Jamie Frazier, the guest speaker at the Minden Lions Club on August, 10, addressed the club about the current state of Christianity in the United States.
Citing scripture, Frazier stated that no one will know when the end will come…unless they are paying attention.
Frazier went on to state that the biggest problems facing Christianity today are an unwillingness to stand up for what the Bible teaches and an attitude of not wishing to rock the boat.
“I think all too often today, our culture has come to churches, and they’ve set up ‘no trespassing’ signs,” Frazier said. “You can’t talk about this because it’s political. You can’t talk about that because it resides in a world outside of religion. We need to keep religion in that little box with a steeple on top on Sundays. That’s what we’ve been told.”
Frazier strongly disagrees with these thoughts. He says, “God’s Word should influence us in absolutely every aspect of our lives.
“We have fights in our culture right now trying to define what a woman is. We have men dressing up like women and trying to read and dance to our children in our schools. We even have fights over whether it is okay to cut off the genitals of our little boys and remove the healthy breasts of our young girls. But how many times have you heard this addressed in your churches? It’s no trespassing. We can’t go there.”
Frazier then shared the results of some surveys. According to a Gallup poll, church membership among adults is now less than 50%.
Frazier also stated that too many people take the scripture and twist the meaning into whatever they want. He then cited surveys completed by Arizona Christian University’s cultural research center (the American Worldview Inventory 2022) that show that, of all Christian pastors that responded, only 37% hold a Biblical worldview.
“These are the people who are in charge of teaching us what a Biblical worldview is,” said Frazier. “If only 37% possess that Biblical worldview in a survey, how many of them have the courage to teach that worldview boldly?
“So many churches, and specifically church leaders, have adopted what I call a doctrine of non-confrontationalism. We don’t want to confront people; we don’t want to upset anybody. We’ve got to figure out if our churches are cruise ships or are they battleships.”
Frazier maintains that lessons about the pleasant things Jesus did (summoning the little children, healing the crippled and the blind) are easy lessons to teach, but he feels that we should not overlook other lessons Jesus taught such as clearing the temple of the merchants and money changers.
“If you offend somebody in church, what happens,” asked Frazier. “Church attendance might go down; giving might go down. But how do you measure the success of a church in this country? We’ve been deluded and deceived into measuring success by attendance and giving.”
“Maybe we don’t need to be worried about the biggest numbers on our attendance sign and instead worry about the ones that are the dedicated leaders and followers of Jesus Christ.”
The Lions Club, a service organization whose motto is “We Serve,” has interesting speakers every Thursday. They meet at noon in the American Legion Memorial Hall at 119 Pine Street, and they are accepting new members to help serve the community of Minden.