What is behind the decline in Baptist membership?

[Nobar King]

Brothers, this is an alarming trend. How can there be fewer baptists? Aren't there more people born than there are deaths?

We must be doing something wrong. Considering the effort we make to tell the world about the glory of Jesus Christ, I would think that there would be A LOT more.

Southern Baptist membership, baptisms decline in 2007

By ROSE FRENCH Associated Press Writer
Article Last Updated: 04/25/2008

Click photo to enlarge


Rev. Jim Cross



NASHVILLE, Tenn.—The number of people baptized in Southern Baptist churches fell for the third straight year in 2007 to the denomination's lowest level since 1987, and membership dipped slightly as well. The president of the Southern Baptist Convention blamed the decline in part on a perception that its followers are "mean-spirited, hurtful and angry." Baptisms last year dropped nearly 5.5 percent to 345,941, compared with 364,826 in 2006, according to an annual report released Wednesday by LifeWay Christian Resources, the convention's publishing arm.

Total membership was 16,266,920 last year, down nearly 40,000 from 2006.
The dropping number of followers in the nation's largest Protestant denomination reflects a trend in other mainline Protestant churches, while non-denominational churches are gaining and the ranks of the unaffiliated are growing. But for a denomination that places winning converts at the heart of its mission, the continued slide is troubling and disappointing, said the Rev. Frank Page, the convention's president.

Part of the blame can be placed on a notion that Baptists have been known too much in recent years for "what we're against" than "what we're for," Page said. "Our culture is increasingly antagonistic and sometimes adverse to a conversation about a faith in Christ," he said. "Sometimes that's our fault because we have not always presented a winsome Christian life that would engender trust and a desire on the part of many people to engage in a conversation on the Gospel.

"All Southern Baptists should recommit to a life of loving people and ministering to people without strings attached so people will be more open to hearing the Gospel message."

The Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention adheres strictly to conservative beliefs, including the inerrancy of the Bible. The denomination is second in size in the United States only to the Roman Catholic Church.
In the past 50 years, the number of annual baptisms per church member—a key indicator of church growth—has dropped sharply. Southern Baptists baptized one person for every 19 church members in 1950, a ratio that dropped to 1 baptism for every 47 church members in 2007, according to the report.

Baptism is a public act administered by a church in which followers are immersed in water, symbolizing believers' identification with Jesus. To counter the decline in baptisms, former SBC president Bobby Welch led an ambitious effort to baptize 1 million people in the year beginning Oct. 30, 2005. Church records show there were 371,850 baptisms in all of 2005.
The denomination's baptisms peaked in 1972 at 445,725, based on statistics Lifeway has collected from Southern Baptist churches since 1922.

While baptisms and membership were down in 2007, the number of Southern Baptist churches grew by 1.1 percent to 44,696 and worship attendance increased slightly to 6.15 million, according to the report. David Key, director of Baptist studies at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, attributes the declining numbers on Baptist parents having fewer children than in years past. He also believes Baptist leaders haven't been aggressive enough in attracting nonwhite members.

"It's not just about parents not having enough children, but we also haven't adjusted our youth programs to target multicultural youth," he said. "It's still a very white Southern experience as opposed to incorporating African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians."

Fortunately Landover Baptist Church is as popular as ever and is welcoming new members daily.

[Nobar King]

Re: What is behind the decline in Baptist membership?

Have good Christians been behind this trend because they are using too many condoms? Maybe families should be required to have more children.

Birth control, not liberalism, explains mainline decline, researchers say

By Greg Warner

Published October 18, 2005

CHICAGO (ABP) -- The decline of mainline church membership over the last century had more to do with sex than theology, according to research by a trio of sociologists. The popular notion that conservative churches are growing because mainline churches are too liberal is being challenged by new research that suggests a simpler cause -- the use of birth control -- explains most of the mainline decline.

Differences in fertility rates account for 70 percent of the decline of mainline Protestant church membership from 1900 to 1975 and the simultaneous rise in conservative church membership, the sociologists said. "For most of the 20th century, conservative women had more children than mainline women did," wrote three sociologists -- Michael Hout of the University of California-Berkley, Andrew Greeley of the University of Arizona, and Melissa Wilde of Indiana University -- in an Oct. 4 article in Christian Century. "It took most of the 20th century for conservative women to adopt family-planning practices that have become dominant in American society," the writers said. "Or to put the matter differently, the so-called decline of the mainline may ultimately be attributable to its earlier approval of contraception."

While mainline churches could claim 60 percent of the total Protestant congregants in 1900, their share fell to 40 percent in 1960. Many religious observers and some sociologists attributed the drop -- and simultaneous growth of conservative churches -- to the lethargy of liberalism and the appeal of biblical certainty. But simple demographics can account for almost three fourths of the mainline decline, the trio of sociologists said.

"In the years after the baby boom, the mainline [fertility] rate declined earlier than did the rate of conservatives. Only in recent decades has the fertility rates of the two groups become similar." The researchers studied shifts in church membership from 1900 to 1975 and the accompanying differences in fertility rates between women in conservative churches -- Baptist, Assembly of God, Pentecostal, and the like -- and mainline ones -- Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, etc. They also created a demographic model that projected what would have happened to mainline and conservative memberships if the difference in fertility rates was the only factor influencing membership during the same period. "The answer is that it would look remarkably like it does in real life," they concluded.

The trio also studied other factors that could have influenced the real-life shift in memberships. For instance, they looked at how many people switched from mainline to conservative churches during the period, and vice versa. During most of the last century, more people moved from mainline to conservative churches than in the other direction. Conservatives were much more successful at retaining their church members, even when they married mainliners. "The declining propensity of conservatives to convert to the mainline accounts for the 30 percent of mainline decline that fertility rates cannot account for," they concluded.

The researchers investigated other possible causes for mainline decline -- support for homosexual and abortion rights, a lower view of the Bible, a higher "apostasy" rate, and fewer conversions from outside the Christian fold. But they dismissed these other factors as "irrelevant" because none could produce numerical changes significant enough to explain the shift in church membership. "Higher fertility and better retention thus account for the conservatives' rising share of the Protestant population," they concluded.

However, the authors suggested, the trends underlying the mainline's decline "may be nearing their end." Fertility rates are now virtually the same between the two groups and will produce only a 1 percent decline in mainline membership over the next decade, they noted. "Unless conservative Protestants increase their family size or mainline Protestants further reduce theirs, this factor in mainline decline will not be present in the future." Moreover, fewer people are now switching membership from mainline churches to conservative ones. While 30 percent of conservatives in the 1930s had come from mainline churches, only 10 percent of those counted among the conservatives in the early '90s had made the switch, the authors said. That downward trend will continue -- if only because there are fewer mainliners left to make the jump.

However, the sociologists cautioned, it will be some time before the conservatives' "demographic momentum" exhausts itself -- perhaps 50 years -- because those born during the conservatives' belated baby boom of the 1970s will be filling those pews for quite a while.

[Pastor Ezekiel]

Re: What is behind the decline in Baptist membership?

Frankly, I'm surprised that there are ANY members of the SBC left. Don't even get me started on those false Christians.