The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist
Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, has reported last
year’s numbers gathered by Lifeway Christian Resources and leadership is not
happy. According to the report, “the
nearly 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention . . . lost more than
105,000 members and 188,000 Sunday worshipers. . . .This marks its sixth
straight year of membership decline.”
Numbers don’t lie, but
they don’t always tell the truth. The
good news is that there are probably thousands of individuals who attend
Southern Baptist churches each week who are not members, don’t think membership
is important, and may never become members of a church although they will be
regular attendees. For a younger
generation of believers, membership is not important (despite what the American
Express commercial says). They find the
church they like, the one where their friends go, or where they experience
spiritual growth and just attend without strings attached.
The bad news is that
many of the churches included in the count and, therefore, their members are no
longer exclusively Southern Baptist churches or don’t embrace the
denomination. There are many churches that
are either dually aligned with other Baptist bodies or they allow their members
to fund mission causes other than Southern Baptist. One church with which I am familiar gives
over 60% of its mission money to another Baptist group by member choice. This same church has not sent a messenger to
the annual Southern Baptist Convention in years. Is it a Southern Baptist church? I suppose it depends on your criteria for
membership.
There are many other churches
that are counted as Southern Baptist who no longer avail themselves of
denominational services even though they still carry the name. Many have become denominations unto
themselves--charting their own courses, developing partnerships with both
Baptist and non-Baptist entities, and ignoring denominational entities. Of course, there are also churches that no
longer call themselves “Baptist” but they are part of the SBC count. Are the members of the non-participating churches
and the “shadow” Baptist churches part of the Convention? They are certainly included in the
total. Again, it depends on your
criteria for membership.
The SBC, not matter
how one counts churches and members, is not going down the drain any time
soon. The report lists 6 million Sunday
worshipers at more than 46,000 churches last year. Many are still committed to the denomination
and its work. The trends, however, are
not encouraging if one simply looks at the statistics.
Perhaps it is time to
evaluate the effectiveness of the churches’ ministry and the strength of partner
relationships in a different way. Are there more effective ways to measure church vitality? What
would we learn if we took a different perspective? What do you think?
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