What happened?

As useful as the hard facts are, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that our 2006 (the latest year compiled) Annual Church Profile (ACP) numbers are down in some critical areas and tepid in others.

Most of us had no reasonable expectation that the last couple of years would reverse our 30-year trends because we saw no sign of it in our own ministries.

LifeWay has told us definitively what we already knew in our hearts. Now, the scramble is over what it all means.

The “C” in ACP stands for “church.” This is not the report card for your association or one of our mission boards. Those institutions have their own accountability process.

Neither is this judgment day for the Conservative Resurgence. That reformation was primarily about the institutions Baptists support, not about the spiritual condition of Ichabod Baptist Church. If there had been no resurgence, most of us would no longer be Southern Baptists but we would still be struggling with stagnation in our church ministries.

This is the self-graded report card for our churches, indicative of the trends revealed in the statistics in most of our churches. Many of our churches do not turn in annual profiles, but we have little reason to think that those churches would noticeably affect the overall numbers.

And while these numbers have huge implications for the work of all things denominational, neither the problem nor the solution will be found in denominational bodies?which are themselves made up of churches.

A perfectly administered denominational fellowship (most of us define that as one that takes our advice) could perfectly assist only those churches that want help and that further utilize the perfect resources. A denomination as bad as some say we are will mostly hinder churches by not doing useful things. Even this dreadful possibility cannot provide much explanation for the general slide of American churches.

WHO’S TO BLAME?
I believe that to whatever degree we have run off younger leaders or narrowed the parameters of denominational fellowship are likewise beside the point. These accusations, just or not, deal with who leads our denominational bodies and to whom we listen most intently. If the SBC is deeply mired in these sins, it may keep a church from cooperating denominationally, but it will not keep your church or mine from reaching people with the gospel.

No resolution, no critical spirit, no pharisaical scrutiny, and no perception that Southern Baptists are negative helps us understand why individual churches, that mostly don’t send messengers to the SBC, are not winning people to Christ. On one hand we’re told that many find the denomination irrelevant and on the other that the denomination is stifling local church outreach.

These explanations offered by various denominational employees and officers might be answers to other questions, but not to this one. That answer will be found locally, personally.

This makes our malaise or coldness or whatever an “us” problem, since we’re all church members and leaders. It can’t be solved by quitting something or firing someone. Wouldn’t that be easy, though?

We, locally, in my own church and community, are acculturated to an inappropriate degree. American Christians are “of” as well as “in” the world.

I don’t mean that we should not be Americans or live among pagans. We should not let the culture in which we live call the tune for what we value and how, or if, we conduct our ministries, though.

Christians and families, the basic units of churches, have become lotus-eaters of American prosperity. We don’t, aggregately, care enough about anything else. Family disintegration, church fights, family financial problems, and general narcissism are caused or at least aggravated by selfish materialism. In this climate, telling our neighbors about Christ is pretty far from our minds. We are just the opposite of Paul?we have learned, in whatever state we find ourselves, to desire more.

RESULTS FOLLOW EFFORT
Having our heads turned by the culture also affects the ministries of our churches, which are, remember, made up of us. There are many things related to making disciples we no longer do. I’d argue that even our commitment to making disciples is so fragmented as to be dubious.

Here’s an example. Of the reporting churches, over 26,000 reported conducting Vacation Bible School. That’s sounds pretty good until you consider that there are 44,000 churches in the SBC. I understand that some churches didn’t report at all but reasonably you’d expect that something like 15,000 of our churches just didn’t do it. On top of this, more than a fourth of our 2006 baptisms grew out of VBS. That would be kids saved and parents saved as a result of follow-up visitation.

For 15,000 Southern Baptist churches, their evangelistic effectiveness could be 26 percent higher if they just used VBS as a means to share Christ in their communities. But they don’t. They just don’t.

Other ways of sharing the gospel seem to be bearing fruit in our day. Men’s outdoor fellowships, regional crusades like the SBTC’s Celebration of Hope meetings, church-sponsored pregnancy resource centers, disaster relief, prison ministry, FAITH, and other traditional and innovative ways of sharing seem to work in those places where churches utilize them. Some of these are denominationally resourced and some of them originate in the heart of a pastor or lay leader, but they are implemented by churches and their members, or they’re not.

No, we can’t program evangelistic results. But it’s not surprising to find that churches that share are more likely to see people saved than churches that don’t.

It is also observable that our culture is increasingly hostile to anything resembling the biblical gospel message. Our communities respect religious observance in only the broadest way. The biblical reasons behind evangelism seem foreign and threatening to most expressions of our culture. But that doesn’t mean that our own neighbors are hostile to the gospel. Most of us don’t know the answer to that question. It’s no excuse.

Our culture constantly shifts but cultural shifts don’t explain why we let the simple act of sharing the gospel take a back seat to so many things in our lives and ministries. To me, acculturation on the part of all of us explains it better. We’d rather fit in, live to ourselves.

THE IDOL OF COMFORT
Perhaps another way to express it is that we love things more than we love people. Even our own leisure and peace become “things” in higher priority than the eternal state of others.

I don’t have the answer. We’ve tried things and I’d say that they work better than nothing. That’s a good thing. Still our hearts are mostly cold. I believe going back to the basics makes more sense than anything else I’ve heard.

By this, I mean:
?The Bible Study hour should be an hour when the Bible is thoroughly studied. No self-help courses or 12-step programs can replace this crucial discipline.

?Worship services should be focused on prayer, Bible reading, and the exposition of the Word. Use as creative a format as you like but don’t fall off into lesser things.

?Discipleship training, focused, systematic, and by whatever name, should once again occupy a prime place in our church schedules. Converts we do baptize are not often enough taught all the things Jesus commanded us. We don’t need to think about whether or not we should do these things; we’ve already been told to do them.

?Prayer, personal and intense, should also be a repeated exhortation for all of us great and small. Only God can warm our hearts so that we return to the first things.

Evangelism and the baptisms that should follow are the results of the more foundational things we do. Those are symptoms of relative c