Ed and Patsy now live in Athens, Alabama and are members at the Pepper Road church. As administrator of this blog, he enjoys sharing thoughts about spiritual maters. Not only his thoughts but good articles from other authors. He is also thankful to have been able to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ for over sixty years.
As we have noticed at other times, a new generation of Christians has come along and have heard of the great periods of numerical growth in congregations in times past, but are not seeing it happening now. They sincerely want to see growth and have come up with a number of fixes for the problem that would attract more “prospects.”
One of these is that we need to scrap the “worn out relics” of past generations, like gospel meetings, public Bible classes, and home studies – all geared to turning people from error to truth. While these may have worked at one time, but no more, we are told. We need to do and say things that will get more in touch with how people feel today. They are more interested in merely enhancing their lives (by feeling good about themselves) than they are in completely changing their lives.
It is my firm persuasion that most of the lack of growth of the past decade or two can be traced to a drifting away from the distinctiveness in our message in our meetings and classes. Most of what comes from our pulpits could be preached without descent in any pulpit in town. The prevailing philosophy of preaching/teaching is to emphasize how much we have in common with our religious neighbors rather than to emphasizing the vital points of difference. Most preaching done now Sunday after Sunday and in “gospel meetings” consist of either pop psychology with little or no Scripture or the reading of some Scripture and drawing a few moral platitudes from it with little reference to the real gospel message or to the danger of going beyond the doctrine of Christ. Along with this they are given some reasons why we think they would find our “church family” a place where we think they would happy – none of which have to do with sound doctrine.
Obviously, the “prospect” is searching for something or else he would not likely be coming our way. So, it is our hope that if we shower him with compassion, friendliness, and love, without referring to anything that might to be wrong with his present “church affiliation,” or any convictions that he would need to change, or any clear line between what the Bible teaches and what he believes or feels, or any life-style changes he will have to make, that he will like us so much that he will change over to us.
So as he assesses the matter, he may think that since there is little difference in the compassion, friendliness, and love where he is presently a member and that offered by this group and that there are other groups he has attended in his search for a “church home” that are just as compassionate, friendly, and loving– so maybe that “something missing” that he is searching for is not available, so he will return to where he was, or try another group, or just give up and quit.
Remember, by offering folks the distinctive gospel message we are offering them something they cannot find anywhere else. I also believe there are people who are looking for that “something” but will not find it in much of the preaching/teaching efforts today.