7 Questions for Southern Baptists to Ask

I’m grateful to be a Southern Baptist. In fact, my training and ministry have always been within the world of Southern Baptists. As I read our recent statistics, though, I see again that we are still reporting fewer and fewer baptisms. As a professor of Evangelism and Missions at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, I grieve these findings.

Last year, I posted my thoughts when God broke my heart over lostness. I had recently stood in a region of the world where folks do not consider the God of the Bible to be God. Seeing the masses broke me like I had been broken only once before in my life. I saw afresh my loved ones, my neighbors, and the nations who do not know Jesus.

Honest, painful reflection forced me to see why I sometimes lose my passion for the lost. I’ve re-framed those findings here as questions for all Southern Baptists to ask today as we gather this week for our annual meeting:

  1. Are we cocooned among believers? I work among Christians. I hang out with Christians. Without intentionality to connect with non-believers, I can easily live in a Christian bubble. Is that your situation?
  2. Is our world too small? My ministry is wrapped up in students, churches, and cross-cultural workers. I travel the nations teaching and training, but I still live in my world doing my ministry, striving to accomplish my goals. Somehow, I forget that I’m a speck among billions of people who don’t know Jesus. What about you?
  3. Do we see the crowds wrongly? Perhaps that’s where my brokenness has hurt the most. Jesus saw the crowds as sheep without a shepherd (Matt 9:36). I tend to see the crowds as people who will read my blog posts, buy my books, praise my teaching, and send students to my seminary. That’s an agonizing recognition and confession. 
  4. Do we love the lost like we should? If I believe a personal relationship with Jesus is the only way to know God and escape eternal judgment, I should want to tell others. If I don’t tell the story, I’m standing for biblical truths I unlovingly choose to keep to myself. That’s tough for any of us to admit.
  5. Have we allowed grace to become routine? The childlike faith that filled me with awe as a young believer has been overshadowed by the day-to-day routine of an older believer. I’ve written about being amazed by Jesus, but I’ve recognized that I, too, can lose my wonder. How is your wonder?   
  6. Do we reflect enough on obedience? I love reading the Word each day. I’m realizing, however, that I sometimes study for the sake of reading and writing – not always for the sake of doing the gospel. What about you?  
  7. Have we made evangelism only corporate? Seldom am I not preaching somewhere on a given Sunday. That schedule allows me to share the story of Christ every week. I’m grateful for those opportunities, but I can reduce evangelism to telling the story only from the safe distance of the pulpit rather than face-to-face. Do you do the same? 

Southern Baptists, how do we answer these questions? 

10 Comments

  • Jim Watson says:

    I think you are missing a key reason. Fear. As I speak to Christians, leaders. pastors a reason they don’t share Christ is they are afraid. I was just talking with a group of elders recently. They were telling of their plan to grow the church. It was based on marketing and sales. I just hung my head.
    I asked when is the last time you shared Christ with a non-Christian. They had to go back months. I suggested let’s share Christ right now. We were in a public place. Pick a person, come with me and we will share Christ. Not one of them took me up on it. The reason, fear.
    I purposefully setup my week so I am with non-Christians so I can share Christ. I can’t imagine going a week without letting someone know about Christ. My experience is Christians like this idea but they really don’t want to be challenged on it.

  • Chuck Lawless says:

    Fair point, Jim, though I think addressing many of the above issues will actually take care of the fear issue. Thanks for the discussion.

  • Honestly part of the challenge is that we (pastors) have not equipped our people for the right conversations. The language has changed -we no longer share a common language with lost people and when we try methods that worked several decades ago folks don’t understand us. We (I) need to model gospel conversations and train our people in those strategies.

  • John W Carlton says:

    So often we think of evangelism being limited to the 4 walls of the church. If a person is under conviction and talks with a Christian wanting to know how to be saved, too often the Christian takes that person to the pastor rather than showing him/her the way. There’s an older book on evangelism that every Christian should read: SHARE JESUS WITHOU FEAR, by William Fay with Linda Evans Shepherd. It’s a great book.

    Thank you for your blogs.

  • Chuck Lawless says:

    Thanks, John. That book is a good book.

  • Paul Neal says:

    Brother and Professor Lawless,
    Am I wrong when I say that many leaders, Pastors are doing more telling with less doing these days. We tell the congregation what they should be doing but they’re looking for the example and not getting it. Also, I’m not totally convinced there is a number of different languages that need to taught to reach lost people. I am convinced that the gospel spoke through a loving heart can reach any lost person in any culture. My fear is the church people have forgotten where they were when Jesus impacted their lives. If they can remember that and use it reach those around them that are lost then that is the language that speaks generation after generation. I once was lost but now I’m found.
    Thank you for all your post, blogs or whatever you want to call them. By the way, you only list 7 questions, where are the other 3?

    • Chuck Lawless says:

      I do think most pastors need to set the example more by doing, but others need to train up others to do the work with them. My apologies on the 10 vs. 7 confusion — we simply mistitled the post.  

  • Brother Lawless, among the laity who pay attention to the SBC inside baseball, you and a few others (Rainer and Stetzer come immediately to mind) are known as serious operators in the areas of church life that most practically hit the daily lives of the laity (or the “99%”).

    Reading through this list, it occurred to me that, especially regarding 1, 2, 5, & 7, the daily life of the average senior pastor is an almost photo negative of that of the laity (I’m a pastor’s son/pastor’s son-in-law but I’ve spent my adult life in the secular, increasingly hostile-to-Christianity workplace so I’ve seen both sides).

    The days of a senior pastor leading by monologue rather than by walking together with those he is charged to lead is long past (if it even really existed). On the list of chief concerns, the 95% of laity would not have the growing statistical problems reported by our denomination as an even top 20 problem to worry over.

    The question I see here is “What can the ordained leadership do to engage the non-ordained laity in the Great Commission such that the numbers actually show progress?” The answer is going to be more simple to understand than to accomplish because it will require a dramatic change on the part of generations of senior church leadership who have bought into a culture that values preaching (and the related preparatory disciplines) above all other activities.

    The maxim has always been, “what the pastor personally engages in is what the church membership will value most”. If preaching and family time (both great and critical things, btw) are the only visible non-negotiable components of a church’s senior leadership’s life, the overwhelming majority of the membership will also value these items to the exclusion of all else.

    I would encourage every man who seeks to lead a church review your list and ask, “what do I need to be doing and how should I be about doing it such that I will draw the laity to join me in the effort?”

    If you need to re-read Tom Sawyer for an example of how to draw people to the work, please do so. 🙂

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