7 Oct 2009
I once heard someone say that the difference between the New Testament church and today’s church is that the New Testament church was life begging for structure and that today’s church is structure begging for life. Although I firmly believe that faithfulness in stewardship is found on both the receiving and giving ends of the spectrum; that is, it’s not just a matter of being faithful in our giving but also of being faithful with what is given, I still don’t believe that the biggest problem facing Southern Baptists is structural. I believe it’s spiritual. It’s not in our “headquarters,” national, state or associational; it’s in our hearts!
To me, expending our energies and investing our time in the restructuring of our convention is tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s not restructuring that we need, but revival. The latter will take care of the former, but the former without the latter will prove futile. No matter how sleek a convention we can build, it will prove to be nothing more than a pretty corpse without the life of the Spirit surging through it. Make no mistake about it; revival is now a matter of our survival!
I once committed myself to restructuring a church by leading it to rewrite its constitution and bylaws. I really believed that this new constitution and bylaws, which were the mere words of men, mostly my own, would solve our church’s problems and make us into a formidable soul-winning force. However, a few days before the big vote on our new church constitution was to take place, I was chased down by the “Hound of Heaven.” The Holy Spirit of God caught up to me and convicted me of being so foolish as to insert my words into the place of God’s Word. Our church didn’t need to be restructured by my words, but revived by God’s Word.
The best thing we can do for the future of our convention is to get back to the Word of God. I’m appalled at the current ignorance of God’s Word in our churches. It’s not just an ignorance prevalent in our pews, but also in our pulpits. Many a modern-day pastor is sorely negligent when it comes to the biblical injunction to “study to show [himself] approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). While many contemporary clergymen are well-versed in the latest church growth strategies, few can properly exegete a passage or defend the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints.
Before becoming a Director of Missions, I thought that the biggest hindrance to revival was found in our pews. After eight years as a Director of Missions, however, I came to believe that it was in our pulpits. Someone has said, “When small men are casting long shadows the sun is setting.” There are a lot of little men occupying our pulpits who view our churches as nothing more than runs on the ecclesiastical ladder of success. To them, each church is a mere stepping stone to a bigger and better situation. No congregation is deemed worthy of a lifetime commitment, especially when some larger church with a far more visible pulpit comes calling.
It’s here that you’ll find our former rope of sand being rubbed out. Cooperation has given way to competition. Yet, it’s a monster of our own making; we’ve created it by constantly parading mega-church pastors before our convention as the sole models of success. This is not meant in any way to demean men whom God has used to grow large churches, it’s just meant to point out that the size of your church is a crooked stick to measure success by. Remember, following Jesus’ miraculous ministry, death on the cross, resurrection from the dead and ascension into Heaven, there were only 120 in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost.
Where are today’s Davids, men after God’s own heart, who are content out back in obscurity caring for the Father’s flock (Acts 13:22; 1 Samuel 16:11-12)? Where are those who make themselves spiritual eunuchs for the Kingdom of God’s sake; that is, those men who care for the church—the bride of Christ—rather than rape and use her for their own ends (Matthew 19:12)?
I understand that this piece won’t win me any popularity contest, especially among my preaching brethren. Still, I feel compelled to write it. It is my burden for a lost world, which is running out of time, and my concern for our convention, which is in danger of becoming more and more splintered and less and less relevant, that motivates me to pen such a piece.
We need revival, and we need it now! I believe revival fires need to be ignited in our pulpits. Until burning white-hot there, there is little hope of revival fires spreading to our pews and throughout our convention. And just in case you’re tempted to attribute these words to some self-righteous scribe, let me publicly confess that no preacher in this whole convention needs revival more than I do, nor is there any church in more desperate need of a divine visitation than the one I pastor.
It seems to me that for a long time we’ve operated under the delusion that the answer to our problems is a matter of human ingenuity rather than divine intervention. We’ve assumed that our doing this or that will automatically translate into some predictable divine response. For instance, if we follow the right formula, God will bless and our church will grow; it’s as simple as that. Thus, the explanation for non-growing churches is that they are simply not following the right formula.
It’s this tendency of ours to look to ourselves rather than to God that keeps us from ever becoming desperate before God, and it’s this lack of desperation that keeps revival from ever happening. My friends, all revival is born in desperation. If we continue to think we can do without it, we will. But if we ever get to the point where we realize that revival is now a matter of our survival, we just might get desperate enough before God for revival to occur. One thing for sure, as long as we’re looking to solve our problems with our church growth strategies and convention restructuring we’ll never have revival. Revival will never happen until we are desperately looking to God. How desperate are you?
Don Walton
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