{"id":1310,"date":"2015-06-10T17:59:36","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T21:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2015-06-10T18:03:13","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T22:03:13","slug":"a-failing-denomination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=1310","title":{"rendered":"A failing denomination"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Southern Baptist Convention released today its annual metrics, just in advance of its annual meeting — and the news is all bleak<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The number of cooperating churches within the Southern Baptist Convention rose for the 15th consecutive year, but the churches lost more than 200,000 members, the biggest one-year decline since 1881, according to the Annual Church Profile (ACP) compiled by LifeWay in cooperation with Baptist state conventions. Average attendance, baptisms and giving also declined.<\/p>\n

[ … ]<\/p>\n

One of the biggest declines last year was Southern Baptist church membership, which fell 1.5 percent to 15.5 million — still the largest Protestant denomination by far, but at the lowest level since 1993. Weekly worship attendance declined 2.75 percent to 5.67 million Sunday worshippers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>The Convention reports it has 46,499-churches. So, a little math and … voila<\/i>: The average<\/i> attendance at SBC church services ~122-persons. But: Some of their churches attract thousands<\/i> of attendees, meaning some of the other churches have much lower than the average attendance, amount in fact to no more than home study groups.<\/p>\n

If you click on the graphic to the right, you’ll be taken to a large, spreadsheet-like graphic that details the grim news — including, interestingly, the fact that North Carolina has the second greatest number of Southern Baptist churches, just behind Texas; can’t say I’m surprised. I checked Michigan, too, because a few years ago there was a lot of talk about ‘planting’ there because of the Detroit bankruptcy; 284. And when I checked the Upper Peninsula, I learned there are only 8<\/i> churches — 3 of them without pastors.<\/p>\n

Those who understand it will never acknowledge it aloud, but the fact is in plain sight: The SBC is in decline, and the decline is accelerating. How else could it be, really? The founding narratives are false, and the authoritarian cult-like values are bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Southern Baptist Convention released today its annual metrics, just in advance of its annual meeting — and the news is all bleak. The number of cooperating churches within the Southern Baptist Convention rose for the 15th consecutive year, but … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1314,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}