Posted on 04/25/2008 8:25:29 AM PDT by Between the Lines
For the first time, Southern Baptists can say membership has reached a tipping point and the nation's largest Protestant denomination is now declining, says one long-time Southern Baptist.
"The decline that many of us have already believed is there is now becoming real," said Ed Stetzer, director for LifeWay Research, in an interview featured on MondayMorningInsight.com, a Web site for pastors and church leaders.
Baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention fell for the third straight year in 2007 to the denomination's lowest level since 1987, dropping nearly 5.5 percent to 345,941, according to LifeWay Christian Resources' Annual Church Profile (ACP), which was released this week.
Total membership also declined by 0.24 percent to 16,266,920.
"This report is truly disheartening," said LifeWay president Thom S. Rainer, according to Baptist Press. "Total membership showed a slight decline. Baptisms have now declined for three consecutive years and for seven of the last eight years, and are at their lowest level since 1987. Indeed, the total baptisms are among the lowest reported since 1970. We are a denomination that, for the most part, has lost its evangelistic passion."
While technically membership has only dropped for one year, Stetzer cautioned fellow Baptists from dismissing the data.
"We don't want people to say 'it's not a big deal.' It is a big deal," he said.
"Southern Baptists have always said 'We're growing. We're growing slow.' You can't say it anymore."
Total membership dipped once before, and then grew in the following years. But this time, Stetzer believes the growth over the past five decades has plateaued.
"Many have predicted that membership (an inflated statistic anyway) would soon begin to decline, but the statement, 'Southern Baptists are a declining denomination' was not 'officially' accurate.
"Until today," he said in his blog on Wednesday.
And while the Southern Baptist Convention added 473 new churches in 2007, gave more than $1.3 billion to support mission activities around the world, and saw a 0.16 percent increase in worship attendance, Stetzer believes the denomination cannot ignore the trend moving toward decline.
"Some might want to point to the good news (attendance up slightly, more churches, etc.). However, you cannot miss the fact that a dubious historical milestone has been reached – and it needs to be noted in denominational and church offices across the country," he said.
"My hope is this will cause people to wake up and change," he commented.
Offering a few suggestions for change, Stetzer said the Southern Baptist Convention needs ethnic and generational diversity in its leadership. Also, the "infighting" has to stop. Debates over theological differences and boundaries at every denominational meeting would only accelerate the trend toward decline, he said.
Most importantly, the recovery of the Gospel in Southern Baptist life is key, he said.
"We must recover a Gospel centrality and cooperate in proclaiming that gospel locally and globally," Stetzer stressed, as he expressed hope for a Great Commission Resurgence.
"It is time for us to once again rise to a new day," he stated. "The temptation will be that the news of the day will result in a new denominational obsession to fix the problem with a new plan. It won’t work. Instead we must refocus on the Divine Obsession (Luke 15), the obsession with lost people."
My little church in Lousiana had over a hundred “members” but only about 40 ever showed up and less than that tithed. The term “membership” is somewhat fungible anyway.
Mt wife’s church of several hundred dropped out of the SBC because they simply couldn’t tolerate the national “leadership” any longer.
I’ll tell you where part of the problem lies. Travelling soccer and baseball teams, club cheerleading teams, etc... I teach Sunday School and about half of the children are gone two or three weeks a month to attend these events.
Our church has about 900 adults packing three Sunday services every Sunday, about 650 of which are members. While we have seen much growth in our 9 year history, there has been little this year do to lack of space. Next month we move into our new building that seats 550. We fear we may have already outgrown the building before we are even in it.
Wasn’t there a plan last year for increasing baptisms?
I think what is undeniable is that the Baptists have started to lose ground. Here in Dayton, the largest Southern Baptist Church (the biggest north of the Mason-Dixon Line) split in half over the (immoral) actions of its minister; and neither of the remaining churches have the name "Baptist."
But people can deny or hide their heads in the sand and pretend this isn't happening. I don't care, because I'm no longer a Southern Baptist.
read later
BTTT
Prayers for your Church and all Christian Churches.
we just left our Southern Baptist church earlier this year...
That darn Jimmy Swaggart anyway.
Thank you and God bless you. Prayers for your Church also.
Oh, Soory. Swaggart is Assemblies of God, a charismatic/pentacostal denom. Thanks for playing ‘Name that Deonimination.’ : )
LOL
tomato tomahto
The numbers being thrown around look like statistical noise. 473 new churches coming into the fold is a good number as is the increased attendance.
Much ado about nothing?
Does this mean that Southern Baptists can now say we are a Mainline denomination?
Only when you've lost membership for 40 straight years.
I guess that ‘purpose (market) driven’ approach isn’t working out so well.
My second thought is that my experience has been that the last SBC church I visited was trying to get people to do these kind of cold-turkey hard sell evangelism activities. Perhaps once upon a time that worked but I just don't think that type of method is very appealing to most people nowadays. We live in an age when you sit and your computer and you get pop-up ads, you sit on your sofa to read and you get telemarketers calling you night and day and you watch tv and you are slammed with infomercials. Everytime you turn around someone is always trying to sell you something and I think people just gave their defenses up.
Thirdly, is it possible the many of these SBC churches have simply over-saturated the market so-to-speak. I would imagine most of these churches are in the south and they've grown about as much as they are going to grow. I wonder if SBC churches have thought of planting churches in other cities where maybe there are not alot of churches instead of just planting another mega church in the suberbs.
I grew up in Xenia and we used to always go to Dayton for saturday night Youth Rallies in the 70's. We probably would have gone to that church. In our church almost all of the people were people who moved from Kentucky to Ohio. LOL!
I don't think he's southern baptist. He's Pentecostal. He's still on WGN on sunday mornings. I don't care much for his theology but the music is actualy pretty good.
I believe it is much ado over nothing. I have never figured out why we Baptists are so number driven.
It's hard to tell evangelicals apart sometimes.
The most reliable indicator of growth is attendance. If your attendance is up, your church is growing.
A lot of old SBCers are dieing due to old age and I suspect that is the reason for the decline in membership. additionally, a number of churches no longer have a class of membership, they rely solely on attendance to gauge their effectiveness.
My own church has apparently ushered in a little over 400 new members since Easter. People come out of the woodwork when you simply lift up Jesus. He’s popular.
We are also have churches in other cities.
“I believe it is much ado over nothing. I have never figured out why we Baptists are so number driven.”
Because of the Great Commission.
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