Nearly every Sunday morning, I think of someone I haven’t seen at church since the pandemic. Maybe they’ve been back, maybe they haven’t. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Everything has changed. That change for me includes the fact…
SBC membership declines again but not as much, while number of churches still decreasing
The bad news for the Southern Baptist Convention is that membership declined for the 17th consecutive year. The good news is that last year’s 1.8% decrease was less than recent years. Those are among findings from the SBC’s Annual Church…
SBC’s ‘conservative resurgence’ has brought two decades of baptism declines
The year conservatives consolidated control of the Southern Baptist Convention is the last year a key marker of denominational growth showed an overall upward trend, according to new annual data released by Lifeway Christian Resources. Even a slight rebound in…
In SBC annual statistics, even the good news isn’t that good
After plunging due to COVID closures, baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention rose again last year but remained well below 2019 levels — a year in which baptisms continued a decline that started in 1999. That’s the good news in…
Burge: Churches should brace for the downsizing still to come
If they haven’t done so already, American churches should brace themselves for the acceleration of social, political and religious trends already ravaging faith institutions, researcher and author Ryan Burge warned. “I think we’re in for a serious downsizing of American…
SBC loses another 435,000 members in 2020
The Southern Baptist Convention has lost 2.3 million total members — or 14% of its membership nationwide — since its peak in 2006. New annual data tracking key metrics for the nation’s largest non-Catholic Christian denomination was released last week,…
Young adults challenging traditional church membership concepts
By Jeff Brumley The value and purpose of church membership is becoming an increasingly hot topic in Baptist and other congregations these days. And that’s “hot” as in controversial and heated, not popular. And it’s one that occasionally pits older…
Studies, experts suggest why some Christians like church shopping
By Vicki Brown You’ve been a member of the same church for a few years. While you may not know everyone in the congregation well, you are acquainted with most folks in your Sunday school class. One Sunday morning you…
When pastors live out the mission and vision of their church . . .
. . . it is a thing of great beauty. Recently I spent a couple of days with Samuel Tolbert, the pastor/teacher of Greater St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church in Lake Charles, LA. [See the church at www.gsmmbc.net.] I have…