You are currently browsing the daily archive for April 30th, 2007.
Wow! He posted two articles on the same day!! I just couldn’t help myself on this one.
First, read this short aricle by clicking on this link http://albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=930
When I read this installment on Dr. Mohler’s blog, it struck me that here is one reason for the decline of Christianity in North America. Those liberal churches mentioned in the article are not among Southern Baptists, but I believe the root problems of the symptoms are the same. Let me explain.
Dr. Mohler observes,
“Deacon Thomas Lindell’s comments add the icing to Rev. Anderson-Smith’s cake. He boasts of having removed all the “power imagery” from the church’s worship services. That, we might imagine, is rather hard to do. If God is not all-powerful, why worship? Without an acknowledgment of God’s power, we are left with little to say. [italics added] A God who is not powerful cannot help, much less save. What can you then sing? “O God our [well-intended but less-than-sovereign Spirit of helpfulness] in ages past?”"
To me, it seems that for most of the rank and file members of our churches, God is not truly seen as the Sovereign Lord the Bible proclaims Him to be. If we could honestly gain a more full comprehension of God’s glory and majesty then our everyday lives would be more subject to His Lordship over us. Instead, the pressures of work, school, marriage and family lead us to make ourselves sovereign. We have the deplorable tendency to be functional atheists when we lose sight of the glory of God and His rule over all creation — even us.
I once attended a seminar on personal evangelism where the leader said that he was convinced that the reason most “average” Christians don’t share their faith with others is that they just don’t love Jesus enough. I think he’s on to something. If we truly “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind . . . and love your neighbor as yourself,” then it seems we would see the people around us more the way God sees them and be more motivated to see them reconciled to a loving, Sovereign God.
As I’ve shared from the pulpit recently, I believe we truly need to experience a God-sent, Spirit-filled, broken-hearted revival. It certainly needs to begin in me. Please earnestly pray to God about this matter. I truly do not want it to be said of our worship that “There’s not much Lord in this Church Service.”
On my daily journey through my regular news stops on the web, I found this article at OneNewsNow.com. I must confess that I am concerned about the facts presented in the article below.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The number of baptisms in Southern Baptist churches has fallen for the second consecutive year despite a push by top leaders to evangelize. At the same time, national membership increased by less than 1 percent, but more churches were built, according to the 2006 profile of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, a Southern Baptist agency that conducts the annual survey, said the findings show that denomination has not been effective in “stepping up to the task of sharing the Gospel with a lost and dying world.”
Baptisms dropped from 371,850 to 364,826, or 1.89 percent, last year, the lowest annual total since 1993, according to Baptist Press. In 2005, baptisms decreased by 4.15 percent.
National membership reached 16,306,246, up by nearly 36,000 in 2005. The number of churches across the country increased by 524, or 1.2 percent, to a total of 44,223.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
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I wonder, in the midst of so much talent and treasure at our disposal, why are we not seeing more people come to Christ in North America? For those of you at First Baptist Dunkerton, do you have any thoughts or suggestions about how we can do a better job of reaching our neighbors for Christ? I truly would love to get some practical input on this matter.
