Though a majority of residents in the South claim to be Christian, many are being taught “quaint moralism over the Gospel, and moralism is the greatest form of self worship. It robs us of our need for God.”

The once vibrant Christian South is beginning to become a “boneyard of religious history,” warned a Raleigh, N.C., pastor.

There may be a church on every street corner but many of them are dying, if not dead already, said Tyler Jones, lead pastor at Vintage21 Church.

Jones has joined several pastors this week to sound the alarm on the decline of the church in the South – a decline that he believes is happening faster than anywhere in the country.

And the decline, they say, isn’t due to the external changes in the South, such as urbanization and intellectual and cultural growth. Rather, the problems are within the church.

In the South, the people are not unreached but wrongly reached, Jones said at “Advance10: Contextualizing the Gospel in the New South,” a three-day conference that kicked off Monday.

Churches have failed to understand the Gospel and how it applies to people’s lives in a rapidly changing culture, he noted. Christian faith in the South exists primarily in name alone, he stated.

Jerome Gay, lead pastor of Vision International Church in Raleigh, also views moralism as a pervasive problem in the churches.

Speakers being featured at Advance10 include Johnny Hunt, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention; and Tullian Tchividjian, pastor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

READ MORE: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100427/saving-the-wrongly-reached-in-the-south/