Let’s Get It Right

As I’m sharing this with you, I will not be using actual names and cities to protect those I care about, but I do want to talk about a very serious topic today…..theological laziness. Over 20 years ago, I was given the reigns of a fantastic youth ministry. The church was booming, and the people that I was given as volunteers were top-notch. I remember packing my house to head there and just thinking about how amazing it was going to be to serve in such a tremendous situation. 

When I arrived, I was welcomed by one of the youth leaders in the parking lot of the church. He was a police officer and embraced me the moment I stepped out of the U-Haul I had been driving. That night, I got to meet with all of the youth leaders at one of their homes. We shared food and laughter, and I was given the opportunity to share my vision for the future of the ministry. I was on cloud 9. This was something I had only dreamed about in the past. I was ready to hit the ground running and see what God had planned for this new endeavor.

Around two weeks into being at the church, I had learned that only a few years earlier, they had moved from their downtown location to a location out in the county near the interstate. They had prayed for God’s leadership, and He led them to this spot in a much larger building with plans to expand. Before they had made the move, the church was averaging about 250 in weekly attendance. After the move, and by the time I had arrived, they were averaging around 800. 300% growth in just a few years is amazing. People were coming in droves to be part of this church. Again, I was so encouraged.

While hanging out in the foyer of the church one morning, one of my youth sponsors was there reading and we started up a conversation. She was telling me how much she loved the church and was so excited to be a part of it. Then she said something that caught me off guard. She made the statement, “The church here has some pretty strong beliefs here on salvation, but they don’t really push that.” I didn’t pry enough in that moment to see what she meant or if she believed differently than the church. I just took her at face value and assumed she agreed with the church and was only giving some commentary on what she had witnessed.

Over the course of the next couple of months, I began to hear more comments like this one and began to have some concerns. I spoke with others on staff about it, and they all seemed to be ok with it. No one seemed the slightest bit nervous about what this mindset could ultimately cost us. We were successful, numbers were up, and offerings were great. We were getting it done, I guess. It was a few weeks later that I learned the trouble of not standing strong in what you believe as a church.

It was a Sunday morning, and one of the kids in the youth group came up to me with her mother and told me that she was wanting to be baptized. I was elated! This would be my first baptism at the church. We set up a time to meet and discuss what baptism is, why we do it, and to see if she was ready to make this massive step in her faith. I believe it was a Tuesday afternoon when she and her mother arrived at the church. We made our way up to my office to talk and see if she was ready for this next step. One of the first things I wanted to do was pull out scripture to talk about the what and why of baptism. We opened up our Bibles to Acts 2:38.

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:38

I simply asked the question, “When the people at Pentecost were broken over what had happened to Jesus and asked what their next step was, what did Peter say they needed to do?” Then I asked what happens when we repent and are baptized. At this, the young lady responded with “the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Suddenly, the mother stopped the conversation and asked, “Do you think that baptism is part of salvation?” My simple response was, “I’m just reading what the Bible says.” The mother quickly took her child and told me that they were going to hold off on getting baptized for right now.

Over the next few months, I was hit with phone calls, emails, and private meetings where we discussed the role of baptism in the life of a believer. I lost most of my youth sponsors, my youth group shrank by almost half, and I was ready to just call it quits. I had a Bible degree from an accredited Bible college, and this was something that I had wrestled with myself in college before coming to where I was. I was in shock that a Restoration Christian Church would even have an issue with this. I had called a friend of mine from back home, and we were considering rooming together while I pursued a new career path. 

I made plans to go meet with the Sr. Minister to let him know I was stepping down and sorry for splitting his church. It was in that meeting that the Sr. Minister apologized to me for the fact that the church had never, up to that point, shared the core beliefs of the church for fear of losing people. He took the blame on himself and told me that I was going nowhere. A few weeks later, we had a Sunday that would be deemed “Baptism Day.” This wasn’t because we were having baptisms. Instead, it was the day that our Sr. Minister would share the church’s beliefs on it and how we, as a church, would be teaching on it moving forward. It was the highest attended service I can remember having there as I believe, we had well over 800 there that morning. That day, our preacher shared the Gospel, and he laid out who we were as a church and what we believed.

The next week, we had 450 people in worship. For so many of those people, their tradition was more important than what the Word of God said. Because they had always been taught one thing, they couldn’t fathom that it could be wrong. This is slothful theology. It’s a theology that doesn’t make the time to wrestle with God’s Word. It’s a theology that makes the Bible bend toward what we want it to say.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
2 Timothy 4:3–4

Theological sloth is one of the most common practices that we are seeing today. Affirming churches, churches that are pro-choice, and churches that accept any belief system or religion have been growing in popularity. This is NOT Christ’s Church. It’s an abomination. As disciples of Christ, the Word of God must be our ultimate authority. We can’t be lazy and simply accept any teaching that we hear. We MUST hold it up against God’s Word and see if it matches up.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene.
2 Timothy 2:15–17

The week after baptism day was definitely a letdown, but over the course of the next few years, that church began to grow again. This time, however, it was united in its teaching. This time, everyone knew what the core beliefs of the church were. This time, it was healthy growth. My youth group, which had shrunk by almost half, grew to double the original size. Several students went into ministry and some are still an active part of that church.

We cannot be lazy with God’s Word. Eternity is at stake. We need to dive deep into what Scripture says and hide it on our hearts. Will people walk away from us? Perhaps. But when it comes to teaching God’s Word, we can’t play around. Too much rides on it. Let’s get it right.