Southern Baptists are sharing the Gospel with the wrong community of people, said Texas-based pastor John Meador at the Southern Baptist Convention's Annual Meeting on Wednesday.
"Is it right that we spend more time talking and writing about the gospel to other gospel-saturated people than we do to a gospel-starved community?" Meador, who is senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Euless, Texas, asked.
Meador urged pastors and church leaders to fulfill their ministerial duties by sharing the Gospel to people whose eternal fate is at stake.
His sermon comes at a time when SBC membership is in decline for the seventh year in a row. Currently, total membership stands at 15.7 million, down from 15.9 million in 2012. Meador suggested that numbers are low because many pastors don't share the Gospel with those "heading to hell."
He also noted that many Christians are not present in "the field" where generations of people are unchurched and lost. Keep reading
This problem is not confined to the Southern Baptist Convention. It crosses denominational lines. Twenty-first century North American church leaders need to be asking themselves two pointed questions: With whom are we actually sharing the gospel? We may aspire to share the gospel with those who are starved for the gospel but in actuality only share the gospel with those who have been saturated by the gospel. We are unwilling to move out of our comfort zone. They also need to ask themselves: How can we and the congregations we are leading move out of our comfort zone and share the gospel with those who need to hear it the most?
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