David Rogers at SBC Impact has written an intriguing article this morning about church membership. It is entitled “Church Membership: A Social Convention?” You can view the article here. In this article David addresses the “decline” of the Christian church in America. This has been a topic of discussion of late; particularly since President Obama declared that America was no longer a Christian nation (you can watch video of his comment here). President Obama’s comment is not the only reason there has been a lot of buzz about this topic; the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) released a study a few weeks ago that has created much of the buzz about the decline of Christianity in America.

However, David’s focus in his article is not so much on the decline itself. He attempts to address a possible reason for the decline—church membership. If I read his article correctly, his point is that “church membership” is not valued nor correctly understood by neither the church nor the people joining the church. As his title put it, church membership has become a social convention. I don’t think he meant that it was invented by our society, but to put it more bluntly, it is a fad. Church membership in America was something “you did” in the 1940’s. Now it is not necessarily something you do and so our numbers are declining. However, David brings out a point to which I would like to add. He wrote, “Personally, I am not so sure that the church overall was any healthier in the 40s than it is now. Not that we’re doing all that great now, but it seems to me, from what I can gather (and Latourette’s quote seems to validate this theory), that the church then was “a mile wide and an inch deep.”” That is still the problem today; churches don’t spend time deepening their members’ relationship with Christ.

The problem with church membership today is not that it is not “cool” to be a member of a church, but I believe it is a conglomeration of factors:


(1) People today don’t understand church membership. Churches have failed to explain that church membership is more than going to a church on Sunday mornings; it is uniting oneself with Christ in saving salvation and following through by publicly declaring that commitment in believer’s baptism. Church membership is first and foremost determined by whether a person has accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.


(2) Churches today don’t understand church membership. If a church will allow a first-time guest to come down the aisle and join the church, then I don’t think that church understand what membership is. We don’t create hoops for people to jump through, but we are to examine people to determine if they have truly accepted Jesus Christ. After all, we are told to judge a tree by its fruit (Matthew 7:16, Luke 6:43-45). In my opinion, churches are doing a disservice to people by not asking about their salvation; we give people the false understanding that they are saved and going to heaven and we never even stop to ask them if they understand salvation.


(3) Churches today don’t require anything for membership. In America we have become afraid to ask our members to do anything. There is this stigma that “if you ask them, they will leave.” Jesus asked his disciples a lot! And a lot of them left! Jesus doesn’t call us to a lazy faith; he calls us to an active faith. There is nothing we do to earn our salvation; however, we are required to do something with our salvation. One of the greatest commands Jesus gave us concerning our faith is found in Matthew 28:18-20—All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. We have trouble asking our congregations to even share their faith with other people in their neighborhoods, workplaces, and families. When we don’t even push our people to be obedient to what is commanded from Scripture, should we really be surprised when we see people leaving the church in droves.

David was speaking to the churches of the ‘40’s, but I think many (too many) of our churches today are still a mile wide and an inch deep. We are not teaching them to be obedient to the Scriptures and to live out their faith on a daily basis. I think this is why so many students “leave” the church when they graduate high school and move on to college. We didn’t spend time deepening their faith in Christ. We didn’t help them build on a foundation of rock—we never moved them off the foundation of sand. So when the storm came, their “house” didn’t hold up. The same thing happens to the adults—when they lose their job, they go through a divorce, have a terrible death in the family, etc. We are setting up entire churches that are spiritually bankrupt, and then we wonder why the church as a whole is in decline.


Do you think churches should require more for membership? Does your church already, if so what do they require?

As a Southern Baptist Pastor, I can speak to this with some firsthand experience. All too often we speak in a condemning manner about what Catholics believe. We are bereaved by the fact that they do not encourage individuals to read the Bible (although they do not discourage it either). There are many other “problems” that we Baptist’s have with Catholic theology, and for good reason.

However, I think that when we “speak” of Catholic belief, we do not carefully choose our words. I think we appear to be condemning individual Catholics rather than condemning Catholicism. I know I am guilty of coming across in this tone at times, even though I try not to do so. But it seems to be one of those areas where Southern Baptist’s as a whole think that it is ok to condemn the sinner rather than the sin—it’s ok to look down our noses at Catholics.

Some of the recent posts I have read from Southern Baptist’s seem to have moved beyond looking down at other religions and denominations and have carried that right into our very own denomination. I understand that the SBC has problems. I don’t think there has ever been a time in its history where it didn’t have its own problems. But in addressing these problems, we have begun to move beyond pointing the finger at the issues and have begun to point them at individuals in the SBC.

I think this is wrong and bordering on sin. This judgmental attitude and condemning spirit is what Jesus meant when he said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matthew 7:1, NIV). Furthermore, when we change from pointing fingers at the problems to pointing them at individuals the rest of that passage comes into play—“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3, NIV).
Whenever we want to point the finger at someone else’s “problem,” we had better have taken a good look at ourselves first to make sure we don’t have a “plank” in our own eye. So for all those “asking questions” that don’t concern an issue but are aimed at “certain individuals,” I would ask you—do you have a plank in your eye while you are pointing out the speck in your brother’s eye?

It was also quite amazing to me that one post attempted to keep it a secret as to who they were pointing the finger at by using cryptic language that, well, wasn’t so cryptic. I haven’t been blogging for very long, but I knew exactly who they identifying. This is a sad testimony to the “Baptist plank problem.” We too many times jump on the wagon of condemnation without first stopping to examine ourselves and determine if we too need to straighten this issue out in our own lives.

I understand that the SBC is becoming more centralized and so the leaders have a much greater effect upon the developing problems and so many feel at ease with pointing the finger at these leaders. The problem, and the plank we don’t want to acknowledge, is that as churches of the SBC we allowed it to become more centralized. One of the great pride(s) of being a Southern Baptist used to be our unique ability to unite together to further the kingdom of Christ without a central denominational government (as the Catholics, Presbyterians, etc. have). When we allow our “government” (the SBC) to become more centralized, it is going to become more dependent upon the leaders. If there are good leaders, then it will follow that the SBC will be good. If there are bad leaders, then it will follow that the SBC will be bad. It is no different than the United States government. It has become so centralized that it is becoming more dependent upon the president as to whether or not the government will be effective at serving the people or the agenda of the president in office.

When we begin to question whether or not a church is “truly” Southern Baptist based upon their giving, or lack thereof, to the Cooperative Program—are we not questioning how centralized we are allowing the SBC to become? I may only be in my 20’s, but I can read history books and I do believe that when the SBC was first formed there was no Cooperative Program. Were those churches less Southern Baptist? When the SBC proposed the 75 million campaign and churches pledged to donate what they could and the pledges exceeded the 75 million mark (92 million to be more precise); however, the receipts fell far short of 75 million (only collecting 58 million)—were those churches less Southern Baptist because they didn’t follow through with their pledge in the face of hard economic troubles (troubles we haven’t seen yet)? The cooperative program cannot be (and never was) the measure of whether or not churches were Southern Baptist. We are not Southern Baptist because we give to the cooperative program; we are Southern Baptist by conviction—by what we believe and not by where we give our money.

I propose that we look in the mirror and pull out the plank before we try to remove the speck in the eye of the SBC. I propose that we plug the hole in the boat instead of relying on the bilge pump and buckets. Let’s fix the problem rather than playing the blame game. If we only worry about who to blame, we can never move out of the past and on to the future. Let us resolve the problems of the SBC and get back to coming together to further the kingdom of Jesus Christ!

UPDATE: There were a few posts that led me to post this, but the two main posts that led me to this response can be viewed here and here.