Slice of Laodicea

Here’s a report about a supposed shake-up in the Southern Baptist denomination. It appears the shake-up is an attempt to restore big numbers and fix a 30 million dollar shortfall in their missionary budget. But wait! There’s no mention of prayer and the role of the Holy Spirit, only replacing numbers as baptisms and memberships decline. Johnny Hunt wants to get back to getting bodies pouring through the door and having those membership cards filled out by visitors.

I have seen first hand just how meaningful those kinds of memberships can be. As a young adult, I attended a Southern Baptist church. Every Sunday an “invitation” was given as a matter of ritual. A few would straggle down the aisle each service for one reason or another. One Sunday, a heavily tattooed man headed down to the front. Everyone was excited because he was a visitor and surely, his trip down that aisle meant a new convert. The man signed the membership card and the very next Sunday, was put right into “service” at the church. The only problem was, nobody really knew him before they handed over the keys to the Sunday School bus. An hour later, the police pulled the reportedly new convert over along with the bottle of Jack Daniels under his seat. The bus had been weaving all over the road. Tragically, nobody ever saw the man again. Welcome to the numbers game, where warm bodies, signing membership cards, walking aisles and instant baptism with no discipleship are the norm.

Johnny Hunt needs to repent for his numbers idolatry and realize that the real reason the churches are declining is spiritual in nature. Real converts produce real churches, no matter the size, where Christ is honored, and lives are transformed by the preaching of the Word. The article reports that Hunt is calling for the “relaxing” of rigid worship standards to draw more people. Based on what I’ve seen in SBC churches, a lot of them have no worship standards to begin with, so I’m not sure how much farther down he intends to go in that regard. Pleasing goats has never been the purpose of worship. Worshiping God and pleasing Him alone is our duty as believers.