By Peter Smith The (Louisville) Courier-Journal June 10, 2008
For most of four decades, Southern Baptists could boast of rising membership even as more moderate and liberal Protestant denominations lost members in droves. But with membership slightly down last year, and flat for the past five, Southern Baptists face a growing anxiety about their future as they gather for their annual meeting Tuesday in Indianapolis.
"We have peaked," Southern Baptist statistician Ed Stetzer wrote in an online commentary on the latest statistics from 2007. "...For now, Southern Baptists are a denomination in decline."
What worries Southern Baptist leaders even more than the membership numbers is a steady decline in the conversion ritual that gave their denomination its name - baptisms.
Annual rates of baptisms have steadily declined not only in recent years, but also during the past 35 years. In 2007, Southern Baptist churches reported 345,941 baptisms. That's down 12% from 2002 and 22% from 1972.
National figures show the ratio of baptisms to members is shrinking - meaning that it takes more members to achieve the same amount of evangelistic success than it once did.
Baptists and some other evangelical denominations view baptism as a central measure of spiritual vitality because they only baptize those old enough to make a commitment to Jesus - meaning that it measures how successful they are in spreading the Gospel.
Along with declining rates of baptisms, policies on who can become missionaries and a shortfall in donations to fund missions will be hot topics at the Southern Baptist Convention, which runs Tuesday and Wednesday.
For the declining baptism rate, some blame the downturn on Baptists' doctrinal divisions, including the battles of the 1980s and 1990s that led to a conservative shift in the denomination as well as more recent debates.
Some blame a lack of enthusiasm for evangelism, while others say even committed evangelists find that Christianity is a tougher sell in an increasingly secular culture.
But some say Southern Baptists are feeling the delayed effects of demographic trends contributing to dramatic membership losses among other predominately white denominations. Trends include an aging population with fewer children and limited success in reaching teens, young adults and other ethnic and racial groups.
"This is not about orthodoxy or unorthodoxy or failed methods," said Baptist historian Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest School of Divinity in North Carolina. "This is about demographics and sociology."
In response to their shrinking numbers, the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board is launching a new evangelism program aimed at reaching every resident of the U.S. and Canada by 2020. The first step is a new image campaign, "We Are Southern Baptists," which includes television spots and a website, www.wearesouthernbaptists.org.
Southern Baptists remain the nation's largest Protestant denomination, prevalent in the South but reaching throughout North America. Weekly attendance is about 6 million, compared with 16 million members, and church records show that one-third of members on the rolls don't live close enough to participate regularly.
Built on the belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, that the only way to heaven is belief in Jesus, and that the right of local churches to govern themselves, the denomination has a worldwide missionary reach and a powerful disaster-relief arm.
One controversy to be discussed at the annual meeting centers on a policy, adopted by the trustees of the International Mission Board in 2005, that only people baptized in a Southern Baptist church, or a church holding Southern Baptist views on baptism, can become missionaries for the church.
A group of 36 former trustees has asked the mission board to overturn its baptism policy, calling it unbiblical and unnecessary.
The mission board also is facing financial challenges. It had hoped to raise $165 million during 2007. It pulled in $150.4 million, a record, but still more than $14 million short. The board was already facing financial stress because of the weak dollar and rising fuel and food costs.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-06-10-southern-baptists_N.htm
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