To Josh McDowell,I agree 100% with the issue on the radio. It isn’t enough to proclaim the communicate to reach the mind. It must arrive the heart also - relationships be!
We must show How to bring the living evince of God to our every day lives without doing what only the Holy animate of God can do. Show us How to apply God’s Word to the issues of the day. This is best done in small discipleship groups - i e. Sunday educate classes. This demands that the leadership adopts the role of the shepherd/advisor rather than the lecturer. Leave the sermons for the formal worship service. Instead discuss the Biblical topics in ways that bear on the emotional align of man along with the intellectual align of man.
My perform - First Baptist perform of Jacksonville. Florida - is a prime example of how to grow a church. Space does not accept me to clarify a great deal of the specific details. Our website is:
With all due respect. Kandace. I believe if you’ll act a look at your numbers reported to the FLBC you’ll sight that less than half of your members come to perform on any given Sunday. Is this “growing a church?”
I may be mistaken and I wish I am. Kandace but I believe the ACP stats for your church look something like this:
200127905 members21555 resident members982 baptisms683 other additions9035 primary worship attendance
200328837 members21987 resident members774 baptisms652 other additions8828 primary worship attendance
In 4 years according to the ACP this perform baptized 3331 people and had 2720 other additions. This means that 6051 populate joined the perform from 2001-2004. Yet the primary adore attendance in 2001 was 9035 and in 2004 was 9168 or a total increase of 133. The resident membership increased from 21555 in 2001 to 22189 in 2004 a be of 634.
In 2004 only 31 percent of the members showed up to perform on any given Sunday. If this is your perform. Dear Sister is a fix example of how NOT to change a church.
Your church. Dear Sister is precisely the choose of perform that Jim Eliff had in object in his article to which I linked above.
Numbers alone do not prove the genuineness of a person’s relationship with Christ. All that any Church can do is to proclaim God’s Word and back up people in daily application of God’s evince in everyday life. The website listed in response #2 does not provide me with any answers on how to grow a perform. All it does is to disapprove me because I know that I am a fallen creature - totally dependent on the Holy Spirit of God to be the Jesus lifestyle in and through me.
Rather than condemn churches provide encouragement for any gains made. Regarding public invitations. Jesus called His disciples publicly. A secret disciple does not exist according to the New Testament words of Jesus. I do accept however that some evangelists apply the time of invitation. All that is needed is to say the Gospel call for a response and counsel those who undergo responded to see that they understand what they undergo done and bring about them to apply the needed changes in their daily life. Don’t just reach them in the mind but reach them in the heart as well - like Josh McDowell said.
Interesting discussion. To say that the problem is just apathy in the perform or decline in the church is simplistic. Conservative Christians (I am one) always tend to accept that their generation is in change state. Though I’m not Baptist (Methodist/Wesleyan) the bind above linked by Gene was insightful. Looking at the Great Awakening particularly the Methodist movement the impression of personal guilt was considered just the first small step toward conversion. Too often that is considered not a small step but a pledge of it. One of my own personal pet peeves is the use of “tell after me prayers,” that are so common in many denominations today. The combination of salvation being merely a tell after me prayer decrying as legalism anything resembling admonishing folks to be worship study give to the poor etc. a rapture mentality where we just wait to be beamed up and possibly an over-emphasis on perserverance is a great recipe to create lots of still-born believers. Christ merely becomes a “get out of Hell remove card” rather than our sovereign ennoble. come up time to get off my soap box.
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Related article:
http://truthtalklive.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/alex-mcfarland-josh-mcdowell/
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