A Denomination in Decline
April 24, 2008
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.
