{"id":10896,"date":"2019-09-09T11:22:11","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T15:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10896"},"modified":"2019-09-09T11:23:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T15:23:40","slug":"major-shrinkage-at-fbc-jacksonville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10896","title":{"rendered":"Major shrinkage at FBC-Jacksonville"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First Baptist Church is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacksonville.com\/news\/20190908\/first-baptist-church-jacksonville-consolidating-downtown-campus-to-1-block-from-10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">selling most of its property<\/a> in downtown Jacksonville, Florida.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A pillar of faith in downtown Jacksonville for 181 years, First Baptist Church plans to consolidate its sprawling 10-block campus into one block in an effort to eliminate skyrocketing maintenance costs, while also rebuilding its dwindling congregation by extending its ministry to growing areas of Duval County.<\/p>\n<p>The congregation Sunday morning overwhelmingly approved the plan &#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Watch the sermon, below.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qxvf9LYKciU\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Watching the sermon, I&#8217;m struck by the pastor&#8217;s frank recitation of the dismal facts &#8212; declining membership and rising campus maintenance costs (and, notice that this church pays no property taxes on its massive downtown campus).  Ordinarily, pastors do everything but drop happy-face balloons from the ceiling when the news is bad.<\/p>\n<p>The problems at FBC-Jax have been growing for years, of course; it&#8217;s Pastor Lambert&#8217;s misfortune to be the guy at the helm when the difficulties can no longer be ignored and pretended-away.  Recall that the previous pastor, Mac Brunson, is the guy who sicced the Sheriff&#8217;s office on an anonymous Internet critic and ended-up paying an undisclosed settlement.<\/p>\n<p>I doubt very much that these measures will secure the long-term viability of the church, because Christianity is untrue and in decline.  Another pastor will face the same problems 20-years from now, but with a smaller congregation.  Perhaps they&#8217;ll rent a storefront in a failing shopping center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First Baptist Church is selling most of its property in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. A pillar of faith in downtown Jacksonville for 181 years, First Baptist Church plans to consolidate its sprawling 10-block campus into one block in an effort to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10896\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10896"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10896"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10900,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10896\/revisions\/10900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}