Please Note: This portion has been excerpted from two articles entitled "The Need for Reformation In The Southern Baptist Convention" and "Instructions for Local Church Reformation" by Founders Ministries.

Our Perceived Need for Local Church Reform
"It is not difficult to observe that evangelicalism in our country is...in serious trouble. Numerous observers have warned us over the last ten years that American evangelicals have all but forsaken their biblical and theological heritage.
     David Wells, in particular, has demonstrated with devastating detail that, in today’s typical evangelical church, the unchanging foundation of the Word of God has been replaced by the ever-changing assumptions of modernity. Thus, the modern church values pragmatics over the eternal verities of the Word of God. Our preachers peddle pop psychology, rather than the healing balm of Christ’s redemption. Our sermons are relevant, topical, humorous, poignant, dramatic – anything but biblical. Theology itself has been dismissed as irrelevant, dusty and unimportant. Unfortunately, in all too many pulpits, these are not generalizations. They are true.   
    This retreat from Biblical preaching in evangelicalism is especially ironic, given that the hallmark phrase of America’s best-known evangelical, Billy Graham, is "The Bible says..." Indeed, in the 1950s, Carl F. H. Henry, the first editor of Christianity Today, could assert with confidence and vigor: "’The Bible says’ is not a mere Graham platitude nor a fundamentalist cliché: it is the note of authority in Protestant preaching, lost by the meandering modernism of the past generation, held fast by the evangelical movement." At that time, evangelicalism could at least mount an argument for the right to claim the mantle of the sixteenth century reformation over and against the enlightenment and all that it embodies. Now, evangelicalism itself is lost in a morass of meandering modernism.
     Examples that shock the conscience are not hard to find. The seeker-sensitive movement, by its very nature, is a bow to modernistic assumptions. Thus, many churches are now offering Friday night or Saturday night services to replace or supplement the Sunday morning worship time. Why? So church members can now get church out of the way early, then have the rest of the weekend to use as they wish. One Saturday churchgoer explained, "If you go to Sunday school at 9:00 A.M., then to the 11 A.M. service and leave about 1 P.M., your day is pretty well shot." Other seeker-sensitive churches have decided to forego offering communion as part of their worship services. Instead, they provide worshipers the opportunity to partake of the elements as they walk out the door after the conclusion of the service. Why? So that those who have not committed to Christianity will not feel excluded by the process. Others, using the same logic, go the opposite direction and invite Christians and non-Christians alike to partake of the Lord’s Table, hoping that the drinking of the cup and eating of the wafer will assist in making unbelievers feel comfortable with this basic Christian ritual.
     Many seeker services have even given up on preaching, offering instead dramatic skits, modern music, multimedia and other means of communication to entertain the audience. Even if preaching is offered, it is typically packaged in short, fifteen to twenty minute "talks" or "discussions" attempting to show that Christianity is a comfortable religion and Christians are "OK" people – normal, just like every one else in the world.
     Of course, it is not just the seeker-sensitive crowd that has abandoned expositional preaching. The charismatic churches have replaced the eternal prescription of "thus sayeth the Lord" with emotionalism, sensationalism, and a God-as-a-bellhop mentality. The pragmatic churches have replaced sound doctrinal teaching with a plethora of five- and seven-step programs heavy-laden with the best contemporary notions psychology and marketing have to offer, sprinkled of course with a few out-of-context Bible verses, on virtually every subject – from salvation to dieting, from parenting to treatment of depression.
     Thus, despite the variety of approaches offered by these perspectives, the bottom line is that Scripture is decentralized, hard truths are ignored, sin is soft peddled, and grace is perverted. It is not an exaggeration to say that modern evangelicalism has traded its Scriptural birthright for a mess of modern, cultural pottage. Our preaching, our evangelism, our music and our worship have become self-centered rather than God-centered. As a consequence, evangelicalism has lost its passion for God.
     These same trends are evident in our own Southern Baptist Convention. Paige Patterson made this point early in 2000 at a conference designed to articulate the fundamentals of the faith for the 21st century. In the keynote address he cited the shallowness of the evangelical pulpit and the shallowness of praise and worship as causes for concern. He warned, "If we don’t do better, we will raise a generation of theological illiterates." He proclaimed that the church today needs preachers who will explicate the word of God verse by verse, explaining the truth of the Bible. Patterson is absolutely right, at least in his diagnosis.

Problem #1: Weak Theology
The problems are well known. First, many of our churches have a weak theology. Consider, for example, the doctrine of salvation. In many Southern Baptist churches, regeneration (or being born again) has simply lost its meaning. No longer does it refer to a divine act of the Holy Spirit in giving a sinner a new heart and a new life, and bringing that person from spiritual death to spiritual life. Instead, being born again is simply a synonym for what happens when a person "makes a decision to accept Jesus Christ into his heart as personal Savior." Or worse, it means to "come forward" or "walk down an aisle."
     Still further, the common twentieth century Baptist view of eternal security is fundamentally flawed. We dip ‘em and drop ‘em, and take comfort in the fact that they are saved even though they never darken the door of a church again. After all, "once saved, always saved." In this way, we ignore – to the eternal loss of many – that the flip side of God’s preservation of the saints is the biblical teaching of the saint’s perseverance in Christ. We have forgotten the historic Baptist belief that those who do not persevere are not carnal Christians; they are not Christians at all!

Problem #2: Weak Evangelism
Predictably, this weak theology leads to weak evangelism. Much of what is called evangelism in our Baptist churches is shallow, manipulative and decision-focused. The principal tools of the trade are altar calls (in which the pump is primed by well-placed counselors who set the example in walking to the front of the church) and the "sinner’s prayer," in which the person "invites Christ into his life." Then, we give immediate assurance to the person who prays the "sinner’s prayer" that he or she is eternally secure in salvation. Never mind the life and practice tests of 1 John.

Problem #3: Weak Membership
Of course, the inherent result of a weak soteriology and weak evangelism is a weak membership. We base membership on a "profession of faith," rather than evidence of a changed life. Our churches baptize preschoolers and accept professions of faith from couples living in open sin. By inviting so-called carnal Christians into our fellowships, we populate our rolls with unregenerate church members.

Problem #4: Weak Worship
The result of a weak membership is a demand for weak worship. Our congregations have not learned to go beyond the pabulum of shallow praise choruses so prevalent in our worship services today. The self-centered nature of these choruses is manifest. The one doing the praising is more central than the one praised in such choruses as "I Bless You," "I Just Want to Praise You," "I Only Want to Love You" and so on. This is not God-exalting worship! It is man exalting! Woe to those who are more impressed with our "love for God" than God’s love for us!

     Given these appalling facts, is it any wonder that the greatest segment of converts to the Mormon church comes from Southern Baptist congregations? And, is it any wonder that most of our Southern Baptist churches have a stagnant or declining membership? The Wall Street Journal reported in 1990 that, of the 14.9 million members of Southern Baptist churches (according to an official count), over 4.4 million are "non-resident members." This means they are members with whom the church has lost touch. Another 3 million hadn’t attended church or donated to a church in the past year. That left about 7.4 million "active" members. However, according to Sunday School consultant Glenn Smith, even this is misleading, because included in this "active" figure are those members who only attended once a year at Easter or Christmas. The only conclusion to be drawn is that our Southern Baptist Convention is a denomination of unregenerate church members!
     This, then, is the diagnosis: contemporary evangelical churches as a whole, and a large number of Southern Baptist churches as a subset (dare I say the majority?), are devoid of biblical and theological thinking, have abandoned a high view of the sufficiency of Scripture, and have traded in biblical values for modern notions of modernity. In our judgment, evangelicalism is collapsing of its own weight."

Our Adopted Strategy for Local Church Reform

Indeed, Organized Church Reform is needed in the Southern Baptist Convention.  In an effort to help make that happen, our pastors are committed to applying the following three principles on a local level at Crystal Valley Baptist Church:

I.  Corporate Recognition of Need for Reform
The first principle is to recognize the need for reformation. Both the Bible and history record how the people of God are continually in need of self-examination and reformation. But in every case of reformation, there must be a recognition of the need. This is the first step.
     Too many people in the church do not know the marks of a true church.  Because they do not have a vision of what the church should look like, they see no need of reformation.  The discerning Christian, however, would not question the need for reformation. The fact that the church of today has little spiritual influence in the world is manifest. Mature and observant Christians recognize that there is no doctrinal foundation, no fixed objective standard of righteousness, because the moral law embodied in the Ten Commandments is missing from most churches. We should be more concerned than we are that the doctrinal foundations of the law have been removed or buried in powerless ritualism. For when the moral and doctrinal standards are removed, the church is swept along without a compass by every wind of change in a sea of confusion. The Bible asks the question: What can the righteous do if the foundations be removed? There is a desperate need for reformation in the church.  [Unless this need is recognized, reform is impossible].

II.  Personal Reform of the Pastors
The second principle of reformation is that the man behind the pulpit must have a reformed life before the people in the pews can ever be expected to change. It has been said that the minister’s life is the life of the ministry. This is certainly true when we speak of reformation. We can be sure that if there is no reformation in the pulpit, there will be no reformation in the pews.

III.  Laying a Foundation
The third principle of reforming a local church involves both the demolition of misguided theological notions and the laying of a biblical foundation anchored by the doctrines of grace.
       Biblical doctrine is more important than most church members realize. Doctrine not only expresses our experiences and beliefs, but it also determines our direction. It shapes our lives and churches. It gives our churches unity and stability. The church that neglects to teach sound biblical doctrine weakens the church membership. It works against true unity, invites instability in its fellowship, lessens conviction, and stalemates true progress in the church.
       Unfortunately, however, we live in a church age where the doctrinal foundations of contemporary evangelicalism have crumbled and been destroyed. But God is interested in laying anew biblical foundations for future generations. He calls patient, persevering workers who long for reformation and who seek his wisdom to lay solid, doctrinal foundations!
       What doctrines are we talking about? The doctrines that are worth dying for are foundational, biblical doctrines, not secondary ones. They are the doctrines believed in and preached by our Baptist fathers -- men such as James P. Boyce, John A. Broadus, B.H. Carroll, John L. Dagg, Luther Rice, P.H. Mell, John Bunyan, Charles H. Spurgeon, William Carey, and Andrew Fuller.
       We speak first of all of the doctrines of grace: [We are utterly depraved and dead in our sins without God; God chose the elect for salvation from the foundation of time out of his own mercy and desire, and that Christ died as a propitiation for his people; the Holy Spirit is the one who effectively calls sinners to salvation; and no one who has been converted can ever, for any reason, lose his salvation, but that true believers will persevere until the end].
       In these doctrines we have a powerful message that is meant for today! We proclaim a powerful God who actually saves. Not a "little god" who can do no more than to help man save himself. Not a puny god who pleads with sinners to come to him and stands by helplessly, wringing his hands, while man makes up his mind.
       We proclaim a faith that is utterly and completely God-centered. Our God is the source and end of everything that is, both in nature and in grace. He is sovereign in creation, sovereign in redemption, and sovereign in providence. History is nothing less than the outworking of God's preordained plan.
       Along with the doctrines of grace, human responsibility to believe is another foundational doctrine, a hill on which to die. We must proclaim to every single person:

     ▪ All are sinners. All are dead in trespasses and sins. They are not sick and simply in need of help. Rather, they are dead and in need of life.

     ▪ Jesus Christ, God's Son, is a perfect, able and willing Savior of sinners, even the worst, yea, even the chief.

     ▪ The Father and the Son have promised that all who know themselves to be sinners and who put their faith in Jesus Christ as Savior shall be received into favor, and none shall be cast out.

     ▪ God has made faith and repentance a duty, requiring of every man who hears the gospel a serious and full casting of the soul upon Christ as an all-sufficient Savior. He is ready, willing and able to save all who come to God by Christ.

       To the question, "What must I do to be saved?" we must respond to all who ask, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." What does that mean? It means: (a) knowing that you are a sinner, (b) knowing that Christ has died for sinners, (c) abandoning all self-righteousness, self-confidence and self-effort as a means of salvation, (d) casting yourself wholly upon Christ for pardon and peace, (e) exchanging your natural enmity and rebellion against Christ for a spirit of grateful submission to the will of Christ through the renewing of your heart by the Holy Spirit.
       It is these foundations that must be vigorously constructed in our churches. Upon the hear preaching of these foundational doctrines, who knows but that God may be pleased to fan the flames of reformation fire.