joining the church part two

In my last post I asserted that the church today is up against certain realities which in my opinion greatly impact the way we receive members. I stated that I believe the pressure of new definitions of success in the church as well as the ramifications of those new measures has had the affect of lowering the bar somewhat on the meaning of membership.

Churches are often run by implementing a "management by objectives" approach. Staff members feel pressure to perform according to predetermined objectives that relate more to those things that are easiest to measure. "What is the bottom line?" we want to know, and by that we mean worship attendance, budget giving, new members and baptism. Tom Ascol is offering a resolution at this years convention calling churches to accuracy in reporting numbers. The fact that many would call for such a resolution speaks for itself.

Someone will object that if churches do not care about results then they are like the bad steward in the parable of Jesus. They have taken his talent and squandered it. Why would we make excuses for our lack of success in carrying out the gospel?

This is the dilemma that most of us in leadership in ministry wrestle with. How or even should we measure our progress? Is this necessary? How do we keep track of our effectiveness in accomplishing those things we believe honor God?

My answer is absolutely yes we should have measures and that they are necessary and biblical. My argument in these posts is that somewhere on our way to the 21st century we changed our values for measurement. And that this change has resulted in an unhealthy tendency to major on minors and ignore essentials.

The Wisdom of History

There was a time when membership counted for something different. The measure for true membership used to be that a person demonstrated a love for Christ, an understanding of true doctrine and a lifestyle that backed up his or her faith.

But sadly, today it is easier to join a church than it is just about any other social organization.

Consider that in the 19th century Baptist churches in America defellowshipped about 2% of their church congregation each year for various disciplinary reasons. Membership was a privilege that was taken seriously. The monthly business meeting was normally a place where people would confess their sins to one another and concerns about how church members who were not faithfully in worship were addressed. The pastor would regularly meet with church members who were falling away from fellowship and who were not in worship regularly.

Now of course I am not suggesting that we look around for people to excommunicate! I am simply illustrating for us how far we have strayed from what was the normal practice of the American church before the 20th century. Think about it- if we were to expel from membership everyone who did not attend worship regularly- I don't have to tell you how deeply we would cut into our church records! The numbers speak for themselves. Our church is typical of most Baptist churches in America- only about 40% of our total membership actively attend our worship.

This would have been unheard of in past centuries. I am not calling for us to return to our colonial past, but to simply learn from the wisdom of our long history. There is something to learn from the way early Baptists in America "did church".

The effects of this kind of discipline, for instance, and the high bar set for membership had some obvious positive effects.

For starters, it created an environment of genuine community. People were in each others lives. They kept up with each other and asked the hard questions. The church community itself served as effective accountability. When there is community pressure to live a certain way, and to meet biblical standards, there is more of a sense of responsibility to live according to your faith. (Some will rightly point out that the Puritan society of stocks and scarlet letters is not to be envied- of course the biblical call of bearing with one another in love and speaking the truth in love is also a discipline of biblical community).

Another positive impact was the health of the church. Some of this was quite obvious. Consider the observation of Gregory Wills from Southern Seminary writing about church discipline of the 19th century:

In large part the discipline worked. It promoted unity and purity. Baptists had their differences in the nineteenth century. But they defined the essential areas in which unity was necessary for maintaining fellowship. They did not tolerate departures from those standards of belief and behavior which they deemed essential. In essentials they were united and discipline protected this unity. Their churches generally achieved the purity they believed that Christ required of them, for they did not retain members who strayed from it.

God apparently blessed it—the churches experienced the greatest revivals in the period in which they practiced church discipline. Between 1790 and 1860 Baptists in America kept up strict discipline and grew at twice the rate of the population

Rights and Responsibility

In any community or institutional system we are influenced by both responsibility to that community on the one hand and our rights within that community on the other. In our culture, we tend to emphasize our rights above our responsibility. People don't litigate to prove their responsibility. This is as I stated before the result of being immersed in a humanistic, me centered ethos. People do not naturally ask, "what is my RESPONSIBILITY?" in this situation. We are way to selfish for that. We naturally ask, "what is in it for ME?" Can you imagine what would happen if we applied the same standard for membership on our 21st century congregation? We would probably be labeled a cult. But scripture rarely speaks of our rights but instead speaks almost exclusively of our responsibility.

Church and Culture: Who's Influencing Who?

No man thinks completely independent of either his history or his surrounding worldview. We are a part of it and therefore it is perfectly natural for us to include it's standard when we apply biblical teaching to our life or to our church. The pre-modernistic understanding of biblical responsibility to church membership was erodedd at almost exactly the same pace as modernism took over our education, entertainment and industry. Charles Finney (1792-1875) introduced the emotional appeal of the invitation at the end of the 19th century. (Many Baptists are surprised to learn that before Finney, churches did not extend "invitations". Click here for an assessment of Finney's theology).

Finney's emphasis on man centered emotionalism coincides with the rise of Darwin (1809-1882) in economics, Marx (1818-1883) in politics and Freud (1856-1939) in psychology (I am not trying to associate Finney to these, I am only demonstrating the context).

William Jennings Bryant (1860-1925), a flamboyant orator and fundamentalist Christian who was twice the Democratic nominee for president also rose to prominance during this time. Ironically, many credit Bryant for transforming the Democrats into a socially liberal party. His emotional oration and revivalistic appeal was his greatest strength. The Republicans roll out a young flamboyant of their own- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). Either one of them could have extended invitations at the end of their train tours with many converts.

In April of 1906 the Azusa Street revival launches the pentecostal movement and entire denominations arise out of an emphasis on emotion and the "movement" of the Holy Spirit. The gift of tongues is seen as a mystical ability to speak in the language of the Holy Spirit while bypassing the mind.

At the turn of the 20th century the industrial age cranks out many new inventions that impact the church. The church finds that by providing electricity in their buildings they can draw a crowd on Sunday nights. Thus Sunday night worship becomes an evangelistic tool that attracts the seeker. People from all over the county will come to a night worship in a lighted, air conditioned building. What novelty it was! The first seeker targeted worship, in other words, was not inspired by Warren or Hybels, but by the light bulb. There was a heavy emphasis on "calling your sinners" at these Sunday night worship events.

The Fastest Man in Baseball

Vaudeville rose to prominance at about the time Billy Sunday (1862-1935) became the voice for evangelical Christianity.

Vaudeville was no match.

I once read an old article entitled, "why women love Billy Sunday." The premise was that he reminded them of a vaudeville style traveling show.

His entertaining sermons and spectacular stage antics drew crowds by the thousands. This ex professional baseball player (Chicago Whitestockings- he set the record for the fastest time around the bases at 14 seconds) became the standard by which many evangelical preachers measured themselves. It was not unusual to see the advertisements for a Billy Sunday crusade along side Sears Roebuck and Company and Dooleys Yeast Powder.

One historian wrote:

Careful planning went into the crusades, and teamwork was essential. A Sunday campaign resembled a vaudeville show as much as a mission; advance men promoted the coming attraction, secretaries made local arrangements, and bands and choirs were hired to provide entertainment. In 1909, Homer A. Rodeheaver, a song leader and trombone player, joined Sunday's troupe, and the tabernacle rang with music and excitement in the build-up to Sunday's explosive sermons.

His marketing strategy would have made Barna proud. I make this point to help us to see that our generation was not the first to borrow heavily from culture in order to accomplish our goals. Nor are we the first generation to be swept up to humanistic standards in measuring that success.

My own grandfather, who was a pastor for over 50 years beginning in the early 1900s, used to quote Billy Sunday, "set yourself on fire, and people will come watch you burn."

One New York crusade Sunday drew 1.5 million people with 100,000 recorded conversions. But it is not known if any of them ever actually joined a church. Billy Sunday rarely taught the necessity of church membership.

Connect the Dots

Of course the legacy of Billy Sunday was much more than just slick marketing. His influence on culture was positive, and there is no question that many came to Christ through his crusades. A long line of effective evangelists count Sunday as their spiritual mentor (including to some degree Billy Graham). There are many more examples of this kind of approach to evangelism that emerged during this time. Billy Sunday just happens to be the most spectacular one.

This is a sloppy way for me to connect the dots- I know. But I am only attempting to illustrate in kind of hellicopter flyover fashion how easy it was to move from a disciplined emphasis on doctrine and responsibilities of membership in the 18th and 19th centuries to an emphasis on human emotion and pragmatism in the early 20th. The importance of belonging and living in church life in spiritual community began to give way to an emphasis on large numbers of people down an aisle and into the baptistry. For the first time churches became concerned with how to keep members. The back door was often as big as the front. The number of people on the church membership roll began to greatly outnumber actual worship and Sunday School attendance.

The reconstructionist south was a very difficult place to live. Churches became the center of community life and associations formed. Many were anxious to get back on their feet and to see God work in spectacular ways. It was fertile ground for wholesale change within the church. There is much to be treasured and valued in that tradition and there were many positive changes in missions emphasis and Sunday School growth. Some of our greatest hymns came out of this time periods as well- God works through difficult times in profound effeciency.

But this was also the culture from which emerged our emphasis on emotionalism and pragmatism. In our enthusiasm for spectacular results, we often neglected our disciplines as incumberances and inconvenience. Perhaps we should hear the words of Jesus: "These you should have done and not left the other undone." (Matt. 23:23). We must somehow balance our enthusiasm for numbers and market success with genuine body life issues such as spiritual discipline, doctrine and accountability.

Back to the Future

Our solution of course is to move away from a tendency toward consumerism in the church and back to biblical missiology. We must rediscover the joy and discipline of biblical community. In response to my last post, Jayme Thompson wrote:

Failing to love individual people and care about individual stories births all kinds of trouble including consumer-driven, Wal-mart-church, marketing craziness. If we don’t “Love God and love people” we can’t obey or get right the other things God requires. We ask the wrong questions. Thinking of people theoretically and en masse is cold. It’s radically different from loving real people whose names we know. It’s also a temptation we all face. It’s so much easier for me to tithe and even give to the church in order to check off my “service” box than it is to tithe, give, and then pay the electric bill for the family next door that’s fallen behind and baby-sit their kids complete with snotty noses and bad manners.

Agreed. Real New Testament church is messy stuff. But I sense that this is the kind of thing that people long for today.

Many years ago I preached a youth revival at the "First Baptist Church of the South," FBC Charleston South Carolina. I have to admit- it was not an exciting church at the time- but what a past!

It was indeed the very first Baptist church in the south. But interestingly it did not have it's beginning in South Carolina, but in Kittery Maine! The ENTIRE CONGREGATION emmigrated from Maine to South Carlolina to start the church. The church later started missions all over South Carolina, began training young ministers and eventually was instrumental in the starting of Furman University.

The membership roll of this one church after 10 years of toil: 98.

Talk about missional.

Imagine me standing up next week and saying, "Hey church, we have decided that there are enough churches here in OKC. They don't have enough in Nevada, so... we are all going to pack up and move our church there.

Baptist historians today credit this one church for being a HUGE influence in starting churches across the south. We trace our heritage back to this one church. How is it that one congregation could have so much impact? How is it that their membership could be so committed to the cause of Christ that they would be willing to relocate their families to the swamps of South Carolina and give so much to spread the gospel to pioneering lands (like Georgia)?

The answer is that membership MATTERED. The people who joined did not think of the church as a club. They were not drawn to the church by emotional man centered appeal, but by genuine conviction and transformation by the Holy Spirit. They were taught and understood the doctrines of the faith and "the apostles teaching." Membership was not the result of a show or an act nor was it simply an emotional appeal at the end of worship. It was a commitment. The bar was high and the expectations were clearly understood. Members were expected to learn the meaninig of membership and the responsibilities and disicplines of fellowship.

Is there a way for us to reclaim this historical value of meaningful membership? I think there is. Although I am not calling for us to return to 19th century church methodology, I am suggesting that we can achieve a 21st century version of it.

What does scripture teach us?

That will be a later post.