I have not linked one of my favorite Internet authors in a good while, so here goes. I wrote some similar thoughts when I used to contribute for sbcImpact nearly a year ago. This is some dangerous thinking and Dan carries the ball a lot farther than I did when I wrote this post.
Why I Don't Understand Church Planting by Dan Edelen
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Perhaps more discouraging or disheartening is that in this area, it isn't church planting that contributes to the sheer volume of Baptist churches (I don't know the reasons for the proliferation of Methodists and others), but church splits. :(
I can take two routes to church. One route takes me past (or in view of) 4 or 5 Baptist churches and a Methodist church. One of the Bapt. churches is a "plant" from a large church in a neighboring county. Three, maybe 4, of the Baptist churches have been involved in a split of some kind.
The other route takes me past 7 Baptist churches. Again 4, maybe 5, of them have been involved in a split.
How sad. I think that is one reason it is difficult for our local assemblies to work together to do anything. Even after the reason for the split is long forgotten, the two fellowships have a difficult time "uniting" because they remember *something* happened.
Well, up here in Allens Creek, we have TEN churches within one mile of one another; three Southern Baptist, three free will Baptist, one independent Baptist, one Pentecostal/charismatic, one "community" church, and one Methodist. Within two miles, the number just about doubles.
And most of the members in those churches do very little if any cooperative ministry other than the token nod at Easter and Thanksgiving.
I have actually been part of conversations in Haywood county now where people know that such and such church is a split but they cannot remember why the split occurred. That is sad indeed.
Dan has continued with another post on the topic, as good or better than the first one.
The Ingredient Needed for a Genuine Church
from the "new one"
That begins with love. And if we don’t have love, it’s all clanging gongs and crashing cymbals. In other words, noise.
And folks, too many churches planted in the United States today are nothing but noise.
WOW. just wow.
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