I completely agree with Bob Newman’s assessment of no need for new churches in South Carolina in the Sept. 20 issue of the Courier.
There are very few communities in South Carolina that really need a new church planted. Splits have been the driving force behind many new churches in South Carolina rather than a new field where one was needed.
Existing churches are generally less than one-third filled on Sunday mornings. In my opinion, new churches are not the way to reach or evangelize people. Besides, a new church’s attendance plateaus or begins to decline after about seven years. This is evident from a review of the “South Carolina Baptist Convention Annual Report.”
In place of a new and separate place to worship, older church congregations (the young and old) need “to repent, and forgive” and learn to “get along.” The younger generations are to learn from the older (Titus 2).
Many years ago, a pastor mentor, Claude Hightower (now deceased), traveled across Oconee County in his senior years to churches where he would be supply preaching. As he would pass by the location of a newly established church, he would observe on Sunday morning only half a dozen cars a mile or two down the road from the church they had left.
From his observation of these new churches, Preacher Hightower said to the weekly pastor’s prayer meeting, “If church people can’t get along with people they dislike on earth, how can they enjoy heaven in the company with the same people?” I was a much younger preacher then, and I heard the message clear. New churches are formed from a divorced congregation.
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