseling pastors today I would say don’t receive anybody into the church or for baptism or anything else at the moment they come forward. Get them into a counseling program. By counseling I am not talking about professional counseling.
I tell [seminary students] to begin preaching [church discipline] as you come to it in the text, don’t back off from it. Preach it straight. Then I tell them when the day comes when you’re actually going to begin practicing it, the place to begin is not with somebody who’s been caught in some heinous iniquity, because you’re going to have sympathy problems there. The place to do it is on every one of these church rolls where you have huge numbers of people that are not attending church…. That is something that people can understand. If folks have not come in five years and they are obviously not intending to come then we owe them, if we love them, a confrontation. If they choose not to respond to that confrontation then we’re doing a disservice to them and the church to continue to consider them members.
You know, this [trimming the church rolls] came up last year. Last year for the first year in our history we had a little drop in membership. The press kept coming to me and saying, Aren’t you concerned about this? I said, Well, no, as a matter of fact I’d like to see a year when we dropped about 3 million more. The press would say, What’s that you say? You wouldn’t mind 3 million more dropped? I would say, No, we’re having a boasting membership of 15 million people, there are at least 3 million of those that we can’t even find. Some of them are in heaven, some probably went the other way, some of them are just in L. A., and we don’t know where they are. For us to count them as church members is absolutely unfair to these people. It’s one of the most unchristian things we could do. So, if we love them, we must stress to them that following Jesus Christ is a matter of trusting Him as Lord and doing what He says. Why do you call me Lord and do not the things I say? We can’t help people live that way. We’ve got to help them see the better way and we need to lose about 3 million that are not really associated with us. Maybe more.
That’s some good stuff from the boss of my boss’ boss.
(The whole interview can be found here.)