New research shows that the Southern Baptist denomination, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, is no longer growing and is, in fact, in decline. A discussion of the report by one of the researchers, Ed Stetzer, may be listened to here. The report is here. Be sure to listen to the interview. It’s about half an hour long, but really great stuff (and, at times, hilarious).
He vigorously argues that the Baptists must now change because doing the same thing as before no longer works. In particular, he begs his churches to “quit fighting” over “tertiary issues” and get centered on recovery of the gospel — giving up lessons that would still be true even if Jesus hadn’t died on the cross. They sound so much like us it’s scary!
He points out that the Baptists’ conservative resurgence (return to conservative theology) has not led to a missional resurgence.
But he sees hope. The Baptists support 5,000 missionaries around the world through cooperative efforts. He sees the beginning of a return to God’s mission.
He notes that 50 years ago all Baptist Churches looked alike. Now they are divided over methods, over Emerging Theology, over gender roles, etc. He concludes —
First, we must remember what we have heard; the Gospel is sufficient. That Gospel was worth fighting for and now it is worth living for.
Second, we must repent of what we have been. We have built factions on differences which are but a sliver of life: young vs. old; doctrinal distinctions built on a hair’s difference; worship models. And, all the while, the pride of each faction has swelled. We must decide to lay down our arms against fellow Baptists who share the same doctrinal confession and worship, reach the lost, or do their ministry in a different manner.
Thirdly, we must wake up to what we are to do. God has chosen the church (not the denomination) to make known His manifold wisdom (Eph. 3:10). Our denomination is only as strong as our churches and these statistics remind us our churches are in trouble.
Now, a word of caution. We absolutely should not celebrate this result! They are struggling for the same reasons we are struggling. Their decline hardly means we will do better. Rather, we have virtually the same problems and are making many of the same mistakes. We should consider ourselves warned!
And they are part of the Kingdom, too. They aren’t our competitors. They are our brothers.
Take the time to listen to the interview. It’s good stuff. (I do disagree with him on a few points, of course, and we can talk about it. But he’s right a lot. Good stuff.)
The thing about Baptists that helped them grow was their focus on evangelism. Now what you hear about is their involvement with politics. Hopefully their new leadership will get its act together. And you are right, they sound like us and we need to focus on similar things in order to right our ship as well.
That was an interesting interview.
Let's collect a few data points. From the Stetzer interview, the Southern Baptists are not growing. Add that to another recent data point: the growth of "mega-churches" among the independent Christian churches was down in 2007 from previous years:
http://www.christianstandard.com/articledisplay.a…
It seems that most traditional denominations are in decline. But there are still examples of groups that are growing. One thing Stetzer pointed out was that groups focusing on church planting were growing. In the ICOC congregations, we are seeing a resurgence of growth on college campuses. People can still be reached with the gospel, and churches can grow.
All this reminds me of a fascinating book I read not so long ago:
http://rouses.net/blog/2007/05/book-review-church…
The answer to the growth problem is not to become more like the secular culture. That is the path the Congregationalists, and the Unitarians took, and it led to decline. The answer is not to adjust our doctrine to be easier and more palatable to the unchurched. Instead it is to preach with conviction about sin, righteousness, judgment, and salvation through Jesus… and to live by the standard we preach.
I am not surprised by this. A lot of my family is Southern Baptist. They get into arguments about their church music the way brethren do about our worship assemblies today.
For example, some people think clapping or adding mechanical instruments to our singing will make it more spiritual. It may liven it up for awhile, but you will still fall into wanting a more 'spiritual atmosphere.' I remember my grandmother's baptist church had a huge blowup about their music services a few years ago. Some wanted it to change to make it more spiritual, for it to seem more heartfelt. Clapping and pianos are not what it takes to have spiritual singing.
Until we are driven to serve and sing from our hearts, we will battle over externals to make a difference.
whooops! I wrote:
"Until we are driven to serve and sing from our hearts, we will battle over externals to make a difference."
I meant "…we will battle over externals in an attempt to make a difference."
I hope that makes sense.
I was actually talking with a friend of mine who is Baptist who works for Lifeway who does most of the research on this for the Baptists. He said that they knew they had been in Decline but no one wanted to believe that. Does that sound familiar? I gave a whole load of information of how to understand the future of Christianity in America such as birth rates and age distribution for the whit middle class, to Flavil Yeakley at Harding last October before he made his report that the cofC had grown by 2.1% in the last 30 years and that we are doing better than all the other denominations. He dismissed all of it because it did not fit in his paradigm of understanding religion of we have this many members and congregations. If we will read books and research by George Barna, Tony Jones, Robert Wuthnow they explain other factors rather than membership numbers that have the greatest affect on the future of Christianity in America. They all tell us that we are all in trouble. But few will really listen. Many people listen to Flavil’s report about the cofC in the USA and think to themselves; well everything is ok. Just like one lady whose congregation just closed and told her daughter that is my friend that Flavil says the cofC is growing. I asked a guy one time what it would take for him to believe that the cofC was in decline in membership. He said that the Lord’s church would never be in decline. Then I showed him Mac Lynn’s book churches of Christ in the USA 2006. 85% of the congregations in the USA didn’t even exist as they do today 70 years ago.
I hope that eventually we will realize that almost all of the ways we understand religion and spirituality are based upon expired cultures paradigms and perspective. Church growth has less to do with memberships and attendance and more to do with how we treat each other and others. This idea of attracting others to our assemblies is based on the paradigm of 50 years ago when entire congregations changed the sign outside the building from Methodist to cofC because of a public debate or Gospel meeting where a doctrinal argument was won. No amount of wining doctrinal arguments or tinkering with our assemblies is going to convince the young post modern generation of Jesus love and the existence of God as he is described in the Bible.
How many more congregations will have to close down? How many more congregations will have to split? How many more of kids will have to grow up and leave faith all together? How many more before we will swallow our pride and delusion and realize the error of our behavior and thinking?
Oh and it would help if would stop referring to a “mission field” being everywhere in the world except for next door to us.
I commend to everyone's reading Alan Rouse's reflections on this post at http://rouses.net/blog/.