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6,000 SBC Churches Baptize NO ONE in 2003

Discussion in 'Evangelism, Missions & Witnessing' started by dianetavegia, Jan 29, 2004.

  1. Scofield

    Scofield New Member

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    We usally ask folks to wait 6 weeks while they continue to study the Word and allow it to confirm them in faith. In the past we've had people come in and confess faith, get baptized then walk out a month latter. Last year we had about 5 baptized and they are still with us.

    Sco
     
  2. Rosell

    Rosell New Member

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    When I pastored a Southern Baptist church, I learned a lot of things over a six year period about the way statistics are reported by the denomination. Basically, the information comes from each individual church via a report form called an "annual church letter" that each church receives. It gets filled out, usually by the church clerk, read and approved at a business meeting and then sent to the local association and the state convention. The state convention then reports the information to the SBC.

    There are a lot of smaller churches where the church clerk is a volunteer, and the church doesn't have any paid staff except perhaps a bi-vocational pastor. There are also a lot of churches where the general feeling is that church business doesn't need to be reported. The church I used to pastor often left lines on the annual form blank. We didn't keep track of our "average weekly worship attendance" or our "average weekly Sunday School attendance" and felt that we would just be guessing at what that figure was, so we didn't report it. In the state convention book of reports, it showed up as a zero. We also didn't report our undesignated receipts, and that was printed as a zero as well. I once asked the office that was responsible for the annual letters to put an NR for "not reported" instead of a zero and was bluntly told that they couldn't do that. So I would guess that a lot of those 6,000 churches report zero baptisms because they either didn't fill out their letter or didn't keep track. Also, a lot of churches are leaving the SBC these days, but depending on the state where they are located, their name remains on the list of affiliated churches for up to a decade. I'd also guess that a lot of those non-reporting churches are no longer part of the denomination, but remain on the list because the state offices haven't got the word that they're not SBC anymore.

    If I were still Southern Baptist, I'd be a lot more concerned about some of the other statistics reported, such as the drop in weekly worship attendance from 7.5 million in 1980 to the current 5.4 million, or the drop in weekly Sunday School attendance from 6 million in 1980 to 5.2 million currently. I'd also be alarmed at the fact that the churches are reporting nearly 8 million "non-resident" members among the 16 million total members. "Non-resident" member is just a nice way of saying that somewhere along the line, they left our church and we don't know whether they are still alive or where they are but they never moved their membership. Those statistics speak of a serious decline in the SBC that most Southern Baptists aren't aware of, and that their current leadership somehow wants to ignore.
     
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