This is now the third and what I hope will be the last installment of my reflections on how I believe the most religious but unrighteous generations among modern Americans is found among the builders (born prior to 1946) and the boomers, my generation (born between 1946-1964).  My focus for these reflections is remarkably narrow and thus could be way off base.  But this is very personal with me as what I am addressing has been brewing inside me since around 1974.  That is when I began to notice that my age group (I was 22 then) and my parent’s age group who would be the age group now from 65+ were remarkably religious but not really righteous as I was seeing that defined biblically.  And this conviction has not diminished at all in me over the years; there was a time when I hoped that it would, but it in fact has grown much stronger with the years.  I think that somehow in the providence of God it is exactly why on the one hand we see many in my age group and their children having left the church not to return.  I have a family member who for a long time has fought against God and so much of the fight generally has to do with what he saw in the church growing up and what he saw in me during my liberal years when I was so intensely religious but so far from being really right with God.  And I believe even more strongly that in God’s providence it is why so many twenty and thirty somethings among whom God is moving mightily reject the traditional church and her traditions because they have seen what that produced in their parents and grandparents and they want no part of it.  It is my prayer that their number and passion will grow greatly in the years ahead.  They are the only real sign of hope that I see for the church in America.

One more thing before I set before you the final five descriptors of what I have seen that have caused me to conclude that the boomers and buildres are very religious but not righteous:  I just finished listening during my workout this morning to a sermon by John Piper where he cited the thousands of traditional churches all over America that are closing and the large number of church plants that are taking place.  If we understand what God is up to, then we should not grieve over these church closings.  It is my conviction that many more thousands need to close and give their resources which in some cases are enormous to the causes of the Gospel in reaching the world.  And we must rejoice at the changing shape of the church where biblical fidelity is being married to doctrinal integrity and it is producing churches with a truly missional mindset.  But that is not happening in most of our traditional churches.  And the reason is the power base that is held in many of them by intensely religious builders and boomers.  In fact, I am convinced that the only traditional churches that are making a real Gospel impact any more are those where the power bases by whatever means have been broken and splintered so that those who once ruled according to their desires have all but lost their voice.  Now with all of that, let me turn to the final five:

Number five:  the privatization of the relationship with God.  Builders more than boomers but certainly among boomers as well see their relationship with God as a purely private matter.  That is not only detrimental; it is demonic.  A relationship with God is the result of the miracle of the grace of God being so manifest to us that our world is turned upside down and inside out.  The outcome is a passion to know God and to make Him known.  We could no more hold in the news of the new birth than we could the news of the birth of our first grandchild.  Nothing has hampered evangelism in so many communities and churches where I have served quite like this very perverted and entirely unbiblical notion about what a real relationship with God looks like.  It has led to people among both boomers and builders who have lived their entire adult lives thinking that they really are believers while never ever having told a single soul about what it means to be saved.  That reality speaks volumes about why the traditional church in America is and has been in trouble for a long, long time.

Number six:  the above view is often welded to a thorough misunderstanding of the precious doctrine of the priesthood of every and all believers.  This truth is a precious teaching of Scripture which simply means that we are responsible before God to communicate His truth to the world and to care for one another in the church.  We do not need a preacher to proclaim the Gospel to the world for us nor do we need a pastor to care for us.  We communicate the Gospel to the world and we care for one another in the church.  The pastor is called of God to oversee the flock of God with the help of other elders so that his priority purpose can be prayer and study so as to teach the depths of the declared Truth of God in the Bible.  But the priesthood of the believer as often understood and practiced by many builders and boomers has come to mean that we can interpret the Bible for ourselves so that it means whatever we want it to mean.  The outcome is that we go to church on Sunday to hear another take on a text that may or may not be different from our own.  I see and have seen this one for some time as one of the most atrocious developments in our SBC life.  It has produced so much perversion.  For example, and I can only site one; it has led us to believe and individual can be saved by saying a prayer and walking down an aisle regardless of whether there is evidence of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in that person becoming an active part of the life of a local church.  That is why we have SBC churches that will boast of 1,000 members while having under 200 in attendance on any given Sunday.  That is the tragedy of the triumph of heresy over truth.

Number seven:  This perversion of the priesthood of the believer led to the democritization of the church.  We in SBC life turned the church into a democratically governed body.  We would have monthly or quarterly business meetings or conferences in which members would come to discuss all matters of business and to vote.  Now this produced two major issues:  first, there is no biblical model for this way of being and doing church, but when you have privatized religion and a perversion of the doctrine of the priesthood, it is easy to make any model of managing a church fit.  Secondly, in many churches that I served we would have people come to and speak out in business meetings that never came to Sunday night worship and in some cases only came to church to participate in business meetings.  And in some cases they were powerful enough to sway the people toward their way of seeing in doing church which in now almost forty years of experience was never, ever what would have been the biblically right path.  And what is most horrific to me is that we still have churches that hold the Bible high as the inerrant word of God and still do Kingdom business this way!

Number eight:  Add to this democratic way of doing church a leadership body called deacons that saw themselves as a board of directors.  Seriously.  Men got to be deacons by being men of influence and power in the community.  Spiritual intergrity and bibilcal fidelity did not mean much if anything.  One of these men who served as a deacon in the fifties in sixties in one of the churches that I served told me after God had turned his life around that when he served as a deacon he never went to Sunday School or Sunday night church and only attended worship occasionally.  He drank at parties with the other deacons and the pastor of the church and saw his role on the “board” of the church in the same way that he saw it when he served on the “board” of the bank.  In his words, “the church was a business to me with its product being the production of good, decent, morally responsible people.”  How horrible is that?  And yet there are still builders and boomers that see the church this way.

Number nine:  Do not underestimate the radically wicked influence of racism among the builders and boomers.  Many who were baptized members into the church among both generations were also those fighting hard against integration.  Members of churches in the south were the leaders in the establishment of institutions both educationally and otherwise whose express purpose was to create environments where their kids would not be in the same classroom or on the same athletic fields as black people.  Now how odd is this mentality?  God is redeeming a people for himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation and we come to the church house to sing to this great God and to say that we want to be involved with Him in His work and then Monday comes and we say, “not really; we want to be involved with God in His work of reaching anglos.”  The church I am in now is the only church I have ever served where I was not given in the early weeks a private audience with a few power boys who tole me what I was to do if a “black person” came forward on Sunday morning.  I have responded to them all the same way and I can assure you that it stuck in the craw of these men who from that moment forward looked for some other reason to come against me, terrified that I was going to seek to bring black people into “their church.”

Number ten:  Boomers and builders are very vocal in every church I have served.  They want what they want and they believe that they are entitled to it.  This entitlement mentality is tied to the reality that most of the grumbling and complaining I hear always comes from these age groups, far more now from builders than from boomers and some of  it in my current situation I understand fully. I do not agree with it and listen politely (most often) but I understand it.  They see the church they knew changing and in some ways radically.  And that is deliberate because the church they knew was rigorously religious which is exactly what I used to be.  And those churches for reasons ordained of God are dying and ought to.  So, I understand why those who are tied too much to what used to be and too little to Him alone who is would grumble and complain.  But underneath is this sense of the church belonging to them.

God revive Your church in our land.  And teach me I pray that is not my church or our church.  It is Your church.  Build Your church, Lord Jesus; that is your promise.  And I stand upon that promise.  Amen.

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