Southern Baptists Must Change or Die Out
The president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says at least two-thirds of Southern Baptist youths are leaving the church between adolescence and adulthood.
In a speech at the seminary in Louisville, Rev. R. Albert Mohler warned that the Southern Baptist Convention will die out unless that trend is reversed.
“The Southern Baptist Convention is either going to become younger or dead. Here we have a big issue; we’re losing at least two-thirds of our young people somewhere along the line between adolescence and adulthood,” he notes. “A generation that has reduced religion and Christianity to what is called moralistic, therapeutic deism — believing that God basically wants them to do well and to do right and to be happy.”
Mohler says biblical Christianity is countercultural. “If we stand by the scriptures, we’re going to have to say hard things to a culture around us that will consider us backward, unloving, intolerant,” he adds.
He has other critiques and encouragement for members of the denomination. “Southern Baptists still look like white-bread Protestantism, middle-class America, still concentrated in the South, and still focused on North America. We’re going to have to be missional, directed outward, uncranky, visionary, oriented to the future, happy and joyful in claiming and assuming the responsibility that Christ has invested in us and being faithful to that,” Mohler concludes.
(Source: OneNewsNow.com)
