From Pastor Cliff Mayton

Saturday, I was reading the latest issue of our Southern Baptist of Texas news magazine, the Texan. One article, written by Randy Adams, Executive Director of the Northwest Baptist Convention, got my attention. I want to share an excerpt of the article with you:

“Basically every metric that we use to measure our effectiveness is moving in the wrong direction, and substantially in the wrong direction. Baptisms are down about 30 percent over the past decade. Our four lowest years since 1947 are 2015, ’16, ’17 and ‘18. We don’t have the numbers for ’19 yet. So, in the last four years that we have are the lowest four years in over 70 years.” Then he stated, “So when you look at baptisms, which of course is a key metric, when you look at church attendance, church membership, missionaries on the field, all of those metrics are down. They’re at historic lows, or at least the steepness of decline is historic. We never experienced this in our 175 years- certainly not going back to 1900, which I’ve done.”

Those are sad and sobering words, and I understand we don’t like to read them, but unfortunately, they are true. We see the proof of this at MBC, but also in churches throughout our country. For decades, in America, we had a Biblical Christian worldview of “God is,” but we now live in a country that has a secular worldview of “God isn’t.” The secular viewpoint, I believe, is obvious in how an alarming number of people in our country are jumping on the socialism bandwagon. It wasn’t that long ago that few people in America would even entertain the thought of voting for socialism.

The real question is what are we going to do about this downward spiral in baptisms and church attendance? One thing is certain, it is not going to magically disappear. The solution is we have to remember the days when the Spirit of God was moving powerfully in our churches and our country. We were praying people, witnessing people and we were faithful in our attendance and our giving to the church. In short, what we need is to return to our first love, the Lord Jesus!

As I continued reading The Texan, I came across an article announcing the passing of Dub Jackson, a Partnership Missions Pioneer. That took me back to when I was a student at Hardin-Simmons University. Dub Jackson came to speak at our Chapel Service and later to share in my evangelism class. He was a man who got everyone’s attention. I was especially impressed with the fact of him being a World War II P-38 fighter pilot in the Pacific, who later became a missionary to the Japanese people he once fought against. As a missionary, Dub developed a new strategy of mission work, partnership missions in which lay people were encouraged to become short-term missionaries themselves rather than only those called to career missions. On that day in 1972, Dub Jackson inspired the class to give our lives to evangelism and missions. I made a commitment that day to do just as Dub inspired and encouraged me. As I read the article, God used Dub’s words to speak to my heart again. Dub was asked this question —What was the single greatest lesson God taught you in ministry and he said, “There’s no place God cannot give the victory. Don’t ever feel like you’ve hit a dead-end wall. God is able to give victory, anywhere, anytime we look to Him and ask.” Those words touched my heart then and I hope they touch your heart today.

I have good news for MBC, “God’s not through with us.” Our greatest days can be ahead if we just believe Him for the victory. Come this Sunday with a renewed commitment to Jesus and His church.