Fruitless Churches

Fruitless Churches

Can we please bring God – the Lord God Almighty is His Name – back into our churches? One of my favourite ‘tweets’ that I regularly put out on Twitter is this – “The modern church has spent millions of dollars/pounds on 'programs' - so where is all the fruit ?? Why are we not overflowing?”

I was just listening to a 1979 sermon from Keith Green where he spoke of a 1933 book The Revival We Need by Oswald J Smith (apparently now out of print). He quoted the book as saying that “There are 7000 churches in this country where not a single soul was saved in this past year !” If that was true in 1933, then how much more true is it today?

Let me just expand that for you a little bit – these statistics a really shocking :-
That’s 7000 churches with an average of 45 weeks per pastor in their own church preaching 1.5 sermons per week (I’m being conservative)

Hmmm let’s see – that’s about 472,500 sermons and NOT ONE soul saved. Not one soul repented. Not one soul answered an altar call. Let me remind you this is 1933 and 45 weeks per church. If you work it that, with visiting preachers, there are actually 52 weeks per year then the total sermons goes up to 546,000 ! Forgive me, this is years ago – so let’s bring it up to date.

In 1933 the accredited population of the USA was around 125 million. Today, in 2010, it is around 310 million. That is approx 250% increase (I’m not a mathematician so please . . . . ) Given the same increase, that would make your 7000 churches to be around 17,500. However, since there has been a general decline in church going – even though 41% of the current population claim some sort of regular church attendance – let us for simplicity’s sake keep to 7000 churches with a zero return for a whole years work by the pastor. That, at the average salary for each pastor of as low as $30,000 per year means that the church spent a minimum of $210 million for zero return. Add to that the millions of dollars more spent on the various programs – a conservative estimate for programs would be $15,000 per year – a total of $105 million.

This makes a total of around $300 million spent to achieve nothing.

Jesus final words to us were these – “Go into all the world and make disciples of all men.” No wonder the Lord must be shaking His head and no wonder the devil must be so gleeful !! Let me remind you what I said to begin with - “The modern church has spent millions of dollars/pounds on 'programs' - so where is all the fruit ?? Why are we not overflowing?” The church’s job is winning souls. The purpose of ALL of our programs should be winning souls. Winning souls means bringing men and women to repentance and giving their lives to our Lord Jesus Christ. We are told to take such people and make disciples of all of them who will then go out and win more souls to our Lord.

Can we please STOP doing Satan’s job for him and start doing God’s work ?? Can we please bring ALL of our programs into the will of God and not into our own plans?? Can we please start to bring Jesus Christ back into our preaching and sermons with the renewed and sole aim of winning souls to the Lord??

When will we learn that God requires us to do things HIS way and not ours? When will we stop being so arrogant as to assume we know what the Lord wants when we truly very rarely have any idea at all? If I were preaching this I would be shouting at you by now !!

In the UK these figures would be even worse and likewise in most of the Western world. We, the UK , the USA, and the West, have simply lost sight of the Great Commission. Pastoring a church has, in very many cases, become just a job with books to be balanced rather than the vocation and calling of old. We have lost our passion. We have lost or at best forgotten our ‘first love’. There are, thankfully, wonderful signs of real revival stirring throughout Europe.

You may be called home to the Lord tonight. How will you face Him? How will you answer Him when He asks what you did to make disciples of all men? It’s NOT “the Church’s” job. We, the people, are the church so it’s our job. It’s YOUR job – it’s MY job. How will you say you did when you are called to account? How will your account look? Will it balance as the Lord wants? Or will it balance only to your own satisfaction?

Hmmm – I wonder.