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CLICK HERE TO READ HENRY BLACKABY’S REFUSAL TO DRINK THE SBC POLITICAL KOOL-AID

Blackaby pinpoints, with lethal accuracy, the problem with the SBC’s pragmatic-driven philosophy to jump-start the GCR. Here is a choice excerpt:

Blackaby, a longtime pastor, college president and coauthor of the “Experiencing God” series of Bible study materials, said declining baptism and membership statistics in the Southern Baptist Convention reflect not so much a lack of passion for Christ’s command to make disciples as a lack of relationship with Jesus Christ.

“When you hear the Southern Baptist leadership being concerned about baptisms and all that, those are a byproduct of discipleship,” Blackaby said. “When you lead a person … into a relationship where Christ is Lord, everything else follows. You don’t have to convince them they need to spend time in God’s Word or prayer or in the fellowship or on mission. That’s a spontaneous response to a relationship to the living Lord.”

Issuing a call for a resurgence of commitment to the Great Commission triggers the wrong response in Christians who are focused on religious activity, rather than a relationship with Christ, Blackaby added.

“Southern Baptists are program-oriented. We are missing the relationship,” Blackaby said. “When you make a statement like [that], the first thing most pastors look for is, ‘What program’s going to come down the pike to help me do that?’ You don’t need a program to help you do that. You just need the relationship to the living Lord. The reason we are not effective is because we have moved from the relationship to a program activity.”

THE REASON FOR DECLINE

Substituting activities for relationship also is why many churches are in decline or on a plateau, Blackaby said.

“We are not leading people into that immediate relationship with the living Lord. If you listen to most sermons, that intimate personal relationship is missing,” Blackaby said. “If you talk to many church members, they feel they are in the right relationship to God when they attend all the worship services, they tithe, they go on a mission trip. And many a pastor would evaluate a member, not from the intimate relationship with the Lord, but for how faithful he is in all the activities of the church. And does he tithe?

“It’s activity. Many of God’s people have moved from the relationship to religious activity,” Blackaby added. “We are content to live without the manifest presence, power and activity of God.”

The place many churches need to begin is not with a call to commitment and activity, but with a call to repentance, Blackaby explained.

“We don’t talk about repentance,” Blackaby said. “Repentance is the essence of what God says throughout the Bible: ‘You have lost the relationship. Return to Me and then you will experience Me returning to you.’ When that happens, the manifest presence and power and activity of God is very real.”

Attempts at evangelism without relationship are artificial and yield artificial fruit, Blackaby noted.

“If you try to bypass [relationship] and give them a program, the Roman Road or another pattern for evangelism, you are creating an artificial approach to evangelism. And of course it has that same kind of fruit,” Blackaby explained. “Those who have been led to the Lord on a program are very reluctant to respond to the lordship of Christ.”

Witnessing to the lost is supposed to be a spontaneous response to a relationship with Christ, not an activity, Blackaby added.

“[The Bible] doesn’t say, ‘You are to do witnessing.’ It says, ‘You are witnesses unto Me,’” Blackaby said. “‘Out of the relationship with Me, you will have an enormous witness unto Me.’ If you’re not doing it now just out of relationship to the Lord, don’t look for a program that would help you do what you ought to be doing spontaneously.”

Here is our 2¢’s worth:

Blackaby is a modern day John the Baptist; he proves that Biblical facts are stubborn things; they won’t go away.Blackaby goes outside the camp from Johnny Hunt. Doctrine really does matter. Blackaby is warning Southern Baptists to “WAKE UP!”

According to Blackaby,we need a BIBLICAL DOCTRINE RESURGENCE. Blackaby has exposed the shallow, impotent, popular, man-made pragmatic methods of modern day evangelism in the SBC. He gives a minority opinion on the GCR.

Conclusively, Blackaby is warning  Southern Baptists to: “STOP!LOOK!LISTEN!” We suggest, also, that Southern Baptists should: STOP!LOOK!LISTEN!  . . . to Blackaby.

It seems that many are giddy and content drinking the SBC’s Political Kool-Aid®

Will any Southern Baptist leaders publicly disagree with Blackaby’s Biblical, common-sense, Spirit-filled article? Or will they just simply ignore him and keep drinking the SBC’s Political Kool-AID®?

AS APPEALING  AS THE SBC’S POLITICAL KOOL-AID®  MAY BE, HENRY IS NOT DRINKING IT!!! WE THINK THAT IS A GREAT IDEA!!! . . . OH YEAH!!!!

ABSTAINING FROM THE SBC’S POLITICAL KOOL-AID® ALSO,

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