The reports are everywhere now about the declining numbers of church members and baptisms – especially among Southern Baptists; so much so that church leaders address it at almost every opportunity as if attempting to somehow spark a zeal in remaining members like a coach might do in the locker room of a losing team at halftime.
Everyone is trying to figure out what’s wrong.
This might come as a shock to many, but I would suggest that the answer here might just be nothing is wrong – that those declining numbers that are troubling the pulpits of American churches right now may well be God’s will being carried out by His own being called out of a growing apostasy flourishing within them.
...Is it not biblical compromise and carnal indulgence that has ultimately caused it – pleasure palaces built with borrowed money to produce sensory circuses that can better compete with the world for your patronage and mine with watered-down gospel messages, coffee shop ministries, rock and roll worship and people-pleasing programs? If it is, then how can more biblical compromise and carnal indulgence solve it?
That’s right – it can’t.
So, while pastors feverishly try to save their ministries (careers) and members try to save their churches (attendance), the exodus is steadily taking it all away – away from the wishful thinking and wayward agendas of misguided men to the promised land of God’s provision where the rot and stench of spiritual death and decay is left behind for the Living Waters of truth, repentance and faith in Christ.
Editor's note: Seeker sensitive churches such as Immanuel Baptist should heed the warning, as well as the Virginia Baptist Mission Board and the Southern Baptist Convention .
HT: Christian Research Net and Slice of Laodicea.
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MORE PROOF: Seeker-sensitive / Purpose-driven Models Creating False Converts
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