Implosion or a Great Awakening?

(Washington, D.C.) — Violence is exploding in our cities, schools and churches. Racism is tearing us apart. The Supreme Court is poised to rule against Biblical marriage. Americans have murdered 57 million children through abortions and there is no end and sight. Marriages and families are imploding all around us. Poverty is growing. Drug and alcohol use is epidemic. And that’s just here at home. Abroad, Iran is closing in on The Bomb. ISIS is exploding across the Middle East. The Kremlin is growing more aggressive. Our politicians are abdicating their Constitutional responsibilities.And many Americans seeing no reason to go to church or put their hope in Jesus Christ.

In this context, thousands of Southern Baptist pastors and lay leaders gathered in Columbus, Ohio, this past week for their annual convention. But this was not business as usual. They gathered to do some serious soul searching.

The good news: the number of SBC churches is growing, rising from 46,000 to more than 51,000.

The bad news: these churches are doing less evangelism, seeing fewer people receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and seeing fewer people baptized than at any time in the past 67 years.

Now, I have to admit, normally I don’t follow what’s happening at the annual Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) meetings. I’m not a Southern Baptist. I was raised in New York State by a wayward Orthodox Jewish father and a wayward Methodist mother — wayward, that is, until both my parents became born again as deeply devoted followers of Jesus Christ in 1973 during the height of the “Jesus Movement.”

But since the election of Pastor Ronnie Floyd as SBC president last June, I have started paying close attention. Indeed, I have been deeply moved to see where Pastor Floyd and the SBC are heading. He has spent the last year tirelessly crisscrossing America and the globe urging Baptist pastors and lay people to become more serious and passionate about preaching, teaching and obeying the Word of God, preaching the Gospel to all nations (including Israel and the Muslim world), fulfilling the Great Commission, and pleading with the Lord to revive His Church and give us a Third Great Awakening.

Pastor Floyd has reached out to many pastors and ministry leaders outside of the SBC, as well. He invited me to preach at his congregation in northwest Arkansas last November. We have met and spoken by phone and email numerous times since, including in Israel earlier this year. I couldn’t be more grateful that the Lord has raised Pastor Floyd up at this hour. What’s more, I pray that the Holy Spirit moves powerfully through him — and pastors like him — to wake up the sluggish Protestant church in America and around the world and call us humbly to serve our Lord Jesus Christ without reservation.