Michael Catt

My home church closed its doors recently. After decades of limping along, they finally pronounced the last rites and admitted they could no longer maintain the facilities. Though once a significant witness in my small hometown and centrally located on the main drag, the church was unable to sustain itself. Where once rooms were filled with preschoolers, children, and young people, hallways had become silent, rooms were locked off, and twenty-five elderly saints huddled up and held on as long as they could.

It didn’t have to happen, and it should never have been this way. I grew up in the church’s heyday. I know what it was like then, and I know what it could have been. Unfortunately, some person or group along the way decided that the Great Commission didn’t apply to them, and they quit reaching the community. Continue reading →

In a recent study, some truths about our denomination were revealed. Even with all the smoke and mirrors we could muster up, the reality is undeniable. Of the 46,000 Southern Baptist churches in North America, 41,600 are plateaued, dying, or near death. If this is true among evangelicals who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, how much more is this true among the mainline denominations?

We have a choice. We can abandon ship, point fingers, or hide our heads in the sand. However, the church that is walking with God will get busy praying, serving, and giving to ensure this doesn’t happen on our watch. Continue reading →

(Read Part 1 here.)

As I get older, I find myself wondering why we have more men answering the call to ministry, church planting, and missions and yet we are going backward in the American church. Our baptisms are down, and the lack of spiritual power is evident. Most of our churches only grow by stealing other church members or by Christians relocating. There is very little evangelism of the lost and least. With all our resources, programs, technology, styles, and options, we can’t seem to penetrate the darkness.

Let me give you my humble and accurate opinion, which I highly respect (my friend Ron Dunn gave me that line). If you aren’t learning, you aren’t growing. How do we learn? By being teachable. Continue reading →

I’m a Baby Boomer. I’ve lived through the birth of rock-and-roll, the Jesus Movement, hippie culture, the invention of color television, the birth of FM radio, records, cassettes, CDs, MP3s, and satellite radio. I was around before the Internet and cell phones. My grandparents had a party line, and growing up all our phones had cords.

I learned to drive with a stick shift, we didn’t have seat belts, and the dashboard was metal. We didn’t use car seats, and we didn’t lock our doors at night. The streets were fairly safe for kids to play in, and we knew our neighbors. Most of us went to the same kind of church our parents and grandparents attended. We all sang hymns, but I was around when choruses started showing up in church, mainly because of the Jesus Movement. Continue reading →

As I travel around the country, I am becoming more and more aware of our need for revival. Churches are fighting. Pastors are leaving the ministry. Ethics is lacking among believers. Morality is slipping away. The youth culture is fast becoming pagan. Children are being abused, neglected, and given over to godless philosophies and worldviews. These are just a few of the reasons why we need revival.

If procrastination is the thief of time, then failure to make godly choices when it comes to things like ReFRESH® is a thief of life itself. We don’t get better on our own. We need the accountability to the body. We need the fellowship of the saints. We need to sit under the anointed preaching of the Word. We need to join hearts in crying out to God to meet us in our time of need. Continue reading →