{"id":6241,"date":"2017-06-09T15:28:56","date_gmt":"2017-06-09T19:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=6241"},"modified":"2017-06-09T15:29:32","modified_gmt":"2017-06-09T19:29:32","slug":"sbc-another-year-of-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=6241","title":{"rendered":"SBC: Another year of decline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Once again, several major indexes are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bpnews.net\/49005\/acp--churches-up-in-2016-baptisms-membership-decline\" target=\"_blank\">down<\/a>.  In 2016 &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Membership declined<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Baptisms declined<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Weekly attendance declined<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Giving declined<\/ul>\n<p>You know what&#8217;s up?  The number of Southern Baptist churches &#8212; which means more pastors are  competing with each other for a steadily declining pool of believers.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose that lots of pastors will arrive in Phoenix with upset tummies, but the rest of us should consider this good news: Their influence, their ability to direct votes, the number of children misshapen by the drumbeat that they&#8217;re no damn good, the number of marriages deformed by the teaching that pleasing an Invisible Friend is more important than wedding vows &#8230; all down, and likely to continue going down.<\/p>\n<p>Hell &#8212; who knows?  I may live long enough to see Albert the Pious become the figure of public ridicule that he ought to be, instead of a smarmy nuisance who is treated with undeserved respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once again, several major indexes are down. In 2016 &#8230; Membership declined Baptisms declined Weekly attendance declined Giving declined You know what&#8217;s up? The number of Southern Baptist churches &#8212; which means more pastors are competing with each other for &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=6241\">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\/6241"}],"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=6241"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6246,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6241\/revisions\/6246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}