It’s been a little over six years since the senior minister resumed preaching at FCCF. Will the pattern previously established for devastating attendance hemorrhaging reemerge? Is it time for FCCF history to repeat? Will the upcoming hearing in the lawsuit against the church and the celebrity pastor bring this about? I’m asking the hard questions.
From the book:
“FCCF struggled through low attendance and membership. Witnesses attending said there were perhaps 200 (without taking an exact count) in the sanctuary on the day Steve Wingfield returned to the pulpit. It was such a sad day for those of us who had worked and prayed to rid FCCF of the celebrity pastor who neglected his flock and allegedly failed to report the abuser. I suppose the phrase used in moving the church into the corporate template actually materialized—’You have to lose hundreds to gain thousands.’
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a well-known pastor and minister at Westchester Chapel in London for thirty years, stated his opinion on striving for numbers: ‘The great concern of the New Testament Epistles is not about the size of the church, it is about the purity of the Church.” [https://virtueonline.org/lloyd-jones-heresy] Yet, in his own words, Steve Wingfield returned to the numbers game, judging his success by how many baptisms happened, as noted in the following First Christian Church in Florissant Facebook post, dated July 12, 2018:
‘I admit it discouraged me when at invitation time Sunday, ZERO public decisions for Christ. (One of the first Sundays with no decisions since before Easter. Our highest was our church birthday in June when 8 people responded!) The good news is we’ve had several decisions mid-week in Starting Point and one teenager is being baptized today in Lake Michigan! Kyle sent the good news from our group of 25 teens at CIY Move conference in Chicago.’
The quest for numbers continued.” (Taylor, Joy S., A View from the Pews — The Inside Story of a Broken Church, 2022, Lily of the Valley Publishing, Santa Claus IN, p. 144.)
#aviewfromthepews #forthevictims
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