That hot summer stands out to me in sharp relief, because in some ways, it represented the highlight of this evangelical (at the time) pastor's missionary fervor. It ws my second summer at the church, and I'd been there long enough to make visits to most of the families, endear myself to the children, and begin to make a difference in their lives. Ours was a patriotic small town, so on the Fourth of July we used our award-winning parade float to hand out candy and invitations to all the kids in town. Since we planned our VBS for the week after this annual advertisement opportunity, we had a record number of kids at church that year.
At VBS, we hit 'em hard with the gospel, which sounded good to the initiated at the time, but in retrospect has the wierd ring of: "For God so loved the world that he made a hell where he plans to burn most people in eternal conscious torment. But God loves Christians best--so if only you'd become a Christian, you get to escape being tortured by the God who loves you." This is not the article where I discuss a better view of heaven and hell--suffice it to say that whatever you believe about the afterlife, scare tactics with children are definitely not cool.
If we offered a terrifying message on the one side, we offered tremendous reward on the other side. Every time a child prayed the Sinner's Prayer, we brought them to the front of the church and applauded. They got a free gift award Bible. And a couple months later, we had a big celebration where they all got to take a swim in the river and get baptized. And they all knew how proud their families would be.
So that summer, fifteen children gave their lives to Jesus. And the church celebrated. But what happened next?
Well, some of those kids continued attending the church, were nurtured and discipled, and today are young men and women of faith. I'm still pretty happy about that. These defining moments of spiritual growth are so important--and in no way am I suggesting that the Sinners Prayer and baptism weren't meaningful in their lives. But just like this article isn't about heaven and hell, this article also isn't about the ones who remained in church and practice their spirituality today. This is about the other ones.
The truth is, the majority of those kids are no longer attending that or any church at all. One reason is that our church leaders never followed up. We were more focused on the celebration, on the number of baptisms we could report to our denomination, than we were interested in fostering the spiritual growth of young people and their families. It was all about "getting them saved and baptized" as the end goal, and not about discipling young believers. It was all about making converts, because a pastor or a short-term VBS staff can do that--but it takes a long term commitment to make disciples. And as one pastor, I couldn't keep up.
You may ask why it didn't seem important to anyone else to do that followup work. If you believe in individual salvation defined as going to heaven when you die, based on faith that's expressed when you pray the Sinner's Prayer and when you get baptized, and if you cling to "once saved, always saved," then you become obsessed with evangelism and tend to de-emphasize discipleship. It's easy for church members to place all the responsibility for evangelism on their pastor (we pay him to preach, don't we?), without taking on the burden of teaching your children yourself. So it's up to the pastor to evangelize them, but not up to the church as a whole to train young believers in their faith. Oh sure, we had Sunday School, for those families that were proactive enough to bring their children. But those classes simply reinforce a teaching that all you need to do is "accept Jesus". After that, you sit back, relax, and see how you can convince your pastor to preach more evangelistic sermons so others can join the club. And when that's what it's all about, then once you get saved and baptized, there doesn't seem like a lot to keep you involved. So you eventually outgrow the church. Do that often enough, and the church begins to die.
Another reason "getting them saved and baptized" is killing the the church, is the extreme emphasis placed on personal salvation. While Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline churches focus on salvation as part of a communal experience, evangelicals elevate personal salvation and personal relationship with God, over the communal experience. The result can be deep spirituality, yes. But The side effect is often a disconnect from community. Personal faith is too easily divorced from believers seeking wisdom together, sharing the joy and pain of others, investing in the life of the larger body and those within it. I'm not negating the need for personal faith, but with the way evangelicals often emphasize personal salvation as "getting saved and baptized," it becomes easy to say, "I can worship God just as well on my boat as in the church." And it's even easier to abandon a church when things go wrong. So while personal faith is good, when we define the end goal as "getting saved and baptized," we create a sense of been-there-done-that.
I can't tell you the number of times parents and grandparents have said to me, "Don't you think it's about time we got little Johnny done?" And, by that, they mean that once the kid is baptized, they can quit worrying that their offspring might spend eternity burning in the lake of torment. Getting them done means taking out a fire insurance policy. And once they have that policy, neither Johnny nor his family really needs to be in church anymore. And this is killing the church.
Still another reason why an emphasis on "getting them saved and baptized" is killing the church, is that there seems to be a disconnect between "being a Christian" and actually acting like Jesus. Once you're saved and baptized, and you've got your ticket to heaven, then you can turn around and be a racist, sexist, ableist, who hates LGBTQIA+ folks. You can who support putting children in cages because their parents are undocumented, and you can refuse to wear a mask because you care more about your convenience more than you love your neighbor. You can do all these things because, as far as you're concerned, being a Christian is all about getting saved and baptized.
The thing is, the younger generation sees this hypocrisy of white evangelicals, and has had their fill of it. They're leaving the church in droves, because "getting them saved and baptized" requires nothing of a person, morally. It was saved-and-baptized white evangelicals who enslaved Africans, who burned crosses on front lawns, and who uphold white supremacy today. Saved-and-baptized Christians have contributed to the fact that LGBTQIA+ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than other youth, and why 40% of LGBTQIA+ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year. Saved-and-baptized Christians promoted the doctrine of expansionism which has killed and oppressed countless indiginous people. These same saved-and-baptized people support politicians whose personal lives and political decisions are the OPPOSITE OF CHRISTLIKE. They hail these politicians as heroes, simply because they support the political agenda of the elite. And the world is catching on, that when the goal of religion is "getting them saved and baptized," you can do whatever you want and still call yourself a Christian.
This kind of evangelism is killing the church. Unless we act like Jesus, we demonstrate to the world that our faith is useless. Unless we vote for the things that our loving, embracing, healing Jesus would vote for, we show our young people that it's really all about power politics and not about caring for our neighbor. We can have all the Vacation Bible Schools we want, lead them in the Sinner's Prayer, dunk them in the water--but if we don't lead by example and teach them to act like Jesus, they're going to see the church as meaningless, and they'll leave. That's why I'll always regret baptizing so many kids that year--because we've failed to teach them to act like Jesus.
This generation is smart. They know hypocrisy when they see it. They can tell if you're trying to scare them out of hell and into heaven. They can tell if your idea of God is a violent dictator in the sky who likes to torture his own creation. They can tell if your life reflects the idea that religion is all about fire-insurance, and has nothing to do with living and voting as Jesus would. So, Christian, if you don't want to kill the church, maybe it's time to de-emphasize "getting them saved and baptized," and start prioritizing Actual Jesus. Because it'll kill the church if you keep talking like you're going to heaven, while you're making hell on earth for the "least of these."
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