A Crisis in the Grace Movement
Can we survive this?
Is the grace movement facing a crisis? I think it is.
I see a shrinking pool of grace pastors and a shrinking pool of grace churches across the United States.
I don’t have hard data. This is just based on conversations I’ve had over the last few months. For example, a saint recently told me about two small grace churches in Florida that basically disassembled because the pastors, due to age or illness, couldn’t pastor anymore. There was no one to replace them. And so the assemblies broke up. Fizzled out. Fell apart.
How long has Altoona Bible Church been looking for a pastor? How tough do you think it’s going to be for Grace Life Bible Church to replace Bryan Ross?
I look around and I wonder...
Who’s out there who can step up and meet this spiritual need?
Who’s going to stand in our pulpits years from now?
Who’s going to help bring the message of grace to the next generation?
Who’s going to mentor young believers?
Who’s going to write another generation of grace books?
Who’s going to plant churches in towns desperate for truth?
Over at Easy Believer, managed by Sharon McEntee, we know of roughly 180–190 churches and organized fellowships in the United States. Think about that. We’re talking about less than 200 churches in a nation of over 340 million people.
I’d say that is absolutely a crisis.
The Philippines have 1,000 churches. Our country has less than 200.
And, as far as I can tell, that number is shrinking.
Of course, the grace movement has never had an abundance of laborers. We’ve always been small. Truth has always been a narrow gate (Matt. 7:14). We’ve always depended upon ordinary people who love right division enough to sacrifice their time, their retirement years, and sometimes their careers and financial gain so that people can not only be saved but also know who they are in Christ and be blessed by hearing about the extraordinary riches of God’s grace.
This has always been and will always be the only way our movement can survive.
Not because we have celebrity pastors online. But because we have faithful saints in cities establishing churches.
We need those people now more than ever.
We need all the normal believers out there in the U.S. living normal lives to step out of their comfort zones and do the hard work of establishing fellowships in their local communities. We also need men willing to study and step up and teach.
The Pauline Design
I’m also very concerned that there is a shift in the way people are thinking generally now because of the internet. If a grace church closes, a lot of saints may well think, “Well, I still have Pastor so-and-so and Pastor so-and-so online. So I’ll just watch them.” And then totally forsake fellowshipping with the saints.
This was never the Pauline design.
This is not what’s best for you spiritually.
The Pauline design is for the existence and proliferation of local grace churches. God wants you to have personal fellowship with other saints. The Pauline design is 2 Tim. 2:2 - men in your local assembly being mentored and teaching. They have to be studying for themselves, as good Bereans, and then stepping up and teaching and passing on that grace message to future generations.
I once listened to all of C.R. Stam’s radio programs. People would write in, and tell him, “I don’t have a grace church where I live. What do I do?”
Stam would say, essentially, “You’ve got your work cut out for you.” In other words, you’ve got to get the message of grace out in your local community and do the hard work of establishing a church yourself.
He’s right. Nobody’s going to do it for you. You have to do it yourself.
We have always been and always will be - grassroots.
And right now, the grace movement desperately needs pastors. The grace movement also desperately needs more churches.
People are not truly edified by simply listening to grace pastors online. They are edified by attending a local church in which they see other saints living out the doctrine. They are edified by personal interactions with other saints, developing those loving relationships, and serving each other.
This has always been God’s design for every grace believer.
Don’t believe me? See Rom. 12:4-5, 14:19, 15:14, 1 Cor. 12:12–27, Eph. 4:11–16, Col. 3:16, 1 Thess. 5:14, Titus 2, Phile. 1:2, and 2 Tim. 3:10.
Consumers of Grace
I also can’t help but wonder if many of us in this country have unintentionally become consumers of grace instead of stewards of the doctrines of grace.
We have men teaching online today.
Thousands of hours on YouTube.
Podcasts.
Articles.
Books.
Conferences.
Online schools.
Never in history has it been easier to find and learn the Word rightly divided.
But learning the doctrine was never supposed to be the end game. Grace is supposed to transform your life, and grace should inspire ministry in your own life. Grace is supposed to motivate your service to God.
And you need to make sure the grace message will be passed on to others where you live.
I thank God for livestreams and podcasts (especially ours!). I love interacting with the saints. There is a time and a place for all of this. But online ministry was never meant to replace real, personal, local churches. You can’t mentor someone through a YouTube comment section the same way you can over a cup of coffee and an open Bible. You can’t shepherd a flock with algorithms.
Paul also never portrayed grace churches as spectators sitting comfortably at home, disconnected from each another, while a handful of men carried the entire movement on their shoulders with online videos.
In Paul’s epistles, you don’t see an audience watching ministry — you see a local body engaged in ministry. Every member plays a role. Some teach publicly. Others evangelize. Others encourage. Some host churches in their homes. Others labor in prayer. Others give financially. Others refresh the saints with love.
Paul continually thanked believers for their fellowship in the gospel because they were also partners in the labor, not merely consumers of doctrine (Phil. 1:3-7).
The local church wasn’t designed to function like a theater where a few perform while everyone else watches. It is a family where every member contributes to the spiritual health of everyone else.
The body functions because every joint supplies something.
And when too many people decide someone else should do all the work...
…we’re in trouble.
Not long ago, I was in another conversation about grace churches and the future of the grace movement. A saint wondered, “Will there still be grace churches? Are churches going to die out?”
That’s a legitimate concern.
Although I’d say the better question is...
“Will there still be grace people willing to sacrifice to carry the torch?”
Churches don’t disappear because the truth stops being true. Churches disappear because faithful laborers become too few.
Big Picture
I’ll just highlight a few problems I see in the grace movement now:
· I think we need to do better about mentoring young men in local assemblies, because that is what 2 Tim. 2:2 is all about.
· If you’ve gone through Grace School of the Bible, you really need to be teaching and helping to build-up a local assembly. To go through that school for your own spiritual edification and not be teaching somewhere is total cop-out.
· I can’t help but wonder how many grace believers live in the same city and don’t realize there are other grace believers in that same city. And they’re all watching videos online because there isn’t a church when they could be fellowshipping with each other. If you have just one other person in your city who knows grace, then that person is your new church, and you must meet regularly.
· Just because great teachers exist online, that doesn’t mean you can neglect personal fellowship with other saints in your own city.
· And finally, churches need to be places of encouragement for new teachers. Churches have to be encouraging young men to go into the ministry and learning how to serve this seemingly-perpetually struggling movement.
Maybe the next grace pastor is reading this article right now.
Maybe he’s listening to our podcast while driving to work.
Maybe he’s leading his family in Bible readings every night.
Maybe he’s teaching a Sunday School class.
Maybe he doesn’t even realize how God can work through him and use him in ways he has never imagined.
Maybe it’s you.
We need you.