Southern Baptist Dead
I wonder how many Southern Baptist parents tell their newly married children to "wait till you get settled" before having children so "you can enjoy each other," as though children will mean the end of romance. I wonder how many Southern Baptist churches greet a family with four or more children with a snide comment from a Baby Boomer about whether "you know what's causing that."
I wonder how many Southern Baptist churches these days devote time in their youth groups to teaching young boys to prepare for the glory of fatherhood? I wonder how many churches recruit older women to teach our girls that the greatest success they can find is not to be the first Southern Baptist female President of the United States or to tithe more money as a monied Southern Baptist bank executive but to be a wife and mother? Is it indicative of how far we've fallen for the American dream that it would be controversial in some conservative Southern Baptist churches even to say this?
It is time for us, as Southern Baptists, to recognize that our success can kill us. As a denomination that once was derided as "redneck" and backward, we're now invited to the Rotary Club meetings. We're being elected to Congress. We're not in the trailer parks anymore. Our young men are successful, suburban, and careerist, and our young women are too. And we think that's a sign of health. Meanwhile our baptisms go down, and our birthrates do too. It turns out keeping up with the Episcopalians can have a downside.
This doesn't mean that we should equate fertility with spirituality. God is going to call some believers not to marry so that, like the Apostle Paul or Lottie Moon, they can devote themselves totally to Great Commission service. Others will not be blessed with large families, or with children at all. But, at the same time, can't we insist that our view of children be dictated by the Book of Proverbs rather than Madison Avenue or Wall Street?
Let's pray for churches that welcome children, embrace families, and seek to evangelize and disciple our little ones, and the little ones in our neighborhoods whose parents will never join them in the pew. Let's pray for churches that won't idolize the Dual Income, No Kids picture of success mirrored on our television screens. Let's teach our boys to want to be husbands and fathers, our girls to want to be wives and mothers, our familes to be evangelists. Let's outbreed the Mormons and out-preach the Pentecostals. Let's press the gospel upon a new generation, win them to Christ, baptize them, teach them, and see the Lord call them to the pastorate, to missions, to lay leadership.
Let's pray for busy baptisteries and crawling cradle rolls. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how respectable we are in the community or how large our capital budgets are. Without a next generation, we'll just be Baptist dead.
Read the rest of Russ Moore's article on low Southern Baptist birthrates here.
