This morning I watched the TV broadcast, “In Search of the Lord’s Way”. This program has long been hosted my Mack Lyon who is also usually the preacher on the program. This day however, there was a guest speaker, a minister from Brentwood, Tenn. He was just exactly like a younger Mack Lyon, with the same delivery, the same awkward turns every few moments to face the different cameras, and the exact same message. The congregation sang the songs a cappella looking only at their songbooks, with solemn faces and not a hint of joy or happiness. If I knew my church helped pay to keep this program on air I would be disappointed. What struck me most was the age of the congregation. It appeared that at least 85 to 90% had hair like my own, gray. These dear folks were largely “Baby Boomers” who in 15 or 20 years will be dead or in a nursing home. My shock was to realize how few young people are in most of the traditional churches. I can view that broadcast and understand why the young couples with children are someplace else. It is bland, boring, and poorly done. 

It seems to me that if something doesn’t change in the next few years that many of our oldest churches will be down to a few members when most of the boomers are gone. The lost are not being won where the church is mostly older people who have been in the church for several decades, and their children and everyone else’s children are some place else on Sunday. My guess is that they have moved on to churches with some signs of life, where folks seem glad to be saved. 

 Aggressive evangelistic outreach is the cure to most of the problems churches face. When we fail to do what Christ commanded, and the apostles modeled, we tend to start slowly eroding away. Not many years ago the British Isles were a hot bed for the gospel with thousands being saved in meetings that lasted for several weeks or months. Today a Bible preaching church in that part of the world is rare. 

We must evangelize or our congregations will die.

Grace and Peace,Royce Ogle