Recently it was reported that the Southern Baptist Convention reported a decline in baptism for this year to the lowest since 1987 and that their membership had dipped by about 40,000 in 2007. This news is a bit of surprise for America’s largest protestant denomination. More surprising, however, was SBC PResident Frank Page’s remarks, “”Our culture is increasingly antagonistic and sometimes adverse to a conversation about a faith in Christ. Sometimes that’s our fault because we have not always presented a winsome Christian life that would engender trust and a desire on the part of many people to engage in a conversation on the Gospel.” Interesting “sometimes that’s our fault” but most of the time it’s someone else’s?
Is Frank Page stating that the reason people aren’t coming to Christ is because they don’t want to? Hasn’t that always been the problem? Wasn’t Jesus crucified because his culture was “antagonistic and adverse to a conversation about a faith in Christ?” Weren’t the disciples martyred because their culture was “antagonistic and adverse to a conversation about a faith in Christ?” What culture hasn’t been “antagonistic and adverse to a conversation about a faith in Christ?”
The problem is not that people are “antagonistic and adverse to a conversation about a faith in Christ” it’s that they’re particularly “antagonistic and adverse to our portrayal of faith in Christ.” We have recreated Christ in our image and it’s not pretty. We have made an idol and called it contemporary Christianity. What we need a is a restoring of the right image of Christ so that people would deal with Christ, not our distortions of it.
Page gets at this when he says, “We have not always presented a winsome Christian life that would engender trust and a desire on the part of many people.” True, but not enough, it’s not the lifestyle choice of Christianity that brings salvation or is desirous. It is Christ who brings salvation and is desirous, not the lifestyle choice - we’ve gotten it wrong!
On a more encouraging note this same article in the Lexington Herald-Leader acknowledges that independent and community churches are growing. Is it because these churches are less steeped in excessive dogma? Is it because they have less trappings surrounding their image of Christ? I don’t know, but I’m glad that I’m a part of one and that we have the ability to be a body of believers - attempting to be the Body of Christ and nothing else.
