By Baptist Press

The Southern Baptist Convention expanded by more than 270 churches in 2017. More people showed up for weekly worship services, and congregations gave more generously in a strengthening economy. However, reported baptisms and membership declined as fewer churches participated in the SBC’s Annual Church Profile (ACP).

Longstanding patterns continued to dominate the ACP, which is compiled by LifeWay Christian Resources in cooperation with Baptist state conventions.

-The number of churches cooperating with the Southern Baptist Convention grew for the 19th consecutive year, reaching 47,544. That’s a 16.3% increase in churches since 1997.

-Membership fell for the 11th consecutive year, to 15 million. Since 2006, Southern Baptist congregations have lost about 1.3 million members.

-Baptisms also declined, as they have for eight of the past 10 years. Congregations reported baptizing 254,122 people—26.5% fewer than in 2007. The latest ratio was one baptism for every 59 church members.

“It’s heartbreaking to be baptizing fewer people for Christ, even though Southern Baptists have nearly 2,900 more churches than we had a decade ago,” said LifeWay President Thom S. Rainer.

“Yet a quarter million baptisms is not an insignificant number. We praise God for every individual who has come to Christ and followed him in baptism. It is my prayer that God would embolden Southern Baptists to share the gospel with their friends and neighbors.”

Fewer churches reporting

The ACP numbers don’t tell the full story of baptisms or other measurables among Southern Baptist churches. Despite the best efforts of associations and state conventions across the country, 26% of churches did not participate, said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. The percentage of SBC churches that participated by reporting at least one item was 74%, down from 80% in 2013 and 77% in each of the last three years. (In Illinois, 95% of IBSA churches submitted an ACP for 2017.)

For that reason, reported totals do not include all of the activity within Southern Baptist life, though the summary does include adjustments in some categories for non-reporting congregations. This summer, LifeWay Research plans to release statistical analysis of the current state of the SBC that includes estimates of the congregations that did not report.

Despite the lower participation rate, the ACP report shows increases in some areas:

-Average attendance at weekly worship services climbed 2.3% to 5.3 million, an increase of nearly 120,000.

-States outside the South reported some of the strongest signs of growth. California now has 47 more congregations and Michigan has 24 more congregations than the previous year. Those figures include churches along with church-type missions—congregations that are not fully independent or self-sustaining.

-Non-Southern states are now home to 21.3% of Southern Baptist churches and 32.2% of church-type missions.

-Reported baptisms nearly doubled in Colorado and rose 31% in Iowa, 17.6% in Alaska, and 13.4% in New Mexico. In North and South Dakota, weekly worship attendance grew by 20.8% while baptisms climbed 34.8%.

Overall, Southern Baptist churches reported 4,376 church-type missions last year, down 2.6% from 2016. The count of churches and missions combined is 51,920 congregations.

Giving & mission expenditures

Southern Baptists saw an increase in overall giving of almost $267 million. Total and undesignated church receipts reported through the ACP increased 3.3% and 2.3% respectively.

Reported mission expenditures fell by about $4 million in 2017. However, the numbers are not directly comparable since there were changes in how many and which state conventions collected this statistic.

Congregations reported total mission expenditures of just under $1.19 billion.

Individual congregations voluntarily report their ACP data to their local Baptist associations and/or their state conventions. National statistics are compiled and released when all cooperating state conventions have reported.

– From Baptist Press

By Nate Adams 

Nate Adams

Though I grew up the son of a pastor and denominational worker, I was in my mid-30’s before I first attended a national Southern Baptist Convention. When the convention came to Indianapolis one year, a friend invited my dad and me to drive over and experience it with him. Though I was a Sunday School teacher and deacon in my church, I have to admit that my first thoughts at his invitation were, “Who cares? Who would want to take the time and spend the money attending what sounds like a large church business meeting?”

In fact, even after attending that first meeting, I came home thinking, “Well, that was kind of interesting, especially the big LifeWay bookstore and the exhibit area. But I don’t think it’s relevant enough to me or my church to go again.”

And so I didn’t, until the North American Mission Board invited me to join the staff there. That was 1997, in Dallas, and when I returned there this year it was for my 22nd consecutive SBC.

I think it’s probably healthy for me to remember that, as an Illinois Baptist layman, I didn’t find the annual SBC meeting particularly relevant, or at least worth the time and expense, until I joined the staff of the NAMB and now IBSA. But that’s when the phrase “who cares” stopped being a question for me, and started being the answer to a different question.

That different question became, simply, “Who decides?” Who decides who our missionaries are, and how our cooperative missions money is spent? Who decides how our national entities are led, and how we will speak to our culture? Who gets to decide Southern Baptist doctrinal positions, and how tomorrow’s pastors are trained?

What I’ve learned over the years is that the person who gets to weigh in on all those important questions and decisions is the person who cares. It’s the person who cares enough to attend the meetings, and to understand and participate in the process. The person who shrugs and asks, “Who cares?” doesn’t. The person who cares does.

Of course, not every person who cares gets his or her way in the process. There were several times during this year’s meeting in Dallas when I couldn’t believe what was being said by a messenger from the floor, or when I even disagreed with what was being said from the platform. At least one of the votes disappointed me.

But now that all is said and done, I look back on the annual meeting of messengers to the 2018 Southern Baptist Convention, and realize that, once again, spirited discussion among Spirit-led believers has resulted in both specific decisions and general direction that are trustworthy, and good stewardship of our shared beliefs and resources, and accountable to the churches.

Somehow the miracle of voluntary, grassroots cooperation by diverse, autonomous churches working together through respectful, democratic processes – led us once again to a place of blessing. And that blessing is the opportunity to do far more together than any individual church can do alone.

To be candid, I occasionally go back to the question form of “Who cares?” and wonder how relevant some of what happens at the national SBC level really is to the life of the average Illinois Baptist church. I’m sure some people ask that same question of their state convention or even local associational meetings. But things are decided at all those meetings that impact the mission of God through all our churches and missionaries.

While I can, I want to be in on those decisions, as one of the people who cares.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. Respond at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA.org.