Southern Baptists to Address Declining Baptisms at Annual Convention

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Troubled by a decline in baptisms, Southern Baptist leaders say their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday (June 21-22) in Nashville, Tenn., could be a turning point for a denomination that claims evangelism as a hallmark. In four out of the last five years, Southern Baptists have seen a decline […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Troubled by a decline in baptisms, Southern Baptist leaders say their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday (June 21-22) in Nashville, Tenn., could be a turning point for a denomination that claims evangelism as a hallmark.

In four out of the last five years, Southern Baptists have seen a decline in baptisms. An influential report declares the denomination is in the midst of an “evangelistic crisis” after years of stagnation.


“This convention is going to expose where we are on the issue of reaching people,” said the Rev. Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, in an interview. “Are we in a position that can be corrected by connecting with the people or have we slid into a position that may not … be corrected?”

After a four-year decline, Baptist officials reported a total of 387,947 baptisms in 2004, an increase from 377,357 the previous year.

But a longer view reveals a plateau for the 16.2 million-member denomination that remains the country’s largest Protestant body.

In 1950, reports Thom S. Rainer, a church growth expert at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Southern Baptist churches baptized 376,085 people.

“Simply stated, the Southern Baptist Convention is reaching no more people today than it did in 1950,” he said in a report published this spring titled “A Resurgence Not Yet Realized: Evangelistic Effectiveness in the Southern Baptist Convention Since 1979.”

“We have concluded that evangelistically the denomination is on a path of slow but discernible deterioration.”

Rainer said many Southern Baptists apparently aren’t sharing their faith with others or inviting them to their churches. Almost a third of Southern Baptist churches reported no baptisms in 2003. In that same year, one person was baptized for every 43 members.


Welch said much of the Nashville meeting will be “directly related” to Rainer’s findings.

Recently converted Tennesseans will be baptized at the beginning and end of some of the sessions. “We want to model what we’re going to call these conventioneers to do when they get home,” Welch explained. “We think it’s a great visual encouragement.”

As the meeting concludes, Southern Baptist leaders will pay tribute to their most famous evangelist, Billy Graham, who will be represented by his grandson, William Franklin Graham IV, a Southern Baptist pastor.

Welch’s “`Everyone Can’ Kingdom Challenge,”’ which he promoted last year during a cross-country bus tour, will be officially launched.

He said the new evangelistic effort _ which aims to see 1 million baptisms _ will run from October 2005 through October 2006. Welch said that will give churches a few months after the convention to prepare local evangelistic efforts and several months after next year’s meeting in Greensboro, N.C., to “encourage and make extra efforts for any of those who have fallen behind.”

“I think that we certainly are at an important juncture,” said Jimmy Draper, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Christian Resources.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS. STORY MAY END HERE)

“We’re basically flat in reaching people,” said Draper, adding that a “strong emphasis” on evangelism is warranted.


But David W. Key, director of Baptist studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, said Southern Baptists may have to rethink the way they do evangelism, including their traditional door-to-door campaign in the host city of their meeting, held the weekend before the annual gathering.

“The knocking on doors is a kind of dated evangelistic model,” he said.

Mark Noll, a history professor at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., said the success of any evangelistic campaign will depend on how far it goes to help people develop a long-lasting faith.

“Programs that grow out (of), in a Christian sense, a fuller understanding of Jesus Christ are going to be good programs,” he said. “Programs that just come down as another thing to try out _ it’ll be like a blue light special at Kmart.”

MO/RB END BANKS

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for file photos of Welch. A sidebar, RNS-BAPTIST-SCHOOLS, accompanies this story.

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!