{"id":4142,"date":"2016-06-25T23:34:05","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T03:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4142"},"modified":"2016-06-25T23:34:05","modified_gmt":"2016-06-26T03:34:05","slug":"baptists-and-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4142","title":{"rendered":"Baptists and babies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve noted over the years that Baptists are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=136\" target=\"_blank\">encouraging<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=3530\" target=\"_blank\">young marriage<\/a> and quick child-bearing, and wondered whether there is a grow-your-own solution afoot.  Well, a well-known Baptist pastor suggests <a href=\"http:\/\/sbcvoices.com\/assorted-items-from-the-2016-annual-meeting\/\" target=\"_blank\">exactly that<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><b>About the fewer baptisms<\/b><\/p>\n<p>So, SBC churches report 10k or so fewer baptisms. \u201cGod help us all\u2026\u201d said Frank Page. Thom Ranier said something like, \u201cThank God for the 295,000 who were baptized.\u201d Ronnie Floyd made an interesting point about non-reporting churches. I think they are all right. Plodder\u2019s baptism solution: <SPAN style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a8f2f5\">Get SBC church members to have more babies. That will get the numbers up in 5-10 years<\/span>. Demographics and birth rates matter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Historically, one of the Baptist distinctives was the refusal to baptize below the age of reason.  Apparently, they&#8217;re willing to throw that overboard, too, in order to get their numbers back where they &#8216;belong.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve noted over the years that Baptists are encouraging young marriage and quick child-bearing, and wondered whether there is a grow-your-own solution afoot. Well, a well-known Baptist pastor suggests exactly that. About the fewer baptisms So, SBC churches report 10k &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4142\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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\/4142"}],"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=4142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4143,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions\/4143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}