Baptist born. Baptist bred. And when I die, I’ll be Baptist dead.

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Catchy, I know. Unfortunately, it is not as common a phrase as it once was. What used to be the motto for Baptist identity and propagation has missed the train when it comes to ringing true for the modern-day Baptist, especially in America. In this article published in the Baptist Press, Dr. Russell Moore addressed some of the issues facing our identity as Baptists and families, and more specifically as Southern Baptists. He asks:

I wonder how many Southern Baptist parents tell their newly married children to “wait till you get settled” before having children so “you can enjoy each other,” as though children will mean the end of romance. I wonder how many Southern Baptist churches greet a family with four or more children with a snide comment from a Baby Boomer about whether “you know what’s causing that.”

This is so true! I can not tell you how many times I have heard couples tell me they want to be able to “enjoy each other” before having children. We sometimes act (at least in practice, if not in profession) as if children are a “great fixed gulf” between martial bliss and the burdened life of parenthood. I think Moore hit the nail on the head on this one. But he wasn’t done yet:

I wonder how many Southern Baptist churches these days devote time in their youth groups to teaching young boys to prepare for the glory of fatherhood? I wonder how many churches recruit older women to teach our girls that the greatest success they can find is not to be the first Southern Baptist female president of the United States or to tithe more money as a monied Southern Baptist bank executive but to be a wife and mother? Is it indicative of how far we’ve fallen for the American dream that it would be controversial in some conservative Southern Baptist churches even to say this?

Be sure and catch this folks. Though not explicitly mentioned by Moore, birth control is a central issue in the question of the future of Baptists in specific, and Christians as a whole. Intentionally decreasing the size of our Baptist families (by whatever means), leads to fewer baby dedications, fewer Baptist youths in Sunday School, fewer VBS kids, fewer Baptist students, fewer Baptist seminarians, fewer Baptist missionaries, fewer Baptist preachers, and fewer Baptists altogether.

So as not to allow us to miss his point however, Moore closes with saying:

This doesn’t mean that we should equate fertility with spirituality. God is going to call some believers not to marry so that, like the Apostle Paul or Lottie Moon, they can devote themselves totally to Great Commission service. Others will not be blessed with large families, or with children at all. But, at the same time, can’t we insist that our view of children be dictated by the book of Proverbs rather than Madison Avenue or Wall Street?

Let’s pray for churches that welcome children, embrace families and seek to evangelize and disciple our little ones, and the little ones in our neighborhoods whose parents will never join them in the pew. Let’s pray for churches that won’t idolize the dual income, no kids picture of success mirrored on our television screens. Let’s teach our boys to want to be husbands and fathers, our girls to want to be wives and mothers, our families to be evangelists. Let’s outbreed the Mormons and out-preach the Pentecostals. Let’s press the Gospel upon a new generation, win them to Christ, baptize them, teach them, and see the Lord call them to the pastorate, to missions, to lay leadership.

Let’s pray for busy baptisteries and crawling cradle rolls. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how respectable we are in the community or how large our capital budgets are. Without a next generation, we’ll just be Baptist dead.

May we always remember that “crawling cradle rolls” are a good thing.

‘BH

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Filed under Birth Control, Ethics, Lawn Gospel, Life, Pro-Life, Quote, Religion, School, Scripture, Southern Baptist Convention, Theology