An Emotional Response

By Cal Cook

We have 10 new members joining BUM Church this Sunday praise God! I so look forward to the excitement and joy of the Palms and the Baptisms and the confirming of our faith with the vows that we as a church take with our new members. It always reminds me of when my family was baptized and joined the church together. Yet at the same time The Spirit reminds me that it may not always be that way.

In 2006 I did an audit of the membership book and found that the 20 year period from 1981-2001 had 84 people join the Bascom United Methodist Church that’s averaging over 4 people a year…pretty good! Until I looked around and only found 15 of them still in our midst…that’s less than 18%. You say well many of that 84 were teenagers who were confirmed and then moved away as adults…yes its true only 39 of the 84 were adults and 10 of the 15 still here, bumping it up to just over 25%.

Yet we’re not just talking about numbers here, we’re talking about souls. Children of God who once said, “yes” to Jesus Christ and were so excited about what was going on in this church wanted to join and become a part of this Body of Believers, now…for them the excitement is gone. In 2008 we read a list of over 30 names that were no longer active members. We attempted to contact them and many said go ahead and remove me from your membership. Some had found other churches and some had not…it’s a sad thing!

Church development books on the subject say that when someone leaves a church for longer than just a few months less than 2% of them will return. Again these aren’t just numbers…they’re people! Many will find other churches and for that I say praise God because the Kingdom of God is way bigger than just our little church. Yet others do not…and they become a part of that large body of people who say, “I was a member of a church once.” And proceed to tell you how awful of an experience it was.

I know in my own life I said yes to Jesus Christ in the weld shop at Davis-Besse and for several years fervently read the Bible and prayed…yet just 5 years later found myself telling someone I was a Christian and they were surprised! They didn’t say the words but the look on their face was obvious…could have fooled me! Had I fooled myself? Was it just an emotional response to the moment? It lasted several years…so it had to be more than just a whim?

I treat those questions carefully because I do not want to deny the working of the Holy Spirit in my life and in the doing grieve Him…yet they need to be asked. My youngest son and I have had lengthy discussions on our role in our Salvation. He has found himself with a group of other believers who say that we are so depraved we can’t even cry out to God without His leading. While I do agree with our depravity being deep, I refuse to believe that we are just puppets and God is pulling the strings. I refuse to give up on the idea of free will and that I really do have a choice…I refuse to accept the role of a pawn in some divine game of chess. Yet does my refusal have anything to do with it? Is it just my arrogance shouting, “I do matter” into the emptiness of time and space?

I am Arminian in my understanding of God for those of you familiar with the term. I do believe that Calvinists make many good points yet I like to say my God is big enough to still be Sovereign despite my free will to choose Him or not. So what is it then…why do people seem to fall in and out of church and even with their relationship with our Sovereign God?

Well to keep it simple, stuff happens…or maybe more specifically life happens! Things go on in our lives and they bend us and twist us and sometimes it breaks us. In that bending and twisting and breaking our faith is challenged as well. Just as today I sometimes ask myself if I really do believe…not that I doubt Christ’s ability to save me or His love for me…I doubt the sincerity of my heart. I know my heart is a fickle thing and that I usually don’t understand it, my actions often do not line up with at I say I believe!

But again it’s not my actions that save me is it? It’s a mystery…but of this we can be certain:

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  

God’s love for us is certain…it’s all around us…the Heaven’s proclaim His Glory, the Psalmists say…and even Jesus tells us that if we refuse to proclaim His Praise:

"if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out." Luke 19:40b