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Outreach reports the largest churches and the fastest growing
churches on adjacent pages in the magazine. So I flipped the page and
discovered something even more puzzling. Even though Saddleback's weekly
attendance fell by 3,000, it reported a "gain" of 1,149 for the year!
How does a church that loses 3,000 report a gain of over 1,000? Maybe they
planted a new church. That's an admirable thing, but even if true why should
Saddleback be reporting the numbers of another church as its own?
In the "Leadership Journal" article, Warren also touted his
church's ability to attract young people, saying that "the largest Gen-X
church in America is Saddleback with over 20,000 names under 29 on our church
roll." Again, how could a church with only 21,000 members have more than
20,000 under the age of 30? And even if that is true, is it a good thing to
have so thoroughly "shut out" those over 30? How could such a
congregation possibly represent the true community -- or "koininia"
-- spoken of in the New Testament?
Some pastors are growing wise to these self-aggrandizing perversions of
truth. Dan Burrell is the pastor of Northside Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC.
Burrell says he has grown disillusioned with the efforts of what I and others
are calling the Christian-Industrial Complex to get him to participate in
Body-Count Evangelism. Interestingly, the movie The Passion, which
provided the context for Rick Warren's comments, provided the context for
Burrell's epiphany.
"I will admit that I got seduced with Mel Gibson's The Passion of
the Christ," Burrell writes. "I was convinced enough that it had
evangelistic value that I bought out five screens at a local theatre before its
public release and we invited scores of non-believers to join us in watching
the movie and discussing it afterwards. I recall one 'decision,' but no
conversions, after all the effort and I learned my lesson. From that point
forward, I've been pretty much immunized against 'partnering' with Hollywood.
Upon further reflection, I've reached the decision that pastors are actually
being asked not to partner with, but to pimp for Hollywood."
Burrell makes the important distinction between "decisions" and
"conversions." If that distinction seems a false one, consider this:
The American Church Research Project reports that in 2000, only 18.7 percent of
the U.S. population attended a Christian church on an average Sunday. Ten years
earlier, in 1990, that percentage was 20.4. In other words, the percentage of
churchgoers in America is going down, not up.
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