Warning to Baptists: Turn or burn

If one desire can describe the mood of Americans this election season, it is a longing for change. There can be no doubt that change is ahead on several fronts. The question is: Will it be good change, or change for the worse?

The largest Protestant denomination in America, the Southern Baptists, is sending representatives from thousands of churches to convene in Indianapolis for the 151st session of the Southern Baptist Convention on June 10 and 11. The church is in crisis. Outgoing president Rev. Frank Page estimates that only half of Southern Baptist churches will still exist two decades from now.

The decline appears to be particularly acute among young people in the church. In 2005 alone, 55 percent of Southern Baptist churches baptized no youths, according to Ed Stetzer with the North American Mission Board.

"They are discovering, as other traditional denominations are, that their future is tied to reaching younger people and more diverse people," said professor Lovett H. Weems Jr. at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Ed Gamble, Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools executive director, said, "Our denomination grew at 1.2 percent last year, not even enough to match our birth rate. Southern Baptist couples divorce more often than other denominations. Most evangelical church youth do not believe in absolute truth."

Rick Hughes, Baptist State Convention of North Carolina senior consultant for discipleship, states, "We must face the fact that much of the American church is declining for a very biblical reason: We have failed to be and make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ."

That lack of meaningful evangelism starts in the home. Christians are doing a poor job of discipling their own children. Eight-five percent of their public schooled children abandon the faith by the time they leave for college, while only 2 percent of their homeschooled students leave. A pro-homosexual author stated, "Whoever captures the kids owns the future." And he wasn't kidding. Whoever owns the children owns the future of neighborhoods, cities, states, nations and, yes, our churches.

The church attrition rate is not surprising. Public school children receive almost 11,000 hours of secular indoctrination from kindergarten through their senior year compared with only 264 hours spent in meaningful conversation with their parents within the same 12-year period. And while Southern Baptists have hired more youth group leaders than ever before in past decades, the number of youth being baptized has fallen dramatically.

So far, the majority of Southern Baptists have refused to acknowledge that their children are being soul murdered in the public schools. Parents scratch their heads dumbfounded as to why their children are abandoning the church in droves, and yet the answer is obvious.

Voddie Baucham and Bruce N. Shortt submitted a resolution for consideration at this year's Southern Baptist Convention. The document, titled "The Resolution on the Indoctrination of Children in Sexual Deviancy in California Public Schools," details the problem and offers solutions. These men hope that Southern Baptists will take action to protect the church's youth, while at the same time helping the children of others.

The alarm is blasting. Recent legislative developments in California slam a government fist requiring that all public school children K-12 be subjected to the following:

Textbook assignments in all subject areas that portray pansexual perversions as normal and good. One book already in circulation teaches that early church Christians both approved of and engaged in sodomy.
Children will be told that deviant forms of "marriage and family" are acceptable.
Affirmative-action plans will protect all school personnel involved in deviancy, and programs designed to re-educate heterosexual personnel will be implemented.
It will be illegal for schools to refuse to permit clubs focused on deviancy variants at every grade level.
School teachers and employees will be free to talk about their own particular perversion in classrooms, and schools will be required to punish any child who speaks against it. Any child who objects will be considered discriminatory.
Children will be taught that they can discover their own sexual orientation through their own personal choice.

It does not take much imagination to see how such measures will only increase rates of child molestation already reported by the Associated Press to be rampant in the public school system. Since all schools will be required to teach deviancy in a positive light, it stands to reason that children will become confused, and large numbers may become involved in deviant lifestyles as a result. These students may contract diseases known to frequent homosexual populations such as AIDS, anal cancer, syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Through the National Education Association partnering with pro-homosexual organizations, public schools throughout America will be similarly affected as state legislatures accommodate deviancy due to pressure from advocacy groups.

At a time when the Southern Baptist Church is declining in numbers, this is an urgent wake-up call. Denominations across America have failed to acknowledge that Christians are failing to disciple their own children. Paige Patterson, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, points to a lack of prayer and states, "The great need is for us to sense our spiritual poverty, seek God's face and do His bidding."

What is God's bidding? Is it for Christians to leave their children in schools where their innocence is shattered to bits? Where they are encouraged to choose their own perverted sex variant?

According to Baucham and Shortt, there is a solution that could result in explosive growth for the church while extending missions into communities nationwide. Implementing it would require the church to inform parents about what is happening in their children's schools and offer a way out – an exodus. And the time is right. As the resolution states, "This may be the most significant opportunity for evangelism that we have ever seen" as flocks of unbelievers searching for a better education system come to our door.

The resolution offers a variety of relatively inexpensive solutions churches can implement. E. Ray Moore, author of the book "Let My Children Go," states, "Because of its size and influence, the SBC can provide important leadership to the entire Church in America." He concludes that "education … is not a function of the state but belongs to the family with assistance from the Church." He asserts that God has placed this opportunity in our hands "to seize the moment and institute new dynamic Christian schools, support current ones and encourage homeschools that will train a stronger generation in the days of the revival to come."

Is the Southern Baptist Church serious about genuine spiritual growth? Is it truly concerned about outreach to children "captured" by deviants working through the government school system?

This year's convention will tell.

Whoever owns the hearts and minds of our children owns the future.

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Olivia St. John is a freelance writer with almost 20 years of experience as a home educator. Her work has been featured in several online publications, and she is currently working on a book promoting home education.