Christians in Retreat

The Tennessean today published a story titled “Southern Baptist Fight decline” which can be found here http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090117/NEWS06/901170354. In this article Bob Smietana, wote,

“The biggest problem facing Baptists may be that they talk a lot about saving souls, but church members have become reluctant to share their faith. Baptists emphasize believer's baptism, which means that new converts should be immersed after professing their faith in Jesus Christ.

Ed Stetzer, head of LifeWay Research, said that a grass-roots evangelism revival is needed in Baptist churches. He says too many Southern Baptists rely on preachers to talk about Jesus.

"Southern Baptists are people who love to talk about evangelism, as long as it is being done by someone else," he said.

In 1978, just before the start of the resurgence, there was one baptism for every 36 members of the convention. By 2007, that ratio was one baptism to every 47 members.

"We are baptizing fewer of our own children, and fewer unchurched people," LifeWay's Rainer said.

More than 9,000 congregations, or almost a quarter of all Southern Baptist churches, reported no baptisms in 2007. And, in that year, only 8.3 percent of the churches were responsible for 49.8 percent of the convention's baptisms.”

The problem has to be that Southern Baptist either:

A. Do not believe in Hell any more.

B. Hate the people around them so much that they wish they would go to hell.

C. Are so lazy and narcissistic that they would rather watch football (or read or play Boggle or whatever) than warn people about hell.

D. Are trying to stay out of hell themselves by playing religious games, and once they have checked off the Church box they are done.

I think the answer is either C or D and it breaks my heart. And, the enemy is not taking a break either. If he can get all of us focused on the election, or putting together a petition to have “Desperate Housewives” taken off the air, or making sure that the Jesus fish on my pickup is well polished then there is no one left to share the gospel with the guy at your job. I would invite you the visit http://www.wayofthemaster.com/learntoshare.shtml, and dedicate your life to Jesus and doing the work he has called us to do. Jesus said “Go” and if we disobey that, if we thumb our nose at the King and make silly excuses then how can we expect anything but condemnation in our lives?

Blaurock Luke 12:47