Four Reasons I am Grateful My Roots are in a Small Membership Church
My spiritual roots are in a very small church in Texas. How small? For one solid year, I was the only student – taught by the same teacher in Sunday School and Training Union. We had thirty to forty people each week, and if we ever hit fifty, we felt revival had come. To my knowledge, we never had a full-time pastor; therefore, I was raised on the preaching and teaching of bi-vocational pastors.
Today, I want to take a few moments to share four reasons I am grateful God let me be raised in a small membership church.
1. We were very committed to the Bible being the Word of God.
Our Pastors taught the Bible. Our people believed the Bible. I was raised carrying my Bible to church every time we met. We participated in the teaching and preaching of God’s Word by opening our Bibles and following as our Pastors taught us the Word of God.
In fact, our church was formed in the living room of our home. My parents were part of a group of people who left a church over biblical convictions. I was way too young to remember the details, but I do remember how exciting it was when all these people began to worship and meet in our living room. Eventually, a church was formed: The Faith Baptist Church.
My parents were not graduates of high school or college, but they were lovers of the Word of God, and Mom taught it faithfully. I remember when I left for college, their #1 fear was that I would not come back believing the Bible was the Word of God. Therefore, my commitment to biblical inerrancy came from a very small membership church in Texas.
2. We believed in the local church of Jesus Christ.
At Faith Baptist Church, if you were a member, you came to church. You were involved in a Sunday School class. You were probably a part of Training Union. You were involved on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. If you were not there, you were missed and checked on. If you began to fall away, you were approached. Therefore, we had a strong commitment to the local church.
As a child or a teenager, I never entertained the idea of not going to church. This was unheard of in our family and in our church. My parents would not have tolerated it and quite honestly, nor would my church.
Therefore, I struggle continually with the lack of commitment I witness toward the local church of Jesus Christ. The main reason I have such a high passion for and a deep commitment to the local church is because of what I learned in my small church growing up.
3. We were taught how to share our faith in Jesus Christ.
As an older child and teenager, I was involved in weekly visitation. This was not a time to simply check on those who were not there; our main role was to share the good news of Jesus Christ.
I remember as a teenager, we were taught how to use the Four Spiritual Laws and how to give our testimony. Then, we walked down the streets of a nearby city and shared our faith in Jesus Christ.
I learned to share my faith in Jesus Christ and win people to Christ because a small membership church equipped and expected me to do it.
4. We were led by bi-vocational Pastors.
As far as I remember, every one of our pastors was bi-vocational. I probably did not appreciate it then like I do today. Some were school teachers, others were salesmen, others carpenters and painters, and others were even students. None of our pastors stayed very long. Perhaps that was because they didn’t live in our town and had to commute, they actually went to other churches, or our church did not or was not able to take care of them.
What I do know is that these men were faithful men. They worked forty or more hours a week, commuted from nearby cities to pastor our church, and faithfully taught us the Word of God. Looking back, I don’t know how they did it all!
Today, those men and other bi-vocational pastors are heroes to me. My friend, Dr. Kevin Ezell of the North American Mission Board, says they are like Iron Men. I agree completely.
In closing…
I don’t like categorizing churches by saying they are large or small, in fact, I don’t like it at all. I really believe that God does not look at the size of a church as much as a church’s faithfulness to the task and opportunity given to them.
I have no idea why God has called me to pastor a church like Cross Church. What I do know is that my spiritual roots from growing up in a small membership church still anchors my soul in the Word of God, the local church, the Great Commission, and a deep belief in God-called pastors. This is why I am filled with a sense of deep gratitude for the church where I was raised and invested in me faithfully.
Yours for the Great Commission,
Ronnie W. Floyd
Dr. Ronnie Floyd is the President & CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee.
A Pastor’s Response to the Recent Report Released This Week on Declining Baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention
A report was released on Monday, May 12, 2014, entitled, “Pastors’ Task Force on SBC Evangelistic Impact & Declining Baptisms.” If you did not see the report, I do hope you will take a moment to read it. There is also a brief video worth watching.
Acknowledgement of and Addressing the Problem
This task force has been meeting since last September, learning, listening, praying, evaluating, and strategizing with our North American Mission Board. I want to break down their acknowledgement of and how to address the problems contributing to declining baptisms.
Acknowledgement Addressing
1. Spiritual Problem Pray for Spiritual Awakening
2. Leadership Problem Model Personal Evangelism and Provide Pathways
3. Discipleship Problem Create a Disciple-Making Culture
4. Next Generation Problem Serve the Next Generation
5. Celebration Problem Celebrate Evangelism and Baptism
I want to thank all of our leaders who were involved in this study on behalf of our churches. I am most grateful for their service.
My Response to the Report
Most, if not all of these findings were somewhat expected, but they did a superb job in crystallizing our present situation for each of us to understand.
I want to share with you a few responses to these findings.
Before I give my responses, please know, as soon as I received this report, slept on it and prayed through it, I sent it to our staff Leadership Team, and requested: Go over this report this week with your teams; we will go through it in our Leadership Team meeting on Monday, plus our next entire Ministry Team meeting.
I share this with you today because I find the report helpful for us at Cross Church. We have talked through many, if not all of these at one time or another over the past six to twelve months. We are continually trying to find ways to improve in each of these areas at Cross Church.
My Responses:
1. Spiritual Problem: Yes, indeed we do. In a recent interview with Dr. Jason Allen of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, I stated specifically: Our greatest problem is spiritual, and our only hope is spiritual awakening.
As I have now spent time praying seriously in four different gatherings with 1,500 plus pastors of the Southern Baptist Convention, I can assure you, there is a growing sense of urgency that spiritual awakening is our greatest need not only in our convention, but in America. We must prioritize a major movement of extraordinary prayer personally, in our churches, across the convention, and among evangelicals in America and the world. We need spiritual awakening!
2. Leadership Problem: Yes, again! For months, I have been talking to our team about how God is burdening me greatly in the area of personal evangelism and how we must be much more intentional in sharing our faith with the goal of asking people to trust Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
I am very excited about an upcoming strategy that will be released soon by the North American Mission Board. It will provide a tool to equip our people in personal evangelism. In fact, I will use it on a Sunday morning during worship to equip our people, and then implement ways for engagement, intentionality, and accountability. Therefore, I agree 100% and pray daily for God to open doors and conversations for me to have gospel opportunities with others. The power is in the gospel. We must share it personally and preach it continually. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation!
3. Discipleship Problem: I agree again, and this is why we have taken our church into an organized weekly curriculum for small groups called Bible Studies for Life. This curriculum series is released by LifeWay, and I have the privilege to serve as its General Editor. At least 150,000 small groups use this curriculum weekly. We want our small groups exposed to the Word of God, and we are utilizing this series to help.
Additionally, we are becoming much more intentional on personal discipleship. We believe we have to have multiple ways to disciple people, and most of all, as the report states, “Create a culture of disciple-making.” There is much to say about this area. Needless to say, it is a very needed and ongoing conversation here at Cross Church.
4. Next-Generational Problem: There is no question in my mind that we must get serious about addressing this problem. I am becoming more intentional all the time about mentoring the next generation. I have done so for years, but in the past couple of years, I have taken it to another level.
It is imperative that we address this issue within our churches and our convention. I talked about this in my interview with Jason Allen, referred to earlier. Therefore, we must get serious about addressing this problem.
5. Celebration Problem: We know this, and have been in the process of changing it in our church. We do realize and recognize that we have to work hard at highlighting and celebrating life-change, personal soul-winning, and baptisms.
In fact, just about ten days ago, I announced our own task force within our own staff team that will evaluate everything: from website, to worship, to hallways, to our entire culture, recommending ways we can improve on celebrating. We were moving in this direction before this report was released. The staff members assigned to this task force are not connected to any of these areas. We wanted to give permission to the members of this task force to look at all these areas with fresh eyes. We will implement most, if not all, of their findings and recommendations.
In Closing
While deeply burdened by the findings released, I am very hopeful about us seeing it turned around within our convention of churches.
Through Christ and the Spirit’s power, we can.
I would encourage each of us to:
1. Wear this burden and act upon it personally and with your church corporately.
2. Talk to God about these things. He is the only One who can lead us and truly insure it is turned around.
3. Communicate these findings with your laypeople and your lay leaders. If you have a staff, communicate it with them also. Evaluate and help them wear this burden alongside of you.
4. When you go inside the Full Report from this group, you will discover these disheartening things: 25% of our churches reported no baptisms at all, 60% of our churches did not baptize one person between the ages of 12-17 years, 80% of our churches baptized one or zero persons between the ages of 18-29, and the only upward tick in trends is that we are baptizing more children 5 years and under as a convention of churches.
The church of America needs spiritual revival and America needs spiritual awakening. We must pray for a movement toward extraordinary prayer! Only this will move us to a higher and deeper commitment to reaching our towns, cities, states, country, and world to faith in Christ. Therefore, “Oh Lord, give us spiritual awakening!”
Yours for the Great Commission,
Ronnie W. Floyd
Dr. Ronnie Floyd is the President & CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee.