Vol. 6, No. 11, 1989

Articles on Other Religious Topics

Craig Branch

We at Watchman Fellowship have been called to be a resource for you in the task of shepherding your flock. As you know, the Scriptures repeatedly admonishes the pastor to guard the flock against false teachers and heresies (Acts 20:28-32). But we are also well aware that there are many diverse demands on you from the congregation making you wear many different hats. You do not have the time to be an expert in every area. The result is that the body of Christ has done very little that is productive in the area of the cults.

We have found that the church has little focus and no strategy at all to reach these people - to see them as a real mission field. As a consequence, cult membership has swelled to 30 million people with over 75 percent of their recruits coming from the pews of mainline denominational churches! Whenever the body of Christ does not respond responsibly to a cancer like this, the disease grows at the expense of the body.

Church growth statistics indicate that between the years 1974 and 1984 the Mormon Church's Sunday school increased by 63 percent compared to seven percent for Southern Baptists and five percent for the Church of God. Other denominations actually reported a decrease in attendance! Mormonism has 6.7 million members and is growing at a rate of nine percent per year, while the Jehovah's Witnesses are growing at a rate of seven percent per year.

In addition, a recent Gallup Poll indicated that 23 percent (60 million) Americans believed in reincarnation and that was before Shirley MacLaine and all the latest media attention. The same poll demonstrated that twenty percent of them were Protestant church members.

You will find that Watchman Fellowship is the most effective way to reverse this trend. Our various programs can be tailored to meet any church's unique situation. In the area of prevention we have found that a church service using one of our films, The God Makers, Witnesses of Jehovah, or The Cult Explosion, accompanied by our missionary comments and the distribution of materials including copies of The Watchman Expositor, gives a long-lasting inoculation against cultic intrusion. Also, when we speak, we usually discover that a large percentage of the congregation has relatives, friends of contact with people in cults, but these Christians have been frustrated in not knowing how to respond. Exposure to our missionary presentation gives them real, viable ways to reach those people for Christ.

Beyond prevention, we have programs designed to teach Christians why they believe what they believe thus preparing them to share effectively with those people in the cults. The average home is visited five times a year by Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. The Jehovah's Witnesses alone have 750,000 of their members going door-to-door between ten and 80 hours a month. The ideal goal is through our exposure and your screening to surface a ministry team from many local churches to be equipped in our Cult Awareness Institute. These trained members can be your own church's resource for continuing education, troubleshooting and developing an evangelistic strategy and program.

Please contact us soon to talk over the possibilities and details at our office number: (205) 871-3366 [or send us e-mail]. We have worked with every kind of major denomination and independent church. We have strong recommendations from major leaders that we would be glad to share with you. We stand ready to serve you in any way.