1. Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

Featured Attending Church Is About Him, Not Us

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by Thousand Hills, Apr 10, 2014.

  1. Thousand Hills

    Thousand Hills Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2010
    Messages:
    1,488
    Likes Received:
    6
    Again, from 2012 Lifeway information I posted in another thread.

    By my math less than 38% of membership (those who have professed Christ, been baptized, say they are born again) actually attend on average for primary worship, its less than 38% because some of the actual attenders may not be members. In your opinion what level should it drop to before you get concerned 20%, 10%, 5%?
     
    #21 Thousand Hills, Apr 11, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 11, 2014
  2. Thousand Hills

    Thousand Hills Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2010
    Messages:
    1,488
    Likes Received:
    6
    Bumping this, still waiting for a response from TND about at what point he will start to get concerned.
     
  3. thisnumbersdisconnected

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2013
    Messages:
    8,448
    Likes Received:
    0
    You keep posting this LifeWay study, and you continue to ignore the caveat included in the study:
    It's hard to gather information from a denomination that is 100% locally autonomous. If the SBC is actually "shrinking" then why does NAMB consistently plant 150 churches a year? Are they renting or building buildings that they then padlock?

    Here are the facts. Ten thousand SBC churches close every ten years. NAMB plants 15,000 churches in the same time frame. So where are the people coming from? And how is it that SBC-affiliated churches make up 25% of the fast-growing Top 100 churches in the U.S.?
     
    #23 thisnumbersdisconnected, Apr 14, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 14, 2014
  4. Thousand Hills

    Thousand Hills Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2010
    Messages:
    1,488
    Likes Received:
    6
    You continue to fail to answer my direct question. And instead cast doubt on the data from the horse's mouth. I acknowledge that it likely does not include ALL SBC affiliated churches, but really, it was large enough to show total membership of nearly 16 million and your implying that's an insufficient sample size and the data can't be trusted. :tongue3:

    Again, praise God that new churches are being planted, and I'm thankful that men and women are out there laboring for this cause. My hope is that the new ones will be much more healthier and Christ centered then the ones they were replacing.

    Again though, you won't acknowledge the facts. You state that of the 100 fastest growing churches in the US that 25% are SBC affiliated. Are these numbers based upon their membership or attendance. They may be gaining a lot of members but are all those members faithfully attending?
     
  5. thisnumbersdisconnected

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2013
    Messages:
    8,448
    Likes Received:
    0
    Your question ...
    ... asks for my personal opinion, which is obvious, so yes, I have answered it. On the other hand, while you praise God for more churches ...
    ... you fail to respond to my question regarding the ten-year average of SBC churches that close vs. those that open. Please respond to the fact that while 1,000 SBC-affiliated churches close every year, 1,500 more open. How do you suppose that works, if attendance and membership are shrinking?
     
    #25 thisnumbersdisconnected, Apr 14, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 14, 2014
  6. Earth Wind and Fire

    Earth Wind and Fire Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jun 5, 2010
    Messages:
    33,375
    Likes Received:
    1,568
    Faith:
    Baptist
    Have you asked why they are joying if they don't attend?
     
  7. Thousand Hills

    Thousand Hills Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2010
    Messages:
    1,488
    Likes Received:
    6
    No I responded, and that is great that new churches are being planted to replace the ones dying. Your failing to acknowledge that 1,000 churches closing their doors is an area of concern. I'm thankful new churches are being planted, but sad that so many are closing.

    Lets look at some more facts:

    http://thomrainer.com/2013/08/03/2013-update-largest-churches-in-the-southern-baptist-convention/

    By my math the total average attendance for these large churches is 1,287,837, Which means that these churches contribute to nearly 22% of the average attendance figures for all SBC churches. These churches likely are not at risk of closure.

    Now lets look at what a typical SBC church is probably like:


    The source of this information is here:http://www.namb.net/namb1cb1col.aspx?id=8590001122 From what I can tell this report was done in 2000, but is the most recent available. Considering that is almost 15 years, I'm sure a current snapshot would look much worse.

    So if the vast majority of SBC churches are relatively small to begin with, and typically most of those have an attendance of 80 to 90, of which 67% are adults, the remainder being youth (studies show 70% of which will drop out between the age of 18 to 22), do you think that if 1,000 churches are closing their doors per year now, how many will be closing their doors in 10-years?
     
  8. Thousand Hills

    Thousand Hills Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2010
    Messages:
    1,488
    Likes Received:
    6
    Thought this was interesting: http://www.namb.net/namb1cb2col.aspx?id=8590001104

    Only 68% of church plants survive after 4 years (We need many more churches being planted to offset the high number that are closing and that will close in the future).
     
  9. thisnumbersdisconnected

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2013
    Messages:
    8,448
    Likes Received:
    0
    Has nothing to do with people walking away from church or from the faith. Has everything to do with small rural churches, shifting populations, and changing community needs.

    I'll give you an example. We just accepted the donation of church property from another Southern Baptist church about seven miles away. This was done with the encouragement of the Kansas-Nebraska Convention. The church membership will begin worshiping with us next Sunday, but next January we will reopen that facility as a satellite of our church. We have outgrown our property, they have six acres, most of it undeveloped. Now, you can look at this as there being one less SBC church in the Kansas City metro. But in reality, it is an opportunity to growth of the gospel through our church, and the net result will be increases in membership and attendance, without risking investment in expansion of church property that will not have a lasting effect, as I'll show you as we go along.
    Without knowing the reasons for the closings, your emotion is misplaced.
    I'd love to. Please see if you can actually find me some.
    Not now. Wait until their pastors retire. Then we'll see.
    No, let's not, because your statistics support the mistaken opinion, like so many today, that bigger is better. It isn't. That is why we haven't chosen to sell our church property and acquire more land farther out from the city center to build a "bigger, better church." Our pastor and deacons, as well as our church membership, is convinced that mega-churches are mega-trouble.

    A mega-church tends to become a "personality cult" built around the pastor, and our pastor doesn't want that. The typical scenario for a mega-church is that is built up on the ministry and personality of the pastor. Eventually, that pastor retires, and when he does, the church starts a long, slow downhill slide. The satellite church, multi-site church, whatever one wants to call it, the type of scenario our growing and vibrant SBC church has chosen to adopt, isn't as prone to that kind of deterioration. The heart of the congregation is Christ, not the pastor.
    You're misreading the information NAMB has published here. The median number of 80 to 90 is for those churches which have only one Sunday worship service. That means (of course) that smaller churches have no need for more than one service. Twelve+ percent of SBC churches have two services every Sunday morning, according to your own NAMB source. It says "A small group of large congregations even conduct three or more worship services (1.4%)." I believe that is an editorial comment that doesn't really reflect accurately the vibrancy and increasing need at many smaller SBC churches for multiple morning services on Sunday.

    We have three morning services. We have (with the advent of our new campus) 1,000 members. By SBC standards, we are not a large congregation. We don't have a Sunday evening service. Instead, we have multiple adult and youth Bible studies, AWANA, and children's and adult musician and choir practices. Our main alternate service is Wednesday nights, and even with that membership, our average attendance for that service is 70. Note the NAMB site said 78.7% of SBC churcheshave Sunday evening services, but gave the average attendance for them was only 40.

    Those statistics -- which you didn't manage to glean yourself, or just chose to ignore -- should tell you that even the mega-churches are not drawing well on Sunday night. That should tell you a lot about the changing demographics of church attendance. It should tell you that your efforts to paint the SBC as being in trouble regarding attendance and membership is a bogus argument.
     
    #29 thisnumbersdisconnected, Apr 14, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 14, 2014
  10. Thousand Hills

    Thousand Hills Active Member

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2010
    Messages:
    1,488
    Likes Received:
    6
    TND, its really hard to debate someone who keeps misdirecting and refuses to answer direct questions. For clarification:

    (1) You hang your hat on the fact that the number of churches is growing, despite the fact that attendance is down. You stated that for every 1,000 that close there are 1,500 that open. I showed you that only 68% of new church plants survive 4-years. Therefore, after 4-years you only really have a net change of 20 churches per year. That's not even 1 per state.

    (2) You somehow have mistaken that I'm a lover of "mega churches". The whole point in that last post was that mega churches (those with over 1,000 in attendance) make up 22% of the total attendance on a typical Sunday in the SBC. However, there are not a large number of these churches (only 1% of all churches). The majority of the churches in the SBC have an average Sunday attendance of 80 to 90. As the data shows, there are probably 250 to 300 members on the roll of each church. These churches are in grave danger of eventually closing, unless they do something to make membership meaningful and do something to keeping the 70% of youth that attend from eventually dropping out.

    (3) The mistake of following pastors based upon their personality is not just a mega-church thing, it happens around here in Stickville, USA when 20 or 30 people follow a pastor to a new church. But you bring up an important part of this whole discussion, are the 70% of church members who don't regularly attend (however, you want to define that), not attending because they made a "decision" prompted by a man, or were they following a man and not Christ?

    (4) Not sure why your throwing in the Sunday night thing. My argument has always been about attendance of primary worship services.




    Thank you for sharing about your vibrant church, this is encouraging to hear. But I think your story actually gives more support to the whole point I'm trying to make. Let me ask, why did the other church not make it? You seem to indicate that churches close because it has everything to do with small rural churches, shifting populations, and changing community needs and that it has nothing to do with people walking away from church or from the faith. If its all about demographics, then why would your church want to open a satellite campus where a previous one failed. Doesn't sound like a very smart move. What is your church going to do differently in that particular community that the previous church didn't do? Also, out of this you are gaining new members/attendance at your particular church, but did the SBC as a whole really grow?

    We probably agree on more than we disagree on in all honesty. However, I tend to think my argument is gnarly, not bogus. :laugh:
     
Loading...