Baptist and Numbers

Sunday was “record” attendance at our church as well as many across the country. I just wish it were that way each week. Kinda like a lot of people showed up for an event and then don’t darken the doors again. They got a “hit” and then moved on.

I guess I am not satisfied with the hit and miss crowd. But what choice do I have? It is what it is. I can cry about how “uncommitted” they are and how they oughta be in church more often. In all honesty the “large” attendance I desire is really to stroke my ego and let me know that I am doing the “right” thing and bringing in the numbers. Numbers is what it is all about in Baptist circles.

I get asked all the time, “So how many do y’all have in worship on Sunday?” I actually hate to answer that question. I know that no matter what my answer is the person will answer back with a larger number from the church they are attending. It almost sounds like they are saying, “Well, we are running such and such in attendance and that makes us a bigger and better church than yours.” They don’t really say that but that is what they are saying without having to say it.

The numbers game is used to prop up one church over another. When our association puts out its annual report, it is our human nature to look at the numbers and compare our church with other churches to see how we are doing. We do so to validate our church, we gotta make sure we are doing the right things. If we aren’t moving up in number categories then we aren’t doing God’s will, so to speak.

Churches are rewarded for numbers. Largest number of baptisms, giving etc. So we reward churches for having “certain” numbers and say to those that don’t, “You are inferior”. If your church has increased by a large number over a period of time, then you are recognized in many different ways. Why the pastor might even be given an honorary doctorate!

Large churches usually have a pastor who writes a book about his or her ”experience” and is invited all over the country to speak and is seen as a spiritual guru regarding church growth.

In the meantime, the small church pastors are doing what they do each and every Sunday. They see God at work within their congregation and thank Him for every small blessing that He gives. They preach their hearts out and see little to no results for months at a time and they wonder why. They feel inferior to other churches and ministries. They feel like giving up.

I know I feel like that often. I wonder why I am where I am. Then God reminds me that I was not called to be “succesful” as the world measures success, I am called to be faithful with what God has given me. I will never have my name on the cover of a national magazine or even a local publication, but preach His Word I will. Faithful to my calling I will remain.  

Do Your Homework

Once heard of church that called a guy to be the pastor and soon found out his credentials were non-existent. He claimed to have seminary training and that turned out to be false. He had lied his way into the church.

Ever since then the church would call seminaries and see if that candidate was legit. They learned the hard way to do homework on candidates. Many churches are a bit too trusting. I understand that, you wanna think the guy is for real. You wanna believe that he/she really did get a degree or two and is fully qualified.

There are too many unsavory people out there for churches to be trusting. Baptist churches are especially vulnerable, since they are autonomous in how they call ministers. In many other denominations there is a “screening” process before a person is “listed” as a minister.

It is way too easy for a person to get a license to preach and it is still easy in many churches to get ordained. In some denominations one has to have a seminary degree before being ordained. I lean heavily in that direction.  If a person is really called, then they ought to seek out the appropriate training to be in said field. Dealing with the souls of people is not a matter to be taken lightly.

And yet I am seeing more and more churches calling people to lead churches with no training whatsoever. The church says: “Well if God calls them, then that is good enough”. Yeah and you get what you pay for! Untrained and uneducated ministers are like the blind leading the blind. Ignorance leads ignorance.

I have had ample opportunity to hear some of these untrained ministers and I am shocked at what they teach sometimes. Yet, I have heard some really good ministers with no training and wonder how much better they could be if they would only seek further training.

All of this to say, churches need to wake up and smell the coffee. We have many small traditional churches that are having a hard time finding anyone willing to come and lead them, so they compromise and settle for an untrained minister and then continue to flounder along waiting for the doors of the church to close. 

Potential ministers need to be vetted out and found worthy. Churches need to do background checks on candidates. Call the BGCT office and any other agency or organization to find out if the candidate is up to snuff. Call  someone in the previous town in which the candidate served and find out what reputation they have. Don’t just call the names on the resume, those are the friends, who will say whatever it takes.

Our churches deserve the best that God provides and it is wise counsel to check the background on candidates.

Preaching, Politics and Great Crowds

Kinda hard not to have heard about Jeremiah Wright and his inflammatory sermons on the internet and on television. Wow, is an understatement when we hear his “sermons”. Reverse the tables and have a white guy preach something similar and he endorses or pushes a Republican candidate, dang his campaign would be so over it wouldn’t even leave a cloud of dust.

A good thing could come out of all this. Maybe finally people will wake up and smell the roses and realize that we are not to mix politics and religion. Some Baptist have been doing it for years. When I hear of it, it makes my skin crawl. It is contrary to our Baptist heritage and is shameful to do.

Several years ago a Southern Baptist pastor friend of mine endorsed George W. Bush from the pulpit. He pushed his church to vote for Bush only. He said that he was the only one qualified and that the church should vote for him. He seemed to imply that if you are a good Christian then you should vote for Bush. Of course I told him he was wrong for doing that and he would not like it if someone endorsed a candidate from the pulpit that he didn’t like. He felt that it was his right as a citizen and a pastor to do so. It violated Baptist principles and the law.

Anyway I digress. Reverend (if he can be called that) Wright is so off track with his so called sermons, it makes preachers look stupid. He was not preaching God’s Word, so much as he was preaching politics. Sure some of it was on morality and ethics as such. That part I don’t have a problem with, it is his partisanship that is so glaring and painful to see in a minister.

Maybe he got caught up in inflammatory preaching to get a crowd. I have often wondered if I preached some really controversial sermons and got loud and angry while doing so, how much of a crowd I could gather together? I would probably be hauled out by some church leaders and set out on the road.

I gotta admit, it would be nice to draw really large crowds and feel like people where coming to hear me preach. Why they might even start shouting amen in church and getting excited instead of falling asleep. They would come up after church and firmly shake my hand and say what a fine sermon it was. That would be nice wouldn’t it? Who wouldn’t enjoy a little praise like that? Why it would make you wanna shout out every Sunday.

Reality is most of us preachers deal with some who fall asleep every Sunday no matter what we preach or how we preach. Yet, they are the first ones to tell us what a great sermon it was!  Our churches are filled with people who come to worship the Lord, not to prop the pastor up.  We preach from God’s Word faithfully each Sunday and pray the church is filled, only to find that half still aren’t there. So we preach anyway, we preach our hearts out and trust God with the results.

I know I am tempted to try “gimmicks” to get people into church. I just wonder if Pastor Wright (wrong) just did what he could to get a crowd. Wonder how the church will hold up now that he is “retired”? Will the new guy continue in the same style and politics?

All I know is that I am called to be faithful, no matter how many show up on Sunday. This Sunday, the church will be full. Full of C E O “Christians”, Christmas and Easter Only. They will come and get the obligatory attendance so they can claim to be Christians and then don’t darken the door again until Christmas. And these are the ones that Barna surveys each year and shows America to be a “Christian” nation. No wonder the numbers are skewed.

So this Sunday I will preach and trust God with the results. I will not yell and wave my arms around to draw attention to me. I will faithfully preach His Word and lift His name high. All of our churches will be full, and half empty the following Sunday, but continue to preach that we will do. We ministers were not called to draw great crowds, just to be faithful. And when we mix politics with the Gospel, we tred on dangerous ground.

Real Church Growth

When I was in seminary there was talk of three kinds of church growth:

Transfer- people coming from another church

Biological-family members getting saved and joining the church

Conversion-people from without getting saved and joining the church

I remember that it was a healthy church that had a good dose of all three. It has been twenty or more years since I graduated from seminary and I have to say the preponderance of what I seen is mostly transfer growth.  How healthy is that?

What we call new church starts are usually church splits. I served a church in a community of some 2000 people but they had 22 churches. There were split offs of split offs. Some churches had split several times. Even with all those churches, church attendance in this town was around 40%. Majority were fed up with the constant bickering between churches and saw them for the hypocrites they were.

Most of our churches have a predominate amount of transfer growth and very little of the other two.  I think Jon Randles is right, we aren’t doing enough evangelism. We are afraid of rejection and so avoid it at all cost. Oh, let the preacher do it and if we don’t see results then fire him and let’s get another one.

The churches that are seeing large numbers of conversion growth are the cowboy churches. Every single one of them has a high percentage of conversions. What are they doing right?  Why them and not us? They are reaching people who would not normally step foot into a regular church. I have heard stories of people coming into cowboy churches who haven’t attended church in more than 30 or 40 years. Some who have never gone to church except for a funeral or a wedding.

Setting in a cowboy church (I have been to several) there are people who may smell of alcohol, tobacco, horse manure, gasoline and all the other smells of hard working people seeking God. They come to these churches cause everyone else is just like them and they know it, sinners seeking God.  They don’t come to polish their halos, but to confess weaknesses before God. They don’t dress up to impress or be noticed by anyone. They come just like they are.

And they hear the Good News that God loves them and desires a relationship with them. Now granted these are a very difficult and hard as nails group of people to work with. They are rough around the edges. But God takes them and polishes up the rough spots and uses them to reach other lost people. They are beggar’s leading other beggar’s to God.

In many of our churches we have put walls up that unintentionally keep people out. We (including my church) want only certain people in our churches. They gotta look clean cut, no nasty smells and dress nice. Oh and take that dad gum hat off in the building! If your children make noise and can’t set still, don’t bother bringing them.

Is it any wonder that people drive by our churches and have no desire whatever to attend? They see us as a bunch of stuck up people who only wanna hang with each other. If you transfer your membership and try to change the status quo of leadership and format, then don’t bother joining.

In many cowboy churches, there is no status quo, just do whatever it takes to reach the lost.  Understand that the majority of people in these cowboy churches are not cowboys. That is a misconception I hear all the time.  Most do not own a horse, cattle, wear cowboy hats or boots. They come because they are accepted and loved into God’s kingdom.

Can our churches break down the walls? Yes, it takes hard work and prayer. It takes  compassion and passion for the lost.  It will mean changing our attitudes towards outsiders. It is not an us vs. them mentality that will win them to our churches. It will mean getting a new set of eyes and ears, the kind our Lord wants us to have.

Maybe our churches need to take a long hard look at what we are doing and not doing. It is high time the BGCT affiliated churches realize that we aren’t growing but shifting the “sheep” around from one church to another.  It is time we get tired of swapping members and start winning new members to His Kingdom. 

Baptist National Enquirer

On blogs like this one, we are prone to “pour our hearts out” and let the chips fall where they may. These blogs almost become “confessionals” of sorts. Problem is everyone gets a chance to “read all about it” and spread the junk.

Could it be that some of what is shared comes across like a glorified Baptist National Enquirer? I can remember when the National Enquirer came into being. I think I was just a kid and my mom picked up a copy at the grocery store. She read it faithfully. But over the years she has found it to be a bunch of horse spit. They have been sued several times for slander by a number of high profile celebrities.  The credibility of the paper has since been shown to be nothing but garbage.

I have to admit I like reading blogs and the dirt does sometimes get my attention. If I really want to get a huge number of “hits” on my blog, then I gotta have some dirt on somebody, preferably somebody well known. It may be the “truth” but it is supposed to be juicy nonetheless.  And if I write about my encounters with said well known individuals then it must be completely true. Nevermind that I am only seeing my side of the proverbial elephant.

Shame on some of our Baptist bloggers who seem to thrive on “dirt” to share with the masses. I won’t mention any names, but at least one or two seem to like to trash the reputation of a certain individual without any sense of Christian love and respect. Sure it may be the truth but is it really necessary? How does tearing down a Brother or Sister in Christ advance the Kingdom?  It doesn’t.

The famous verse–”Any man putting his hand to the plow and looking back….” –seems to imply that it is best to look forward and not to the past. Yeah, some stuff was done that may or may not have been up to snuff but let’s look forward. I know, I know some get upset with the notion of “Let it go, man”. But if we don’t it will eat us up on the inside. It will own us and take us to an early grave.

I am reminded of a verse I memorized many years ago: “Be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” Maybe if we Brothers and Sisters in Christ did more forgiving and less painful “confessing”, then we might have a better audience for the Gospel.

It just my opinion.