Southside Baptist Church, Athens, AL

in·oc·u·late - (ĭ-nŏk'yə-lāt') - v. 1. To introduce a serum, vaccine, or antigenic substance into (the body of a person or animal), especially to produce or boost immunity to a specific disease.¹

The more I engage in our community and the more I share the gospel with people, I get a sense that many have been inoculated to the gospel.  It seems that everybody knows something about Jesus, and from that everybody assumes they are "saved."  Lives, however, are not showing any good evidence of repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ which are the marks of regeneration.  They have some vague notion of Jesus dying on a cross, but they cannot articulate any understanding of the substitutionary nature of His sacrifice.  Most, and maybe some of you reading this, even wish I wouldn't use such "big words" like 'substitutionary'.  That in itself is a good indication that the church has failed to preach and teach the gospel faithfully, for the idea of substitutionary sacrifice is at the heart of the gospel.  As a matter of fact, without it there is no good news at all!  So it seems to me that many people in our community have learned just enough about Jesus to have built up an immunity to the gospel, and it has been the church that's been administering the free vaccine.

As we, the members of Southside, proclaim and exalt Christ and Him crucified as our substitute in our everyday lives and relationships, pray that this proclamation will be met with the power of the Spirit to tear down misnomers regarding the true gospel and to affect salvation among our hearers.  May the clarity of the truth of the Christ-centered gospel we proclaim be heard in such distinct contrast to the man-centered message popular today that the vaccine will be found to be ineffective against this different strain.