Thanks for being a new reader!

Your pragmatism is showing here, I suspect. The reasoning that “Jesus only got 25%” is not an answer, though. He told us to make disciples, not converts, and our success rate has nothing to do with it. If we fail to do that, then we’re ignoring the Great Commission. He appointed some to be pastors and teachers because people need solid leadership in becoming a disciple. You can’t walk away from the process or else you will get people like Stu who don’t know any better.

Is Stu responsible for some of what should be his own growth? Yes. But so are the people who led him to Christ.

Your comment about community is odd because we are the Body of Christ for a reason, and the Body is designed to be integrally woven together, not a loose collection pf parts strewn here and there. The illustration you give of North Korea fails to address the need that what is foundational is Christian belief, THEN corporate function.

The Church Growth Movement has tried to show how God will benefit people, but it’s been a colossal failure. We’re not “selling” Jesus as a spiritual Swiss Army knife. And God does ask people to sacrifice their own needs for those of others. All the apostles wound up dead or paid harshly for their allegiance to the Lord. If dying to self is self-flagellation, then I don’t understand what you think the components of the Gospel are.

“Stu” backslid because he decided to backslid, because he’s an autonomous individual who chose the carnal over the sprirtual. “Stu” is a big boy who made big boy decisions. He didn’t backslide because the person who informed him of the gospel didn’t adequately brainwash him. Jesus taught that some seed would spring up too fast and wither away. If that what he said, then we can assume that even He was powerless to prevent some from falling away.

If there are any “anti-witnesses” here, it’s the people witnessing to college kids on a bender during Spring Break. Every good salesmen knows that to sell a product (1) identify people who would be interested in your product, and (2) identify to those people why the products meets their desires. Yet too often, evangelists do the exact opposite: go find the people most uninterested in spiritual matters, then yell and scream at them about how they need to change everything about themselves. It makes the evangelist feel all warm and fuzzy that they’re “witnessing to sinners”, but accomplishes nothing and throws pearls to swine. The few converts the find, like “Stu”, unsuprisingly go back the way they were.

We’re creating “anti-witnesses” because we’re not communal enough and aren’t self-sacrificing enough? Son, if communalism measured the sprituality of a population, then North Korea would be the most holy country on the face of the Earth. There is no such thing as a “relational, community faith”. Only an individual can believe or think, not a group. If you want to make the church grow, stop asking people to flagellate and kill themselves for the Lord, and instead show them how a relationship with God will benefit them and their house.