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.)
]]>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?
]]>“We believe that Christian Baptism is the immersion in water of a believer, into the name of the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost; to show forth, in a solemn and beautiful emblem, our faith in the crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, with its effect in our death to sin and resurrection to a new life.”
The act of baptism does not save, but it is commanded.
]]>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