Texas Baptist Forum: Help small churches

Help small churches

David T. Olson claims: “It’s probably five to seven times easier to plant a new church than to help an established church that’s in deep difficulty restore its vitality” (April 6).

This line of reasoning has led to the phenomenon that was reported to the BGCT Executive Board several months ago. A staff member said 54.8 percent of BGCT-affiliated churches average less than 50 in Sunday school attendance. Churches this small cannot have strong youth, music and mission programs. They mostly concentrate on survival.

I have tried to count Baptist churches in or near Kilgore, population 11,000. There are more than 25, most falling in the under-50 category. About one-fourth are affiliated with the BGCT. Starting missions often means adding small churches that never will grow strong. Working to strengthen small churches may be more difficult, but it may be better in the long run. Starting new work is exciting, but God may not want us taking the easy way.

I’m trying to practice what I preach. I have started a program aimed at strengthening small churches. We join together for fifth-Sunday hymn singing, January Bible study and monthly breakfast meetings with local pastors.

Charles Whiteside

Kilgore

Relevant churches

Many churches are beginning to do some form of “faith in action”—being the church. They are to be commended. Two complaints I have heard from fundamentalists concern (a) engaging in service projects as a form of “being the church” and (b) doing “faith in action” on Sunday “instead” of worship.

To the first concern, if any “service project” is not a platform for evangelism or “pure religion” as the Apostle James defines it, then it should not be done at all.

Second, First Baptist Church in Vernon simultaneously took lay-preachers and worship teams to six state institutions and nursing care centers, did door-to-door evangelism to 300 people, preached to and fed 150 kids in the park, fixed major problems at the houses of 10 elderly people, cleared the brush from 20 elderly people’s houses, prayed for 12 hours straight, and delivered meals to 150 poor folks. None of the people we served were in church on Sunday morning—hence reaching them in their homes on a Sunday—and all of them received a copy of God’s inerrent, inspired, authoritative word. That’s why we do it on Sunday.

We go to church to worship, learn and grow. We leave the church to demonstrate our worship to a world in desperate need of Christlike examples.

I invite every reader to become relevant to their community. If you are not relevant, then you are irrelevant.

Let’s let God judge the efforts of churches to fulfill the Great Commission.

Ben Macklin

Vernon

Praise for Reynolds

I would like to add my words of praise for William J. Reynolds to those of Ragan Courtney (May 4). Dr. Reynolds presided over the Sunday School Board’s Church Music Department at a time when Southern Baptists became “somebody” in the world of evangelical musicians.

Bill successfully built on to the solid base that had been laid by those “pioneers” who preceeded him.  We church musicians could say with a certain pride that “we were Southern Baptists.”  We finally stood shoulder-to-shoulder with church musicians of other mainstream evangelical denominations.

Many are not aware that he was an encourager and source of help at a time when Southern Baptists had many missionaries who used music as a main thrust in their mission work.  He helped many of us who served in Brazil, and he and T.W. Hunt led in a conference of  “music missionaries” from all over Latin America.

On my furloughs, he honored me with invitations to attend the annual meetings of state music secretaries. These were so helpful to me, as I had been invited by Brazilian Baptists to organize their church music department, and my only experience had been that of a minister of music.

Bill was a personal friend to me as well as to my “music missionary” son, Carlos.  We will miss him, his big booming voice, his inspirational song leading and his love of people and of the Lord.

Bill Ichter

Minden, La.