Any conferences, summits, meetings, or retreats need to be focused on one issue: reinventing church structure. We are headed the way of the church of England and are already seeing it in many places. Baptist churches in many small towns are dying, even if they are the ONLY Baptist church, for one reason: new people do not engage in old traditions with blind acceptance. The church needs to: reconsider a different pattern to ministry than the seven day cycle, reconsider the role of professional clergy, engage all members in some aspect of the church’s ministry TO the world (not just one another), replace Bible study for the sake of Bible study with Bible study with a purpose–discipleship and disciple making, etc. We have to do locally, as each church, what and old institution needs to do: be reborn or die. But we must do it while maintaining a firm footing on Biblical truth.

Ben Macklin

The most accurate stats say that church attendance in America is actually around 17%, instead of the oft quoted 40%. Even in the South, we are at 25-30%.

We are losing America, not because of an evil culture, but because the church is sick. Southern Baptist leaders will only attack others and never look at our own problems. It is time to move on.

I’ve always wondered about “resident members”, and the shortfall from there to total membership. Does that mean people who moved away but we did such a lousy job training them, or we couldn’t even tell whether they were born-again, and they never ever joined another church after moving?

If that’s the case, that’d be enough for God to take some action in our midst.

Maybe He has.

The other side of this issue is the fact that, with 45,000 independent, autonomous churches, a denominational initiative won’t solve the problem. The churches have to do it themselves. Denominational leadership can talk about it, but they don’t have the means to bring about the genuine spiritual revival that the churches need to experience. And over the last decade, I don’t think you will find as many churches listening to the leadership as there used to be.

Ranger,
Dead on. I’ve been saying the same things for years. I not only think it’s hypocritical of us to try and do CPM but we’re also ill equiped to minister in most of the places that we do because of our backgrounds. Most of us are from large group, class driven churches. Now we’re out here trying to help guys start house churches, with no paid staff, no buildings, no materials…..we’re not equipped for this.

I think you are all over it. I’ll argue in this series that the disintegration of the denomination may be the best opportunity for local churches in decades.

Ranger-
No rambling that I see. I understand you and you are right on target.

1. Whenever I was in college, the majority of college age and twenty something Baptists did not go to Sunday morning church. A greater number would show up for evening services on Saturday night or Sunday night that were aimed at their age group. An even greater number would go to small group studies on Sunday nights, or weeknights. From what I hear of my former students this remains the case. There are many, many people interested in God and Jesus who simply won’t go to a “church” to find out about Him, and would never “join the club” (i.e. membership) even if they did start going and following Jesus.

2. I’m a fan of evangelical preaching, and I still struggle to stay focused through a forty minute sermon. I wonder what it’s like for someone who’s not a fan of preaching. Or even worse, what about someone who’s not a believer at all and just came with a friend. I bet it’s really hard to stay focused or get anything out of the message at all. I bet it’s much easier to get something out of a small group study, and I bet they feel a lot more comfortable in a home than in a sanctuary.

3. It’s no coincidence that the majority of churches over here in China are growing in homes with smaller groups of people and with lay leadership. No, most of the leadership has never stepped inside of a seminary nor has a single degree in anything related to the Bible. Yet it’s amazing how their doctrine ends up being almost identical to mine. It’s amazing how the Holy Spirit is just as good of a teacher as the professionals at our seminaries. Don’t get me wrong, I love biblical studies and I particularly enjoy studying Christian origins, but none of the research I’m doing (or have done) is essential to being in community and living in communion with Christ, and I can verify that fact from the leaders I know over here who have no interest outside of reading and teaching the Bible in a very simply manner, and letting the Holy Spirit do the rest.

4. The church I worked at back in the states gave a lot to missions, and was proud of that (as they should have been). Yet when you broke down the budget about half went to paying building loans and maintenance, about twenty percent went to paying salaries of staff, support staff, etc. and about fifteen percent went to funding programs and paying for curriculum. Granted some of that money went to outreach programs, and outward focused ministries the vast majority of that 85% (which was well into the millions of dollars) was very inward focused. It’s time to be honest and realize that buildings (even gyms, cafes, etc.) end up being more flock focused instead of lost focused. We say they are for outreach in order to get funding, but they end up being primarily used by the membership. Furthermore, whereas I believe we need trained staff training other lay leadership, I think our salaries are way too high at times. Granted, ministers are underpaid compared to the amount of hours they put into their work, isn’t that more because we aren’t adequately training the laity to take part in ministry, which is a result of years and years of not training them so that they now expect that we do so much?

5. I think it’s hypocritical that we on the field are told to plant churches that meet in houses, with lay leadership, that don’t waste money on buildings, etc. and do so based on the New Testament model, while we do the very things we preach against back home, and do those things very proudly! Just look at the mass celebrations at the end of building campaigns that were probably unnecessary to begin with!

Sorry this seems somewhat like rambling and that the ideas are very loose, but I think you get the picture. In the end, the younger generation not tithing as much doesn’t scare me nearly as much as it scares some, because hopefully it will call us back to a more local, home-based, laity driven community ministry, which doesn’t require vast amounts of money, is much more reproducible and much more unbeliever friendly and focused. Furthermore, I would suggest that this type of focus in our churches would also increase overall missions giving as our people started being more outward focused in the way that they viewed ministry and life in the Baptist church.

Could it be that in this great “falling away,” great revival could ensue as God’s people are forced to rely totally on Him as a remnant in a strange land? Maybe God is at work doing a “Gideon-like” work of reduction, even if only on paper. When the “strength” of our numbers and the crutch of socio-political power and influence is gone and we honestly face our situation, we should be driven to our knees in utter and total dependence upon a movement of God’s Spirit. Sounds like we could be on the verge of another “book of Acts” kind of period of expansion.

If, that is, if we read the signs and respond accordingly.

Thanks, and keep it up.
Terry