Church Decline Not Inevitable, Baptists told

The General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain has challenged Baptists to buck the trend of church decline by experimenting in new ways of service and worship.

Rev Jonathan Edwards told Baptists at the BUGB Assembly in Brighton on Saturday that while decline in the Baptist Church had not been as severe as in other churches, it had still been "enormous".

"Decline does not necessarily mean that we've been doing things in the wrong way but it must surely give us pause for thought; it must surely encourage a spirit of humility," he said.

He said he was encouraged, however, by the findings of the recent Tearfund study which found that 32 per cent of respondents - or more than 2.3 million people - would be interested in going to church if a friend or family member invited them.

"There's not doubt that we've much to learn from surveys like this and we would be foolish to think that decline is inevitable. There is very much that we can do," he said.

"It seems obvious to me that we need to be willing to examine radically all that we do to ensure there is nothing that we are doing that could be contributing to the decline. Everything should be up for grabs."

He challenged Baptists to take a fresh look at their services, fellowships, buildings and youth work.

"Why do we do things the way we do? Too often the church has thoroughly deserved its public image as being conservative and out of touch with the contemporary world. Decline needs to sharpen our thinking. It is a positive tool."

He urged the Church not to compromise the message of the Gospel in order to be culturally relevant but told listeners to be "defiantly counter-cultural".

"The call to costly discipleship has been changed to a call to 'do your best' and worship has so often been changed from a meeting with a transforming majestic God to a form of Christian light entertainment," he said.

Rev Edwards said that the church needed spiritual renewal in order to "catch God's vision for His church and His ministry", he said, adding that ministers needed to be "spiritually alert", explore new training techniques and find new partnerships.

"We need to be flexible," he said, adding that churches needed to "find imaginative ways of involving the congregation".

He said this challenge was even greater today because of the "extraordinary ignorance" among many Christians, even new students coming to college as ministerial students, who he said knew nothing of basic Bible stories.

He also called for worship to better reflect all members of the congregation and bear in mind that three to four generations, each with different musical cultures, would be gathering together for the worship at any one time.

"I think the crucial thing is that we are flexible and we don't hide behind tradition," he told Christian Today. "We need to be light on our feet and listen to the statistics.

"I think in Baptist churches often we've been very dismissive of older people and we need to be more sympathetic to the shape of their needs."