FaithWalkDaily September 29, 2008
I've decided to write my devotion today in a response to Christine Wicker’s book, "The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church" http://www.christinewicker.com/
I recently received a message and article from a friend via email. I’ve highlighted in red, some of the issues I want to address in my responses that follow. I wrote to my friend Bill and to Christine Wicker with what I felt God revealed to me in prayer. Mind you, whatever I write, is still clouded by the heart of a woman, a human being, a sinner. No matter what I say, in the end, it's really no more than my opinion mixed with my heart and compassion for truth - God's word. Read on. Warning: it's LONG.
Bill’s Message:
Dear Friends,
This article was in the Dallas Morning News this morning. I picked up this book by Christine Wicker last week and I am about half way through it. In the book she really picks on the Southern Baptist because I think they are the only group who will give her hard facts of their records of attendance, etc. In her book, she claims to have accepted Christ as her Savior, but beyond that, I haven't a clue. To be fair to her, she doesn't only claim that Southern Baptist have slipped in numbers but all Evangelicals are declining. The problem with her research is that she has only selected a few of the churches and not all of them. For example, Crossroads Christian Church, where I attend, the faithful and the dedicated are growing very fast. I would really appreciate your thoughts and comments on this.
Bill
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The Article Bill sent:
Christine Wicker: The great evangelical decline
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, June 1, 2008
What Baptist leaders have known for years is finally public: The Southern Baptist Convention is a denomination in decline. Half of the SBC's 43,000 churches will have shut their doors by 2030 if current trends continue.
And unless God provides a miracle, the trends will continue. They are longstanding and deeply rooted. The denomination's growth rate has been declining since the 1950s. The conservative/fundamentalist takeover 30 years ago was supposed to turn the trend around; it didn't make a bit of difference.
Leaders said it did. Reporters and politicians believed it did. But the numbers kept going down until, finally, they have become obvious to everyone.
Evangelical faith has been dropping since 1900, when 42 percent of the U.S. claimed that distinction. Every year, Religious Right evangelicals, such as those who lead the Southern Baptists, are a smaller proportion of the country. Every year, their core values are violated more flagrantly by the media, scientific discovery and mainstream behavior. Every election, politicians promise to serve them and then don't because evangelicals lack the power to make them.
What all this means is that we were duped. All the hype proclaiming an evangelical resurgence was merely that – hype, a furious shout from a faith losing its grip, manipulation by a relatively small group of dedicated, focused, political power-seekers.
The long decline of Southern Baptist faith is critical to the entire evangelical movement because the Southern Baptist Convention, which claims 16 million members, is the biggest evangelical denomination in the country, almost six times as large as the next biggest predominately white evangelical denomination.
The second-largest evangelical group, the National Association of Evangelicals, has claimed 30 million members. Their churches actually have 7.6 million, tops. Most of those are having the same problems the Baptists are having.
As the true picture of evangelicals' problems has developed, panicked leaders are splitting into camps. Some say that the church is lax, soft, sold out. That what's needed is an even bigger dose of the medicine that the SBC fundamentalist takeover delivered. More authority, more strict interpretations of the Bible, more sermons about sin and suffering and sacrifice, more rigor about who is and who isn't getting to go to heaven. They argue that Christianity-lite is the problem. Get back to the Bible, they say, which means proclaiming more confidently that the only interpretation is Truth, and anyone who doesn't agree with it will surely go to hell.
A growing number of dedicated Southern Baptists believe the Bible's truth is a Calvinist one. They reject the traditional Baptist idea that any human can choose to be saved in favor of predestination, the idea that only those whose names are already written in the Book of the Lamb will go to heaven. Kick out the unregenerates, they say. That will fix the problem.
Still others say the problem is image. Evangelicals have been seen as mean-spirited and narrow. Caring about the environment and giving more attention to the poor and needy will turn it around. Get out of politics, they say. Play down abortion and gay rights. That will fix the problem.
But none of these ideas will halt the increasing irrelevance of evangelical faith to the great majority of the U.S. population. Evangelical faith is being attacked inside and outside its churches by forces that won't be stopped by new biblical rigor or an image makeover.
I'll give you just three of those many forces.
One is Alcoholics Anonymous and all its 12-step offspring – the creation of two Christian men who wanted to help alcoholics. They modeled AA on the teachings of Jesus and the ideas of philosopher William James. Instead of asking alcoholics to be saved, they asked them to call on a god of their own understanding. Sometimes leaders illustrated the freedom of that definition by saying, "That door knob over there might be your god."
They included 12 steps based on Christian principles that are never identified as Christian and include no Bible verses. They eschewed guilt and any talk of sinfulness. Repentance was directed at specific people who had been harmed. There was no doctrine, no institution, no demand for monetary support.
Tens of millions of addicts and other troubled people used this "door knob god" to build new lives. They learned that they didn't have to read the Bible, attend church or follow a preacher's rules to engage a divine power that could heal them.
Nothing like that kind of open-ended faith had ever been experienced before. And so the role of the church as interpreter of God's truth and the Bible as its sole repository lost power with millions.
The second attack came within the church as American evangelicals themselves became less willing to proclaim that they are the only ones saved. That idea had seemed reasonable when people lived in fairly homogeneous groups. "The other" was unknown, seemed inferior and appeared unlikely to have God's blessing. Since few people had much to do with foreigners – except in times of war, when they were trying to kill them, or from behind a tourist's camera, when they were making souvenirs of them – "our way is the only way" seemed reasonable.
But international travel, business and communication have changed that. So have huge waves of immigration. Now "the other" is likely to be your son-in-law or grandchild.
The idea that only one little part of one kind of religion has the only way to God has begun to seem more and more unlikely. It has begun to seem rude. Un-Christian, even. And evangelicals, who don't like being boorish any more than anyone else, have become less and less willing to relegate their neighbors to hell.
So we have a completely formless god of great power and instant accessibility romping around, rescuing millions whom everyone else had given up on. Then we have more Christians getting squeamish about proclaiming hegemony over heaven.
And along comes The Pill. It's merely one of the insidious attacks science has launched against traditional religious faith, but it is surely the most successful. Nothing in history has changed human relations as much as that little white pill.
The curse God laid on Eve wasn't quite so ironclad anymore. Skip forward a few decades, and couples started delaying marriage until their late 20s, 30s or even 40s. But that pill meant there was less pressure to abstain from sex until the wedding.
So hardly anyone did. Some single couples who slept together or lived together and simply kept quiet about it kept coming to church, but millions of others slept in Sunday mornings. Evangelical leaders resolutely hewed to the abstinence standard at least formally, resulting in little more than extra hypocrisy.
That didn't matter much. Hypocrisy has always flourished, and it hasn't killed the church yet. But evangelicals' failure to grapple with change meant the church was no help in a world where people were expected to sleep together long before marriage and desperately sought guidance about when and with whom.
Evangelical leaders defend their stance by claiming that God doesn't change and that neither does sin. But sin does change. Slavery wasn't sin once. Now it is. Taking a wife and a concubine wasn't sin once. Now it is.
And God – or our understanding of what God is, which is all we actually have – changes, too. When societies change, their interpretations of God change. Their readings of the Scripture shift. Human understandings are remolded so that faith can remain vital and effective during new times.
Whether evangelical intransigence is pleasing to God isn't anything that humans can ever be absolutely sure of. If it is pleasing to him, God may send a great revival that will sweep the country and restore them to their place of predominance.
Such revivals have happened before. They could happen again.
But I've named only three of the ways that evangelical faith has come to seem less useful, necessary and vital to those who might benefit from its teachings. Evangelical faith is failing in so many other ways that a growing number of Christians believe a New Reformation is needed.
If they are correct, the Southern Baptist Convention is unlikely to lead that reformation. Let's hope it is at least around to participate.
Christine Wicker is the author of "The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church." Her e-mail address is christine@christinewicker.com.
This was my response to Bill:
Dear Bill,
As you know, I serve in ministry to the Christians reaching out to Mormons. This gives me a great deal of contact with pastors and ministry leaders of many denominations. We only connect with those whose doctrines are sound and in agreement with what we believe to be Biblically true (see here www.cogprays.net - click on the What We Believe page) regarding the essentials of faith. For this purpose, we are confident in crossing denominational lines for the sake of the gospel outreach in Utah. We work with many SBC churches who tend to be very conservative and sometimes border on legalistic. However, I believe they are, for the most part, true Christian brothers and sisters. As I'm sure the others have already enlightened you, RBBC is with the Baptist General Conference (BGC) and has somewhat different doctrine than the Southern Baptist Convention. That's about all I know which ain't sayin' much...
Here's what I do know, which may shake your tree and give you plenty to pray about. Many doctrinally sound Bible teaching/preaching churches in America are declining. That includes Evangelical Presbyterian, Baptist of all flavors, Evangelical Free, Calvary Chapel, Community, Independent and many others. While at the same time, "seeker-friendly" mega-churches continue to grow. I've heard from friends everywhere that the general decline is not limited to those in the oppressed areas where Mormonism dominates. As I've prayed about this in regard to churches in LDS influenced areas, the Lord has given me an image and insight you might find worth praying about. Our economy is certainly affecting giving and attendance. But this sickness goes much deeper than that.
While I prayed, I saw hands, palms up, with fingers slightly splayed. The hands moved gently in and out, side to side, as one might shake a sieve. I sense that the Lord is doing a great sifting of the churches in America and indeed around the world. He is not pleased with us. We have become complacent, apathetic and worldly as a people - we have fallen away from our first love. We give more time to sports, television, music, entertainment and all forms of worldly involvement than to God's word and fellowship. He is sorting the chaff.
Why are the mega-churches growing? I can speak for some I've been in contact with but certainly not all by any stretch. I was horrified to hear the pastor of a large and growing non-denominational Christian church in Utah publicly state "Our goal is to be the first mega-church in Utah." For starters, I wouldn't know how a person could define such a goal. Is there a certain number associated with a "mega-church?" Secondly, what kind of sick goal is that? By the numbers rather the healthy salvation of souls?
As I prayed and asked God for discernment, that I not stand in judgment, He called to mind the Scripture in Matthew 13:3-9 Then he told them many things in parables saying: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up the plants were scorched and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil where it produced a crop-a hundred sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 He who has ears let him hear." NIV
I believe God is telling us that in (many of) these large churches, much seed is thrown out, but not all fall on fertile soil. I have seen a number of Christians leave small, loving, close knit fellowships over some worldly argument or dislike of a person and lose themselves in huge churches. They tell me how wonderful it is and what a great preacher they have only to write me some months or years later to express their disappointment over finding the messages watered down or people shallow in their faith and relationships.
Satan wants nothing more than to divide God's people. Because God's people are saturating themselves with good deeds in the church (busy about ministry) and pretty trappings rather than putting the time they need to into Bible study, etching God's word on their hearts and one on one witnessing and discipleship, the church is in trouble. The wholesome fellowships are dwindling while the whales are swallowing the little fish and belching out uninformed fools who ultimately turn around and start their own crazy cult, turn to new-age religion or fall away from religion altogether.
We're not done for yet. Many are crying out on behalf of our nation and our faith according to 2 Chron. 7:14-15 If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. NIV
In my humble opinion, for what it's worth, we seriously need to get back to the basics - Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself:
- Daily prayer
- Daily Scripture reading/memorization
- Worship & Fellowship
- Being "Jesus" to your neighbors, coworkers, friends, family and community
- Welcome the newcomer to the neighborhood with baked goods or an invitation to church
- Watch for someone in need and reach out Reaching out to someone hurting in your church or community
- Contacting local representatives and senators to take a stand on issues that affect our faith and morality
It's not my premise that all big churches are bad or even that any big churches are bad. My concern is that wherever we choose to worship, our hearts need to be SLD:
Seeking the will of God
LISTENING to the Holy Spirit
Doing the will of God
If inadvertently through our desire to see droves of the lost and deceived come to faith in Christ we have unwittingly done so by our own methods and expectations, God forgive us and set us straight. There are many large, thriving churches teaching God's word and drawing people not only to salvation but discipleship. They’re raising up godly, vibrant Christians. There are also the other kind that I believe have grown according to their own plans and purposes and they've become big business, not sanctuaries of worship. God will deal with them.
My desire is to stir the body to look at our own churches and pray for our pastors and leaders for discernment and wisdom. Would they seek God at all times and do nothing to promote man’s ways but everything for the purposes and glory of God.
I hope you'll forgive the sermon. I've just returned from a week of praying with Christians and pastors in Utah and am zealous for good holy fellowships whose hearts are on fire for God and the desire to save souls!
I Love you all with the love of the Lord.
In His love, by His grace,
anne
It seemed to me that my response to Bill's inquiry about declining churches turned into a diatribe on mega-churches. Don't know where that was coming from but it's pretty much how I feel.
My Message to Christine regarding some of her statements:
Dear Christine,
Please forgive me to start because I haven't read your book and don't know that I will. However, a friend of mine wrote to me asking for my comments on the article he included.
He asked me, not because I'm some authority on churches or a brilliant analyst, but because I work with churches of many denominations in a prayer ministry - moral support for Christians working in Utah who are persecuted and beleaguered by well-meaning and horrendously deceived Mormon folks.
My friend sent me the above article (which I’m guessing is an excerpt from your book) in order to help me understand his question.
Personally, I don't think we need a bunch of numbers to see what's happening to the church in America. It is obviously declining. I'd be willing to bet you could ask any person who's been attending a home church for at least a few years and they would tell you there are fewer people in the pews today than 3 years ago.
The smaller churches shrink faster and are the most troubled. From what I've seen myself, people often leave a small church to go to a "more vibrant church." If they were really honest with themselves, they'd admit they can hide easier in a big church. You don’t have to be committed to ministry when there are so many others to fill the servant positions.
Some families have left our small Evangelical Presbyterian fellowship, claiming their children didn't have enough peers to help them grow. Get real. Fellowship is not about connecting our kids with peers. I do understand a parent's concerns today, wanting their children to have a good support network to lean on since there is so much against them in the public school system and the world in general. But what are they teaching their children?
- If you cry loud enough I’ll give you what you want
- If you’re not happy with your situation, run away
I’m sorry, but I think they’re gravely mistaken. Since when do our children lead our families? America’s future IS in deep trouble. This is a HUGE trend today.
But you want to know the truth Christine? I'll tell you the real problem in our churches today – all Christian churches– it's us. Parents. Christians. We let our televisions run out of control, don't monitor what our children watch, they spend countless hours online or playing video games or both, we let them read books of questionable influence, we don't read the Bible at home or eat together as a family any more. We run off to sports instead of mid-week church meetings. Everything that used to strengthen Christian families and home life has gone out the window.
We're busy, busy, busy accomplishing nothing, nothing, nothing!
Here's one for your records. Why do you think the LDS church is growing at a phenomenal rate? They're using the Biblical model of raising families and it's working! Now, if they were just teaching the Bible instead of Joseph Smith’s fairy tale, they'd have it made.
But why is all this happening? Well, I can throw your theory about AA out the window. You wrote, “And so the role of the church as interpreter of God's truth and the Bible as its sole repository lost power with millions.” Dear Christine, it never had any power in their lives. They didn’t acknowledge the Bible or God to begin with!
Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob were inspired to start the program that has helped millions of people get and stay sober, not to mention all those other 12 step programs that have helped countless others recover from sex addiction, drugs, food or whatever one is addicted to.
As a result of finding god in a teddy bear in 1990, while earnestly praying for God to reveal Himself to me, I not only got sober, I found Jesus in a little Baptist church in 1994 and continue to grow in real faith one day at a time, sharing the gospel with others as the Holy Spirit leads and ministering to Christians who bring the true gospel to Utah.
I wouldn't be alive or saved if it weren't for AA and the brilliant approach those two men inspired. I know a lot of people who wouldn't have gotten sober through a church or religion but were willing to at least concede to the possibility of God through AA. Some of those same good people now fill the pews in Christian churches, worshipping, sharing their faith and serving the Lord. God will have whom He will have and nothing man does will interfere. Many who overcame addictions through the twelve steps of AA did find true faith in Jesus as a result of the admonition in AA literature to "return to the faith of their youth."
That’s exactly what happened to us. Albeit a teddy bear is a long way from the God who created the universe; it was the best I could do at the time. God led me to AA to ultimately lead me to Him. One Sunday, my recovering alcoholic/addict live-in boyfriend and I went in search of an eloquent speaker to perform our wedding ceremony on a beach. We landed in a little Baptist church, heard and received the gospel, and ended up getting married in that church (after a 10 month separation and abstaining from sin.) During the ceremony, the pastor used our testimony and one of my bridesmaids, another recovering member of AA, made a profession of faith in Jesus that day. God did that, we didn’t. God used AA. There must be millions of similar testimonies.
Your second analysis of the church looks at the transience of society today. Well, that theory can also be argued due to the fact that we have always been a blended society. The very nature of the US is a virtual melting pot of people from around the world who poured into this Native American land.
“Now ‘the other’ is likely to be your son-in-law or grandchild.”
This is not a 21st or even 20th century concept or problem. Jesus warned us 2000 years ago about the dangers of being unequally yoked. Look what happened to the Israelites when they married people in the lands they inhabited. They ended up with idol worship, turning away from the God of their father Abraham. Is it not the spirit of rebellion that in fact causes us to lean on our own understanding, disobeying God’s will?
Here my friend – hear, my friend – I must correct you.
“Evangelical leaders defend their stance by claiming that God doesn't change and that neither does sin. But sin does change. Slavery wasn't sin once. Now it is. Taking a wife and a concubine wasn't sin once. Now it is.”
Sin has not changed. Slavery has never been a sin. Adultery has always been sinful.
How man treats a slave may be and often was sinful. Whether by force or choice, any man who works for another is a slave, “one that is completely subservient to a dominating influence,” according to Miriam Webster. What many men often did in the early days to their slaves was certainly sinful. Yet in many Old Testament accounts, some slaves were well cared for and even treated as members of the family. But God never said slavery was a sin.
What has changed is the nature of slavery. No longer are men bought and sold as commodities. There are still wicked employers who abuse their workers and others who treat their employees with great respect. Sin is sin.
God commands us to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. " Matt 22:37-40
Anything short of that is abusive and sinful.
Gal 3:28-29 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
God did, however, say adultery was sin and it has always been. So that hasn’t changed either. Only man’s laws regarding such have changed. God created one man and one woman to be unified and populate the world. God allowed man to do as he pleased (free will) and man chose to have multiple wives. It certainly wasn’t a mandate by God and God warned man about the problems such behavior would cause. He did, after all, state in the original ten commandments, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Ex. 20:14 There was good reason for that. Paul, in a letter to Timothy his disciple, teaches him that a deacon must be a man with one wife. Wonder why…
“And God – or our understanding of what God is, which is all we actually have – changes, too. When societies change, their interpretations of God change. Their readings of the Scripture shift. Human understandings are remolded so that faith can remain vital and effective during new times.”
God does not change. Never has. Never will. Disillusioned man may misinterpret God or His meaning but God is God.
Mal 3:6-7 I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. 7 Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty. NIV
Heb 6:16-19 Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. 17 Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. 18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. NIV
Finally, I believe the decline of the Christian church in America is the result of sin, plain and simple. We live in a corrupt society – fallen world – as a result of man's willful turning from God Almighty. There is nothing new under the sun for heaven’s sake.
There is nothing to save us but the Holy Spirit convicts us that God will and does withhold His blessings as long as we persist in our sins. Each man, woman and mature child must be convicted in their own right and reach this decision. It can't be forced by any church. We see many great men teaching the truth from the pulpit, preaching repentance and admonishing the body to share the gospel. The people nod in agreement (or sleep,) then leave church all aglow with new resolve. All week they go to their soccer games, eat their McDonald's crappy meals, watch Big Brother, and spoil their children. They live in the world all but 2 hours a week. Well duh, monkey see, monkey do.
An old Cherokee tale recounts the story of a grandfather who teaches life principles to his grandson. The grandfather says, “son, on the inside of every person a battle is raging between two wolves. One wolf is evil. It is angry, jealous, unforgiving, proud and lazy. The other wolf is good. It is filled with love, kindness, humility, and self-control. The two wolves are constantly fighting. The little boy thought about it, and said, “Grandfather, which wolf is going to win?” the grandfather smiled and said, “whichever one you feed.”
The bottom line is, it isn’t the fault of the church. It isn’t a changing God or changing sin or changing truth. It is the perversion of man and his self-will run riot. It isn’t up to any governing body to determine how the body of fellowship grows. It is always up to individuals. It isn’t the US government that has screwed up our economy but the collective of irresponsible individuals who have spent with foolish greed. We have been feeding the sin nature.
One of the greatest things I learned in AA that would serve us all well to practice is personal accountability. If every man and woman would do a “fearless moral inventory” to honestly see their own sin with a willingness to change, things would improve, people would turn back to God and His blessings would once again flow. As long as we persist in living in this world as if it were healthy, our churches will shrink and our faith will decline.
Satan is the ruler of this world. He’ll have his fun for awhile. But it won’t last forever.
Meantime, what are we going to do about it? Which wolf are we feeding? Can you honestly evaluate the amount of time you give God vs. the amount of time you give the world? That should speak volumes about what your mirror is reflecting.
Christine, God bless you. I understand your frustration. Having seen what’s happening first hand, loving the church and God as I do, I just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake the people, saying, “don’t you see what’s happening to us!”
I suggest that you and everyone disturbed by the decline of Christian churches, step up and do something about it. It starts with meeting with God every day in prayer and Bible study and listening to the Holy Spirit. Go to church, worship, encourage one another in fellowship and hospitality, meet often, be a shining presence in your communities, share the gospel as the Holy Spirit leads - be Jesus. That’s all we’re really asked to do. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love God by sharing God with your neighbor. Love man by sharing God with your neighbor.
Be very careful about writing books and making claims that you know something. God is in control. Every man needs to be accountable to Him. Then things will turn around and He will hear our prayers.
These words, spoken to the Israelites so long ago when they had gone astray, hold every bit as true today for us, right here in the USA. I believe God has been telling us this as we see more seats in the pews empty. He is calling to the remnant, if we would only listen, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.” 2 Chron 7:14-16 NIV
May the Holy Spirit who knows your heart, guide you in a closer walk with Jesus.
Not afraid to speak the truth in love,
anne hughes
http://www.cogprays.net/
