The SBC in Decline

I returned home from my hiking trip at the Grand Canyon to a bundle of unread emails and Google Reader items. I tried in vain to get cell phone and Internet/email reception in the backcountry, but God has preserved the canyon from these mind-zapping communication trinkets.

Perhaps like many of you, I was disheartened to find several commentaries on the declines in the SBC. For those of you who don’t know much about the Southern Baptist Convention, click here for some information. It is the denomination to which I belong, and the way in which my church cooperates with other churches for the sake of the gospel.

The facts are fairly straightforward:

Baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention fell for the third straight year in 2007 to the denomination’s lowest level since 1987, dropping nearly 5.5 percent to 345,941, according to LifeWay Christian Resources’ Annual Church Profile (ACP). Baptisms have declined annually seven out of the past eight years. Total membership also declined by 0.24 percent to 16,266,920.

My father stated it well, “Although we pray God will bring revival and change, the trajectory is not positive. If current trends don’t change, it seems we are about to enter a period of declining membership.”

News on these declines can be found here, here and here. Good conversations around this issue can be found here, here, and here.

I’ve purposely decided not to write much about this issue. Quite frankly, there isn’t much I wish to say about these declines. But there is a whole lot that I can do to help reverse the trend. As a pastor, I will take personal responsibility for leading my church in the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.

God’s Grand Creation

My wife and I head off to the Grand Canyon early tomorrow morning. I’ve hiked the backcountry out there twice before, but this will be the first time that Erin accompanies me. We’re both excited to get away and see one of the most majestic scenes in all of God’s creation – gazing at a sunset and sunrise from the bottom of the canyon up.

The Grand Canyon is special to me beyond reasons of sheer beauty. It was at the canyon a few years back that God finalized his call on my heart to become a pastor. A few of my church friends and I ventured on an epic road trip from Louisville, KY to the Grand Canyon, hiking it for several days, and then driving home through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Kansas. Twelve guys on an eleven-seat church bus was in itself an adventure.

After standing amazed at the glory of God’s creation, breathing in the magnificence of Northern Arizona, we traveled over the Hoover Dam and through Las Vegas, NV.

We stopped for dinner in Vegas, but we didn’t stay for a meal. Disgust replaced our appetites. We saw in stark contrast the grandness of God’s creation at the canyon to what man has created in Vegas, a portico of sin in a desolate desert.

It was through God’s general revelation of nature that He specifically revealed to me the next stage of my life – to pastor people. It was in Vegas that the weight of a lost world finally fell upon my shoulders. I felt the urge to beg and plead people to spend a day looking at the glory of God’s handiwork rather than wallowing in the filth of man’s masterwork. Watching people wilt in and out of blinking oblivion, I deeply wanted them to know the omnipotent Creator who brings life in the fullest.

The dichotomy between Vegas and the canyon is infinite – what God does versus what man does. It was on that trip that I experienced the gravity of worshiping creation over worshiping the Creator. All of the buildings in Vegas are mere facades – poor replicas of the real thing. After the exquisite adventure of the Grand Canyon (which included a narrow escape from an attack of killer bees), Vegas felt sinfully tame.

Perhaps Jim Elliot said it best in his diary, “The Lord made mountains to climb, not just to look at, and up there one understands why – seeing the vista that most folks never see, with the sense of farness that most never feel.”

Many in our communities are far from God – they are searching for meaning in mere facades. They are betting their lives on a lie from Satan. Grand fulfillment is found only in One – the Lord and Savior over all, Jesus Christ.

The Generational Faith Gap

From the Pew Forum on Religion:

One-quarter of all adult Americans under age 30 (25%) are not affiliated with any particular religion, which is more than three times the number of unaffiliated adults who are age 70 and older (8%). Overall, younger Americans tend to be considerably less Protestant and far less religiously affiliated than older Americans.

Taking into account current census data (as of today), the number of under-30 Americans unaffiliated with any particular religion is 31,375,207. The harvest is abundant…

10 Things I Love About My Ministry

When we walk with the Lord, the path that He leads us on is better than any path we would have found on our own. Our church is on a path - a path leading us forward in a great adventure with our God. And we have already seen God do many great things through us. While I could add more items to this list, let me share with you ten things that I have rejoiced over at my church this past year:

1. Baptizing people of all ages (from children to senior adults)
2. Seeing members weep over a need for even more prayer in the church
3. Having a person get saved at a funeral
4. Watching new teachers get excited about Sunday School
5. Hitting the streets in a dark area of nation and evangelizing the lost
6. People rededicating their lives to the Lord on Easter
7. Ministering to those who rejoice in everything
8. Hearing students give their testimony about missions before the entire church
9. Partnering with a missionary from Colombia for the sake of the gospel
10. Building a beautiful new coffee shop with incredible cheese danishes!

Worship Makes You Happy; TV Does Not

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a study of 4,000 Americans by academics Daniel Kahneman, Alan Krueger, David Schkade, Norbert Schwarz, and Arthur Stone. The survey focused on the reasons why the sharp rise in our standard of living in recent decades has not resulted in a corresponding rise in levels of happiness among people when compared to earlier generations.

The article postulates why this stagnant state may exist among Americans:

The standout cluster was what the authors label “engaging leisure and spiritual activities,” things like visiting friends, exercising, attending church, listening to music, fishing, reading a book, sitting in a cafe or going to a party. When we spend time on our favorite of these activities, we’re typically happy, engrossed and not especially stressed.

The obvious implication: If we devote more time to these activities, maybe we would be more satisfied with our lives. Yet the evidence suggests we’ve missed a huge chance to do just that — which may help explain why Americans are little or no happier than they were four decades ago.

Over that stretch, men reduced the amount of time they spent working. Meanwhile, women — as a group — spent more time earning income, reflecting their increased work-force participation. But this increased time at the office was more than offset by a drop in time devoted to mundane chores.

In other words, both men and women had the chance to lavish more time on “engaging leisure and spiritual activities.” But in fact, time spent on these activities has actually declined over the past four decades.

Instead, there’s been a significant increase in the hours devoted to what the authors call “neutral downtime,” which is mostly watching television. Women now spend 15% of their waking hours staring at the tube, while men devote 17%.

My hope is that worship isn’t “neutral downtime” for those attending church. While it’s certainly not definitive, this study supports the notion that we should be actively engaged in worship, not just being entertained. And while I believe that video clips and the Internet can be appropriately incorporated into a worship experience, how far is too far? What’s your take?