A few years ago, I [Mark Dever] conducted a seminar at a state Baptist Convention on “Getting your church off the plateau.” I picked up some typical modern liturature to read. In it, the author encouraged pastors to “Open the front door of your church and close the back door.” I understood what the author meant. He meant that the church should be more accessible and that we should do a better job on follow-up, assimilation and discipling-all laudable ends. And yet, as I read about opening the front door and closing the back door, I couldn’t help but think that if many of the generation of Baptist pastors from a century and a half ago gathered around to read the book, they would locate our church’s major problem elsewhere. They might even say that the answer to the endemic weakness in our churches is closing the front door and opening the back door! Closing the front door simply in the sense of being willing to be honest about the cost of discipleship, and being more careful about conversions claimed and members accepted; and opening the back door in the sense of being willing to correct and discipline those who join.
In too many churches today, the centrality of preaching and administering the ordinances has been replaced by an emphasis on other things. We should stop and consider what effects this change is having on our churches and on their faithful and effective witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Jason Robertson is a husband and a father and a pastor. He is dedicated to leading and equipping his the Church with God’s word and biblical theology for life ministry, using a combination of pastoral, church planting and evangelism experience. He holds a Master of Divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is experienced in church planting, evangelism, missions, and the training of pastors and Bible teachers.
Jason has been preaching the gospel since 1985, serving the first ten years of ministry as a Southern Baptist itinerant evangelist out of Milldale Baptist Church in Zachary, LA which ordained him in 1993. He has preached in hundreds of churches in over 30 States and 4 countries. He planted churches in Siberia, Russia in the summers of 1993 and 1994. He founded Murrieta Valley Church in California, which he planted in cooperation with the SBC NAMB in 2001. He also teaches ministry students at California Baptist University.
You can hear his sermons and read his manuscripts on sermonaudio.com. Just follow the link to "sermons" at the top of this page.
I believe part of the decline in the centrality of preaching and the sacraments in modern churches is attributable to the decline in viewing them as means of grace.