Letter to the Church, Pastors, Priests, Deacons, and Elders

Dear Church Leaders,

Our community is full of the lost and the saved; both groups need leadership to protect their children. God has imprinted on the hearts of parents that their children have inestimable value meaning children deserve to be protected against predators. We have protected children since we fought off cave bears with rocks and spears. Are modern children not worth protecting from predatory social influences and unsafe overreach?

The church worries our protection of the innocent will somehow hurt church evangelism and we will not save the Lost to the kingdom of God. We have watched how the agenda desires to cause anger and division, and the Church cannot respond in kind. We have seen the church, Christ, and ourselves, like progressive Christians see the church. We’re just here to love on people until we save them. This is not Biblical; it’s incomplete and puts the responsibility on us to save the lost. God’s love is amazing when we minister to the innocent, the hurting, and the persecuted. However, love isn’t meant to be done from a distance; love without truth and character and boldness is just platitudes. It’s empty words. We forget when love prays for its enemies, love recognizes it has enemies. God didn’t send us to save, but sent us to make disciples, teaching and baptizing. We teach truth even to those who don’t want to hear it.

The disciples found a hostile world, preached the gospel, performed miracles, and taught. However, they did not do it timidly nor did they do it with the hope they wouldn’t upset people. The disciples didn’t silently love people, hoping the message would reach them through the third person of the trinity, our Holy Osmosis.

Church membership has declined 20-40% in 20 years. Only 47% of Americans were church members in 2019, down from 70% in 1999. Belief in God and heaven has also dropped substantially. The church in America is dying because we aren’t being bold in public spaces. The SBC hasn’t been immune to this loss either. Soon, the majority of people won’t believe in God or heaven in America. The Lost and Saved follow leaders; and church leaders chased corrupted rewards. They have taught worldly reward and approval are more important than selflessly living for the Kingdom of God.

We aren’t bold or protectors or standing in the gap between the powerful and the weak. Are we not God’s Holy People? Our predecessors ended slavery and ended women being sold by their father. They made child sacrifice and pedophilia illegal. Our spiritual ancestors did greater works than Christ, as he promised, because they were bold. The church is diminishing; its light is going out. Parents think no one will protect their children. Lost and Saved parents made a deal with Baphomet. He promises to end their children’s suffering with happiness.

The Church’s silence and deals with Satan have shown the next world doesn’t matter or even exist. Be silent and the Devil will leave you alone. We signed on the dotted line. We promised to only preach in the church; only teach in the church; hide in the church. Risking hatred, abuse, violence, and arrest while peacefully speaking God’s truth will help the lost and the saved to know this world only matters because of heaven. The church has stopped risking death for the world to come so people have lived as if this miserable, brutal world is all they get.


The protection of children becomes about how to protect children in this world; the lost and the saved have stopped considering the world to come. If there is no God, if there is no heaven, then parents must protect their children in this world through irrational means. The parents feel an immediacy to this threat hanging over their children. There is no future for them, so some parents will protect their children’s happiness in this world, even if that sacrifices them to gay or transgendered predators. Even non-believing parents instinctively know this world is suffering and pain and if they have to protect their children, they will sacrifice them to Baal and Moloch to end the pain now. Other parents live in a world of apathy, passively hiding at home and not engaging in God’s calling to protect their children from predators. Either way our children lose.

We are not fighting flesh and blood. We are fighting against demons and fallen angels. When we silence our voices as a church, we invite these demons into our nation, our community, and our churches. Christians must be bold right now. We may lose members being bold. We will not win every soul by being bold. But imagine if Martin Luther had been less bold. Imagine if Paul had been quiet. Imagine if Christ had decided we weren’t worth dying to protect. If we are not bold, we will be called to be Dietrich Bonhoffer in a government openly hostile to Christ. Nothing in this world belongs to Satan, not even politics. If we abandon our religious liberty to oppose evil in the public sphere, then we are abandoning our religious liberty in our churches. There is a Kingdom of Souls ready to be led if you will lead them. Stand up and defy predatory librarians and teachers, even if it costs you everything.

Your Fellow Servant in Christ,

[Your Name]

Verses

The Great Commission: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
Being Bold: "For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." (2 Timothy 1:7)
Love: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud." (1 Corinthians 13:4)
Pedophilia/Harming Children: "But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matthew 18:6)
False Gods: “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3)
Principalities and Powers: "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 6:12)
Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." (Hebrews 10:25)
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship." (Romans 12:1)
"Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction." (2 Timothy 4:2)
"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." (1 Peter 2:9)
30 “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. (Ezekiel 22:30)
Research
In 2007, 74% of American adults said they believed in heaven, while in 2018 this dropped to 72% (Pew Research Center).
Belief in heaven declined more sharply among Catholics (from 85% in 2007 to 79% in 2018) than among Protestants (stayed at 82%) (Pew Research Center).
Only 64% of adults under 30 believe in heaven, compared to 82% of adults 65+ (Pew Research Center).
Belief in heaven is correlated with church attendance - 82% of weekly churchgoers say they believe in heaven, compared to 62% of those who seldom/never attend church (Pew Research Center).
Americans with no religious affiliation are less likely to believe in heaven (only 44% do), compared to 95% of evangelical Protestants and 91% of historically black Protestants (Pew Research Center).
Only 49% of religiously unaffiliated Millennials (born 1981-1996) say they believe in heaven (Pew Research Center).
Church membership in the United States has declined sharply in the past 20 years, from 70% in 1999 to 47% in 2019 (Pew Research).
The percentage of Americans who describe themselves as Christian fell from 85% to 65% between 2002 and 2019 (Pew Research).
Only 31% of Americans born after 1980 (Millennials) describe themselves as religiously affiliated, compared to 51% of Baby Boomers (Pew Research).
The percentage of Americans who say they believe in God declined from 92% to 89% between 2007 and 2014 (Pew Research).
The percentage of Americans who say they believe in heaven declined from 85% in 2007 to 72% in 2014 (Pew Research).

Works Cited


Metaxas, Eric. Letter to the American Church. Simon and Schuster, 2022.