This is undoubtedly a question that has crossed an increasing number of minds in the past several years. This is a question that, quite frankly, demands a well thought and honest answer. When well-meaning children are forsaking the long held traditions of their fathers and mothers in record numbers, when it seems that you can’t turn around without hearing of another sexual indiscretion from a trusted, conservative Baptist leader, and when by all appearances the IFB which led us to Christ, to our spouses, and to our lives as we know them today seems to be shrinking into non-existence, the question, “What happened?” demands an answer. This sincere question does not deserve a quick retort from a sacred desk, does not allow room for dismissal, and has surpassed the ability to be pacified by statements such as, “don’t judge all of us by some of us.” Fundamentalism, in many respects, seems to be broken, and I’d like to get to the bottom of why.
First, however, please allow me to introduce myself. I am not your enemy. I was saved at four and a half years of age on my Dad’s lap with his Old Scofield, black, leather bound, King James Bible. I surrendered to preach, and was called to the Lord’s ministry as a result of growing up in an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church. I went with you to Fundamentalist and Fresh Oil conferences, Pastors' School, Missions, and Youth Conferences. Many of you signed my Bibles. We took sweet fellowship together. We saw the Lord move together. I bathed your pews in prayer before big meetings. I wept on the floor at my seat while begging the Holy Spirit to move during the invitation time at your conferences. I have two earned degrees from one of your Bible colleges. I don’t regret my time there. I worked with your kids in my ministry and I lived with them in the resident halls. I listened to them, I prayed with them, I loved them, and I’m tired of watching them lose faith because they can’t intersect the God of the Bible, the failures of men, and the Independent Fundamental church as we know it today. I am not your enemy. I am your contemporary, your children’s counselor, and your friend. In this post, I simply want to share my heart with you.
I believe there are three main culprits to blame for the failings of several churches within the IFB. I will attempt to highlight them from a humble aspect of having a heart for the wonderful people within the IFB and great hopes and desires for their futures in Christ. May God give me grace as I type that I do not come across as hateful or spiteful in any way.
The first culprit I would like to blame for these failings, and cut out of my Sunday worship, is Pride. Pride has crept into our denomination and filled our well-meaning people with its toxic, hallucinogenic venom. Pride has told our New Testament shepherds of the flock that they are Old Testament prophets to be feared and obeyed, as if they stood in the place of God and His Holy Spirit. Pride has gotten the best of me in many instances. I had grown to the point in my own religious practice where I thought that only I and those like me were right and that I had figured “it” out. I actually thought that God was beaming with pride over me while He merely tolerated those with lesser standards, as if somehow the blood of Jesus had to cover all of them and only parts of me. I looked down on groups like Teen Challenge, World Vision, Youth for Christ, and other “Liberal” attempts at discipleship and service to the Kingdom. I somehow believed I was in God’s cool group because of my standards and position in the church while never stopping to think that maybe He didn't even acknowledge my standards because He was distracted by the stench of my pride in His nose. We have lifted up our standards as though in them somehow we have eternal life.
I have witnessed this pride in my brethren. I have seen parents cheer and cry tears of joy as one child enters Bible College, but cover up and explain away as another child pursues a career via a community college or university. We have forced our children into full time church work so we can look good to our peer groups. As a whole – how is this working for us? Pastors drive teenagers to full-time Christian service like cattlemen drive their stock to the market, and too often the motive for doing so is status among the brethren. Only in the IFB will we say at a conference statements such as, “I was speaking to a lawyer who joined my church…” (so proud that we have reached a solid community minded layperson), but then turn and condemn a teen for wanting to become a Christian lawyer, doctor, or public servant. I wonder if the reason our churches are so generationally weak and there is such a lack of Christianity in law offices, police forces, and doctor’s offices is due, in part, to the fact we demonized those career choices for our kids and then banished them to full time Christian work where they have floundered and, in many cases, lost faith. Pride has damaged us from the inside out and has been a catalyst for us to damage our laypeople. Pride has been singularly instrumental in keeping us "in-focused" and keeping the world a safe distance from being affected by our so called gospel message of, “look, appear, sound, and act like me”. May God forgive me, and grant me the grace to bring healing to those I have hurt with this monster of pride in my own heart.
The second reason I would like to address is merely speculation on my part. I will need you older men to attest to the validity of my theory. In my opinion, we have gone from being an Independent movement to being a denominational settlement. We have ceased chasing after evangelism and new ways of reaching people. We have written off everything new as wrong. Every new idea, every new song, and every new everything as though Christianity started in 1944, as though Jesus Christ wore a black suit, white shirt, wing tipped shoes, and looked like Cary Grant. In the book of Acts, Christianity was a movement! People were meeting daily in their houses talking, growing, praying, eating, and spreading the gospel in such an exciting fashion that people were being converted and added to the church daily! What an exciting time in history! Help me out here men, but the stories that I have heard of Bible Colleges back in the 70's remind me of this time. Excited young men and women so pumped to serve God that they had to find a place to learn how to do it better. You guys landed in the IFB in an exciting time with a heart for doing something big. Compare Fundamentalism from where it is now, as a whole, to where it was then. Looking back, I would call that more of a movement and would have to compare many of our churches today to settlements. We have settled into our denomination and we are comfortable. We haven’t changed our clothes since 1950. The classy business people or the blue collar workers in our various communities have zero bearing on how we live and dress. We are wearing a uniform and living up to the standard of our denomination with no regard to how we are perceived by the people we are called to reach. We haven’t added a song to our hymn repertoire since 1946 as though Fanny J. Crosby’s hand was held by the Holy Spirit through verbal, plenary lyric writing (I jest). We absolutely refused to consider any form of evangelism besides door to door, confrontational soul-winning. Please don’t get me wrong, I believe in confrontational soul-winning. I think it is good and right for a believer to confront his friends and acquaintances with the truth of eternity by showing them the crisis of sin and death and the relationship found in the person of Jesus Christ, but could we be more effective if we weren't so settled in our ways? What if we incorporated the demonized lifestyle evangelism to our word of mouth evangelism? Jesus often fed, healed or showed kindness to people before He told them the way to heaven. What if people looked at us and saw Christ instead of seeing pride, arrogance, and sexual cover-ups? What if people saw our faith by our works? Why are we so settled on everything we do as if it were Gospel? Forgive my observation, but it seems to me that we are Independent before we are humble servants, we are fundamental before we are intuitively evangelistic, and we are Baptist before we are disciples. I don’t want to settle here. I want to move!
The last aspect I will blame for the failures we are seeing in the movement we have known and loved is a direct result of the pride mentioned first. We are sorely lacking love in our churches. Having a bus route doesn’t mean that we are loving. Supporting a missionary doesn’t mean that we are loving. Having a food pantry doesn’t mean that we are loving. These can definitely all be outward expressions of an inward love, but they can just as easily be, and far too often are, status symbols or trademarks of our religion. How do you feel about the rock and roll church down the road that preaches Christ and Him crucified? Crazy to think, but Jesus is using them also. Has it ever occurred to us that Jesus died for all the people we hate? Has it ever occurred to us that maybe God is just as capable of using prideful, arrogant, hateful, conservative, KJV waving Baptist as He is of using liberal minded, ESV iPhone app reading, hand raising, non-denomination, Jesus lovers? I’m not asking you to yoke up with them, but I am asking for a gut check. Are you a loving person? Is our religious association a loving group? Would your spirit be more upset if I wore a Jesus t-shirt to Sunday morning church or if nobody came to Christ that week? Would you be more upset to find out your children listen to Casting Crowns and Jamie Grace or to learn your baptistery hasn't stirred in months? Are we primarily broken that people haven’t responded to God’s saving grace, or are we primarily gate keepers of a temporal religion who love only those who decide to get in?
Am I right? Have I figured it out? No, not even close. When we get to heaven, we all will be surprised, humbled, and dumbfounded at what worship and holiness really look like. When I come to worship and learn of Him, I want to do so under the tutelage of a servant who doesn't thank God that he's not like the church down the road which is full of people who actually need Jesus, as if we don’t. We need a return of humility to our conservative brand name. Here is the reason I believe the IFB is dying. Pastors trained us young ones in doctrines, standards, and evangelism, and when we try to reconcile how we see you treat your brethren, how you refuse to be more effective, and how you Glory in your traditions, as if they died for your sins, we cannot. We have come to an impasse. The fruit so many IFB churches bear today cannot be the fruit of Christ. From the same fountain we cannot drink both sweet water and bitter.
In conclusion, let me make a plea to you as your student and co-laborer. Can we ask God for a humbling? Can we ask God to help us reach this world? And, can we begin to love one another? I do not believe that the IFB as a denomination can be saved, or is worth saving, more than any religious sect is. I do believe, however, that Pastors who are independent in their operations and fundamental in their beliefs can return to a humble service to the Lord. We can return to a loving outlook on our communities and brethren. We can begin again to measure Christian growth in a person’s relationship with Christ and desire to bring people to Him instead of their conformity to our religious traditions.
"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
Article written by David Parton
