Harris Creek Baptist Church

Recently, the Church of England met to discuss the priorities for the church. Wonder what they are thinking about? What should be number one on the list? What do you think the church should be focused on? Read this snippet. (Here is the full article.)

“A meeting of the Church’s “parliament” was due to discuss whether clergy should be doing more to convert British Muslims to Christianity.

The sensitive issue was highlighted last week by a senior bishop who accused Church leaders of failing to reach out to other faiths, and warned that radical Islam is filling a gap in society caused by the decline of traditional Christian values.

But now the Church has put off the debate on recruiting Muslims until next February at the earliest and will discuss the promotion of churches as tourist attractions instead.”

Read that last paragraph again. First, I laughed. Then I cried. Then I was angry. So I started to write a blog to gun them down. This would be like shooting fish in a barrel. (Has anyone ever done that? If you miss a few times and the water runs out, is it even easier?) Seriously, how could their priorities be so messed up? This is why the church in England is floundering. They don’t know which way is up.

I was ready to go, then someone handed me an interesting article from the Dallas Morning News written by Christine Wicker.

The gist is that thousands of SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) churches will have closed their doors in the next 20 years or so. “The Southern Baptist Convention is a denomination in decline. Half of the SBC’s 43,000 churches will have shut their doors by 2030 if current trends continue.”

(Note: She says that what is happening to SBC is indicative for all evangelicals in America. She gives reasons for that but little support. I do think the SBC is headed for a bruising, and I do that that if the broader Evangelical community doesn’t take note it could happen to them as well.)

These are not flaky tourist attraction places. If you know anything about SBC, they promised that the focus on getting doctrine right would bring about revival. But as Wicker notes: “The denomination’s growth rate has been declining since the 1950s. The conservative/fundamentalist takeover 30 years ago was supposed to turn the trend around; it didn’t make a bit of difference.

Leaders said it did. Reporters and politicians believed it did. But the numbers kept going down until, finally, they have become obvious to everyone.”

If we just hold to the same beliefs about scripture and women in ministry, the church will be saved. Apprently that won’t work much better than tourism.

Now, there are some essentials in belief. I hate to crash the party, but Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. And I believe that Muslims should be converted. But the essentials are best summarized by the Apostle’s Creed, or Nicene Creed. Something more along the lines of what C. S. Lewis aptly called Mere Christianity. Our real problem is our lack of rootedness within Scripture and the tradition and history of the Church. Our individualism has led us to scripture to interpret it along the lines of our own desires, rather than listening to the wisdom of Scripture in the context of the church. Since scripture is affirmed as inerrant, our interpretations of it have become inerrant as well.

We interpret Scripture not in isolation but seeing its truths through the lens of millions of faithful believers within the crucible of life. Jaroslav Pelikan once said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” The struggle to live with God in Christ by the Spirit and to make sense of His Word in a world that does not value such life or practices did not originate with us. It will not end with us either. We simply take our place in line, doing our best to listen and live in faith, passing on what we know to reliable people just as Paul tells Timothy. We do not trust in our own faithfulness. (The quintessential error of Southern Baptist Convention from my view. Of course this is perenialy a problem for all who trod the narrow way. I suppose that is why Jesus said “narrow is the way, hard is the road, and few find it.”) We trust in the faithfulness of Christ.

Our sustenance and even revival in our land will not come from correct doctrine, but from conviction, repentance and reconciliation attested to in the scriptures, but empowered by the Holy Spirit.

So I will not throw stones at anyone else. Instead, this week I will stop and examine my own life, Not just what I believe but how I have lived. I will pray for conviction from inward sin. I will do my best to walk with God and be an agent of His grace. Lord, have mercy on the church of England, have mercy on the SBC. Lord have mercy on me a poor sinner.

What about you? What will save the church?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 10:37 am and is filed under Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.