The Annual Church Profile report from the Tennessee Baptist Convention is out- and decline is the word of the day.

All areas reported by churches declined except Sunday School enrollment and financial giving, reported Libby Eaton, information specialist of the TBC. The number of TBC churches reporting this year also declined — 3.4 percent — from last year. The TBC has about 3,000 member churches. Eaton said she had hoped the number of reporting churches would increase as church secretaries and association secretaries are trained to report online. The TBC has offered online reporting for two years via TeD (Tennessee Electronic Database).

The cure? Commitment.

Please pray for Tim & Ashley. Ashley was hospitalized this afternoon with two blood clots– one in each lung. Please pray for her as she undergoes treatment to remove the clots. Pray for wisdom for the doctors dealing with her specific condition. Pray for Tim as he cares for their 5 week old daughter, while Ashley is in the hospital for at least the next week. Thank God that the clots were found before they moved and caused more serious problems!

Our Association participates in the Angel Food Ministries.  Check out the link- it very well may be something you would like to make use of; or someone you know might wish to as well.

Recent research from Lifeway Research indicates that total membership in the Southern Baptist Convention dropped nearly 40,000 last year, prompting one official to declare America’s second-largest faith group officially a “denomination in decline.” New statistics released by LifeWay Christian Resources listed total SBC membership in 2007 as 16,266,920, a 0.24 percent decrease from the 16,306,246 reported in 2006. Baptisms, long used as a marker of Baptist vitality, dropped more than 5 percent to their lowest level since 1987.

And

A prerequisite for membership in most Southern Baptist churches, the number of baptisms has now declined for three consecutive years and seven of the last eight years. Baptisms are at their lowest levels since 1970.

And worst of all

In 1950 Southern Baptists recorded one baptism for every 19 church members. Today the ratio of baptisms to total membership is 1:47.

Our denomination is in decline- as is the whole of Christianity.

There’s lots of information here.

For the family of Rema Ladd. She passed away this morning and the family will need your prayers on their behalf. Funeral arrangements will be posted here when they become available.

UPDATE: The funeral arrangements are as follows: The family will receive friends 6-8 Wednesday the 23rd at Evans Funeral Home, Rockwood. Funeral will follow at 8. And the burial will take place on Thursday at 2 at the Oak Grove Cemetery, Rockwood.

A map to the cemetery is available here.  And here’s the directions to the Evans Mortuary.

Available here.

And you know it when they head off to their Senior Prom.  Wartburg’s prom was tonight and before some of the kids headed out, they posed for their folks.  You can view them here.

Mike WInters is the Pastor of Eureka Baptist- and his mom died this morning.  Please remember the family.  Further, Rema Ladd is a member of Eureka and she is quite ill.  Remember her as well.

You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you know about Christian beliefs. I admit, you can practise Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar. — Dorothy Sayers