The Southern Baptist denomination fell to its lowest point
since 1987 per the evangelical group’s Annual
Church Profile. The statistics show that the number of Southern Baptists
fell to 14.8 million in 2018. This was the first year that Southern Baptists
numbered fewer than 15 million since 1989.
Baptisms fell by three percent in 2018, which was a slower
pace of decline than the nine percent drop from 2017. Weekly attendance fell by
just under half a percent to 5.3 million and the number of Southern Baptist
churches declined by 88 to 47,456.
The report was not all dark. Four states, Minnesota, Texas,
Virginia, and Wisconsin posted double-digit growth in the number of congregations
and giving increased by $82 million to a total of $11.8 billion. The sharp rise
in donations is likely due to the good economy and congregants tithing based on
larger incomes.
Still, the falling number of members and baptisms is
alarming for Southern Baptist leaders. “Heartbreaking to see these ACP
declines. We must do better as Southern Baptists. God help us,” said Adam
Greenway, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
As I wrote this weekend in “The Laodicea
Church Is Now,” the decline of the Southern Baptists, the denomination to which
I belong, is part of an across-the-board decline of organized religion in the
United States. Evangelical denominations are following the Catholic Church and
mainline protestant denominations in withering as the “religious
nones” rise sharply.
The reasons for the decline are many. Several years ago, we
were members at a thriving Southern Baptist church in Georgia that it would
have taken an FBI investigation to determine was Southern Baptist. This “community
church” did not identify as Southern Baptist because so many people had been
alienated by other Baptists throughout the years that the pastor and deacons
considered public association with the Southern Baptist brand to be a stumbling
block in spreading the gospel.
The denomination has been famous for its teetoler preaching
on alcohol and other aspects of pop culture. One Southern Baptist church that I
belonged to split over a requirement that Sunday School teachers sign a pledge
to abstain from alcohol. A Southern Baptist ban on dancing was the subject of
the 1984 movie, “Footloose.” Southern Baptists even launched an ineffective boycott of Disney
in 1997 over the company’s “anti-Christian and anti-family direction.”
A few months ago, I wrote
about our search for a new church following a move. What we found as we visited
many Southern Baptist churches was that quite a few were unprepared for visitors
and lacked the programs that church-seekers are looking for. In some cases this
is due to resistance to change from older members (ask any pastor about the
phrase, “We’ve never done it that way before”) or that the members view the church
more as a social club than an evangelical outreach organization. Very few
churches seem to have any organized plan for outreach and are waiting on
members of the community to find their way into the pews instead. This is
increasingly unlikely in today’s society with its multitude of distractions.
The modern church’s political mission is also to blame. It
seems to be no coincidence that the Southern Baptists peaked in the 1980s when Jerry
Falwell entered politics with his Moral Majority. The shift of focus from
soul-winning to political power likely raised walls between churches and about
half the country who were being implicitly called immoral if they disagreed
with Falwell.
Southern Baptists are a denomination that is run from the
bottom. There is no head of the Southern Baptist church that is equivalent to
the pope. Instead, churches send delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention
each year. The problem with this system is that when the public sees Southern
Baptist leaders, it no longer sees men like Billy Graham and Russell Moore.
Today, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and Robert Jeffress are identified as
Southern Baptist leaders. The pro-Trump message of these men often drowns out
the gospel message of their denomination.
Franklin Graham, son of the apolitical Billy Graham is an
unabashed Trump supporter. On Sunday, Graham tweeted
out a partisan call for prayer, saying, “I don’t believe any president in the
history of this nation has been attacked more than Donald Trump… If he succeeds
we all benefit, but if his enemies are allowed to destroy him and pull down the
presidency it will hurt our entire nation.”
Likewise, Jerry Falwell, Jr. was an early supporter of Trump
in 2016. The backing of the Liberty University president enabled many Christians
to look past Trump’s past and behavior to support the serial adulterer and
foul-mouthed candidate.
Robert Jeffress, the pastor of Dallas First Baptist, has
made news time and again, not for spreading the gospel, but for his adulation
of President Trump. In 2017, the choir at Jeffress’ church sang a “Make
America Great Again” hymn while earlier this year Jeffress
himself attacked evangelicals who do not support the president, saying, “Let
me say this as charitably as I can. These ‘Never Trump’ evangelicals are
morons. They are absolutely spineless morons, and they cannot admit that they
were wrong.” It is hard to find a more explicit message that if you aren’t sold
on Trump, you aren’t welcome at church.
While people like these do not represent rank-and-file
pastors of Southern Baptist churches, they are the public face of the church to
much of the country. When paired together with local church members who present
a legalistic and unfriendly view of the denomination, it is no wonder that
seekers are going elsewhere. Or nowhere.
As Jesus said to John the Revelator, many Southern Baptists
have lost their first love, that of the gospel message, or have diluted it with
an unpopular and divisive political message. If the denomination wants to turn
its decline around, it should return to the tactic that made it successful in
the first place: going outside the church walls to spread the Biblical message
of Christ’s love and forgiveness.
A declining number of Bible-believing Christians is not going
to change American culture from the top down. Whether on abortion
or the content of movies and television shows, pursuing political victories as
a minority is destined to fail and hurt the church in the process. Instead, churches
should focus on changing the culture from the bottom up by changing people
through Jesus.
Originally published
on the
Resurgent
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