Much Less With Much More

I just did a little research about the state of the church in America. Some of what I discovered broke my heart. For instance, there are communities in the north eastern part of the United States where as high as 66% of the population are classified as post Christian. In fact 8:10 of such cities are the north east. The other two are in the Pacific Northwest.

While I am not ashamed of my heritage in the Southern Baptist Convention, which dates back to my salvation in 1984, nor do I boast about it. There are more than 47,000 churches in the convention. That is up about 2,900 more congregations than a decade ago. That should be reason to celebrate.

While we have 2,900 more churches, baptisms have declined eight of the past ten years. In fact, baptisms have dropped over 26% since 2007. That is alarming. While we have significantly more churches, we are reaching significantly lower amounts of people through all our evangelism emphasis. To take this a little bit further, the ration would be one baptism per 59 churches. Disheartening.

Multiple books and articles have been written to reveal the reasons why this occurs. Studies and surveys have been done to gather insightful information to reverse this trend. Still the steady decline in baptisms continue.

I've read numerous books on this topic and the subject of church growth. I have a few shelves lined with such books. In the early days of my ministry those things consumed me. Not so much these days. I really only concern myself with the numbers of how many are getting saved and how many are following in baptism. That informs me if we are keeping the Great Commission. [Matt 28:19-20].

I believe the Lord has shown me one of the major reasons why churches are losing ground. I plan to share that with our church this weekend. It will require change. It will require some adjustments. We will see if the congregation and other congregations are willing to alter their present courses, if they are ineffective in the area of evangelism. Time will tell.

The Art Of Listening

I met with some college buddies for lunch today. During the course of conversation, one took out his phone and began responding to text messages. I asked if our conversation bored him. He told me he heard all previously said. He recounted the first part of the discussion nearly word for ward. Afterward, I asked him, "What was said next." He stammered and then said, "You got me. I don't know."

We talked about everything from education, debt , parenting, ministry stuff along with church planting and church revitalization. Needless say, lunch lasted longer than an hour. We had not all been together in years.  We had much to catch up on sine we last met.

I listened a lot today. My friends had plenty to say and in the back of mind I kept thinking about some scripture from James. "This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger;" [James 1:19]

It seems everyone wants to be heard, but few want to listen. Opinions are expressed by news pundits, celebrities, politicians, the wealthy and special interest groups. It appears nobody is listening to anyone else. Listening is an art. It is one thing to hear words. It is another thing to understand what the other person is communicating.

You stand face to face with another person and tune out the words being spoke n to you. Ask any parent with young children. Or ask anyone who works in the public sector dealing with people all day long. Especially critical people. It is a whole other thing to give another person your undivided attention and make them feel what they are saying is important to you and that you are interested. Also, much can be learned by listening. You never know when someone might drop a nugget of truth you can hang onto.

We all need to be quicker to listen and slower to speak. Being slow to anger is another topic for another day. The focus for today is working hard at listening to others. Really concentrating on what they have say instead of formulating your response. Lord, please help us learn to be good listeners.