{"id":5709,"date":"2024-06-03T03:01:21","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T11:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/breathingspace\/?p=5709"},"modified":"2024-05-26T09:36:40","modified_gmt":"2024-05-26T17:36:40","slug":"why-getting-them-saved-and-baptized-is-killing-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/breathingspace\/2024\/06\/why-getting-them-saved-and-baptized-is-killing-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Why \u201cGetting them Saved and Baptized\u201d is Killing the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
I\u2019ll always regret baptizing 10% of our kids in Vacation Bible School that year. Yes, that\u2019s right\u2014keep reading to find out why.<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/a>
\u201cA Child\u2019s Faith\u201d<\/a> <\/span>by Cbglades is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n**
**
That sizzling summer stands out to me in sharp relief. It represents the height of this evangelical (at the time) pastor\u2019s missionary fervor.<\/strong> It was my second summer at the church. I\u2019d been there long enough to visit most of the families, endear myself to the children, and begin to have influence in their lives. Ours was a patriotic small town. So, on the Fourth of July, we used our award-winning parade float to hand out candy and invitations to all the kids. Since we planned our VBS for the week after this annual advertisement opportunity, we had a record number of kids at church that year.<\/p>\n
**
**\u00a0<\/p>\n
For God So Loved the World\u2026<\/h2>\n
At VBS, we hit them hard with the Gospel. <\/strong>This sounded good to the initiated at the time. But in retrospect, it sounded like, \u201cFor God so loved the world that God made a place called hell, planning to burn most people in eternal conscious torment. But God loves Christians best\u2014so if only you\u2019d become a Christian, you\u2019d escape being tortured by the God who loves you so much.\u201d\u00a0 This is not the article where I discuss what I don\u2019t believe about hell<\/a><\/span>. Suffice it to say that whatever you think about the afterlife, scare tactics with children are not cool.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not Just an Eternal Reward<\/h2>\n
If we offered a terrifying message on the one side, we offered a tremendous reward on the other side.<\/strong> And not just an eternal reward, either. Every time a child prayed the Sinner\u2019s Prayer<\/a><\/span>, we brought them to the front of the church and applauded. They received a gift award Bible. A couple of months later, we had a big celebration where they all got to swim in the river and get baptized. And they all knew how proud their families would be.<\/p>\n
So that summer, out of a hundred and fifty kids who attended VBS, fifteen children gave their lives to Jesus. And the church celebrated. But what happened next?<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/h2>\n**Some Continued in Faith<\/h2>\n**********
**
Some of those kids continued attending the church. There, church members nurtured and discipled them. Today, they are young men and women of faith.<\/strong> I\u2019m still pretty happy about that. These defining moments of spiritual growth are so important. I am not suggesting that salvation and baptism aren\u2019t meaningful in their lives. But just like this article isn\u2019t about heaven and hell, it also isn\u2019t about the ones who remained in church and practice their faith today. This is about the other ones.<\/p>\n
**
********\u00a0<\/p>\n
Getting them Saved and Baptized<\/h2>\n
The truth is most of those kids no longer attend that church, or any church at all<\/a><\/span>. <\/strong>One reason is that our church leaders never followed up. We were too focused on the celebration, and on the number of baptisms we could report to our denomination. Instead, we should have been more interested in fostering the spiritual growth of young people and their families. It was about \u201cgetting them saved and baptized\u201d as the end goal, and not about discipling young believers. It was about making converts. Because a pastor or a short-term VBS staff can easily do that, but it takes a long-term commitment to make disciples. And as one already overworked pastor (with little help from the deacons), I couldn\u2019t keep up.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Follow-Up Work<\/h2>\n************
**
You may ask why nobody else thought it important enough to do that follow-up work.<\/strong> If you believe in individual salvation defined as going to heaven when you die, based on faith that\u2019s expressed when you pray the Sinner\u2019s Prayer and when you get baptized, and if you cling to \u201conce saved, always saved,\u201d then you become obsessed with evangelism and tend to de-emphasize discipleship.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy for church members to place all the responsibility for evangelism on their pastor (we pay pastors to preach, don\u2019t we?) without taking on the burden of instructing your children yourself. So, it\u2019s up to the overworked pastor to evangelize them, but not up to the church as a whole to train young believers in their faith.<\/p>\n
**
************Oh sure, we had Sunday school for those families that were proactive enough to bring their children.<\/strong> But those classes reinforce the teaching that all you need to do is \u201caccept Jesus.\u201d After that, you sit back, relax, and see how you can convince your pastor to preach more evangelistic sermons so others can join the club. And when that\u2019s what it\u2019s all about, then once you get \u201csaved and baptized,\u201d there isn\u2019t a lot to keep you involved. So, you eventually outgrow the church. When that happens often enough, the church begins to die.<\/p>\n
<\/h2>\n*Emphasis on Personal Salvation<\/h2>\n****************
*
Another reason \u201cgetting them saved and baptized\u201d is killing the church, is the extreme emphasis placed on\u00a0personal\u00a0<\/em>salvation.<\/strong> Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline churches focus on salvation as part<\/em>\u00a0of a\u00a0communal experience. <\/em>But Evangelicals elevate personal salvation and personal relationship with God above all else. The result can be deep spirituality, yes. But the side effect is often a disconnect from a sense of community.<\/p>\n
**
Personal faith is too easily divorced from believers seeking wisdom together, sharing the joy and pain of others, and investing in the life of the larger body and those within it. <\/strong>It\u2019s also too easily separated from social conscience and justice work. I\u2019m not negating the need for personal faith. But with the way Evangelicals often emphasize personal salvation as \u201cgetting saved and baptized,\u201d it becomes easy to say, \u201cI can worship God just as well on my boat as in the church.\u201d\u00a0 And it\u2019s even easier to abandon a church when things go wrong. So, while personal faith is good, when we define the end goal as \u201cgetting them saved and baptized,\u201d we create a sense of \u201cbeen there, done that.\u201d<\/p>\n
**
**************\u00a0<\/p>\n
Getting Little Johnny \u201cDone\u201d<\/h2>\n**************
**
I can\u2019t tell you the number of times parents and grandparents have said to me, \u201cPastor, don\u2019t you think it\u2019s about time we got little Johnny\u00a0done?\u201d<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>And, by that, they mean that once the kid gets baptized, they can quit worrying that their offspring might spend eternity burning in divinely inspired agony. Getting them\u00a0done<\/em>\u00a0means taking out a fire insurance policy. And once they have that policy, neither Johnny nor his family really needs to be in church anymore. And this is killing the church.<\/p>\n
**
**************\u00a0<\/p>\n
Being a Christian vs. Acting Like Jesus<\/h2>\n**************
**
**************Another reason an emphasis on \u201cgetting them saved and baptized\u201d is killing the church is that there seems to be a disconnect between \u201cbeing a Christian\u201d and acting like Jesus.<\/strong> Once you\u2019ve got your ticket to heaven, then you can turn around and be a racist, sexist, xenophobic ableist who hates LGBTQIA+ folks. You can support putting children in cages because their parents are undocumented. You can force women to travel to another state to get appropriate OBGYN care. During a pandemic, you can refuse to wear a mask because you care about your convenience more than you love your neighbor. And you can support tax cuts for the rich while depriving the poor of a livable minimum wage. You can do all these things because, as far as you\u2019re concerned, being a Christian is all about getting \u201csaved and baptized.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/h2>\nSaved and Baptized White Evangelicals<\/h2>\n****
The thing is, the younger generation sees this hypocrisy of white Evangelicals and has had their fill of it.<\/strong> They\u2019re leaving the church in droves<\/a><\/span>, because \u201cgetting them saved and baptized\u201d requires nothing of a person, morally. It was \u201csaved and baptized\u201d white Evangelicals who enslaved Africans, who burned crosses on front lawns, and who uphold white supremacy today. Saved-and-baptized Christians have contributed to the fact that LGBTQIA+ youth are\u00a0120% more likely to experience homelessness than other youth<\/a><\/span>, and why\u00a040% of LGBTQIA+ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year<\/span>.<\/a><\/p>\n
Yes, it was saved and baptized Christians who promoted the doctrine of expansionism which has killed and oppressed countless Indigenous people.<\/strong> These same saved and baptized people support politicians whose personal lives and political decisions are the opposite of Christlike<\/em>. They hail these politicians as heroes, simply because they support the political agenda of the elite. And the world is catching on, that when the goal of religion is \u201cgetting them saved and baptized,\u201d you can do whatever you want and still call yourself a Christian.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Killing the Church<\/h2>\n*******************
**
This kind of evangelism is killing the church.<\/strong> Unless we act like Jesus, we demonstrate to the world that our faith is useless. Unless we vote for the things that our loving, embracing, healing Jesus would vote for, we show our young people that it\u2019s really all about power politics and not about caring for our neighbor. We can have all the Vacation Bible Schools we want, lead them in the Sinner\u2019s Prayer, and dunk them in the water. But if we don\u2019t lead by example and teach them to act like Jesus, they\u2019re going to see the church as meaningless, and they\u2019ll leave. That\u2019s why I\u2019ll always regret baptizing so many kids that year\u2014because we\u2019ve failed to teach them to act like Jesus.<\/p>\n
**
*******************\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
If You Don\u2019t Want to Kill the Church\u2026<\/h2>\n*********************
**
*********************This generation is smart. They know hypocrisy when they see it.<\/strong> And they can tell when you\u2019re trying to scare the hell out of them to get them into heaven. They know that, while you say that God is love, you really view God as a violent dictator in the sky who likes to torture his own creation. And they can tell when your religion is all about fire insurance and has nothing to do with living and loving and changing society as Jesus would. So, Christian, if you don\u2019t want to kill the church, it\u2019s time to de-emphasize \u201cgetting them saved and baptized,\u201d and start prioritizing Actual Jesus.<\/strong> Because it\u2019ll kill the church if you keep talking like you\u2019re going to heaven, while you make hell on earth for the \u201cleast of these.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/h2>\nFor related reading, check out my other articles:<\/h3>\n\nYouth Evangelism Gone Wrong: A Confession of Spiritual Abuse<\/a><\/span><\/li>\nNo, Jesus\u2019 Death Was Not Your Fault<\/a><\/span><\/li>\nThe Chosen People and Guns: Our History of Supremacy, Violence, and Genocide<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"*************************
**
*************************I\u2019ll always regret baptizing 10% of our kids in Vacation Bible School that year. Yes, that\u2019s right\u2014keep reading to find out why. That sizzling summer stands out to me in sharp relief. It represents the height of this evangelical (at the time) pastor\u2019s missionary fervor. It was my second summer at the church. I\u2019d been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4628,"featured_media":5712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1434],"tags":[3930,3936,3933,3939,334,3942],"class_list":["post-5709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-challenging-the-church","category-for-pastors","tag-child-baptism","tag-child-evangelism","tag-getting-them-saved-and-baptized","tag-killing-the-church","tag-social-justice","tag-white-evangelicals"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy \u201cGetting them Saved and Baptized\u201d is Killing the Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'll always regret baptizing 10% of our kids in Vacation Bible School that year. Yes, that's right\u2014keep reading to find out why. 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