The bad news for Southern Baptists is that the denomination, the nation’s largest Protestant group, shrank in 2023, with a drop of a few quarter-million people.
The excellent news, in line with the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual statistical report, is that the decline slowed from 2022. In addition, of those that remained, more went to church and more newcomers took the plunge to get baptized.
The SBC’s 2024 Annual Church Profile, released Tuesday, showed that membership dropped to 12.9 million members, the bottom for the reason that late Seventies. Having peaked at 16.3 million in 2006, membership has been in decline ever since, with nearly 3.5 million members in total lost. About half of that total loss has come since 2018.
Weekly attendance at churches rebounded from the Covid-19 pandemic, topping 4 million per week, while small-group attendance was about 2.5 million. Donations on the denomination’s 46,000 churches also remained robust, topping $10 billion, feeding nearly $800 million into SBC national and international ministries.
The SBC’s churches also reported 226,000 baptisms, a key evangelism statistic held dear by Southern Baptists. About 175,000 latest people joined SBC congregations in 2023.
Churches in Florida, Georgia, California, North Carolina and Tennessee reported the most important increase in baptisms from 2022 to 2023.
Todd Unzicker, executive director-treasurer of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, said that churches in his state have focused on increasing baptism through training and a “fill the tank” initiative, which challenges congregations to replenish their baptismal tanks within the weeks before Easter. He said that while many churches often need to see more people baptized, few were prepared to baptize them.
“When I might visit churches, many of the baptistries were full of Christmas decorations and boxes and supplies,” he said “And I at all times thought, if the Lord moved, they are not even ready.”
“While we frequently address our shortcomings, it is also good to pause and rejoice the worldwide good Southern Baptists are accomplishing,” said Jeff Iorg, president-elect of the SBC Executive Committee. Iorg, the longtime president of Gateway Seminary in Northern California, was named the SBC Executive Committee’s leader in March.
Bart Barber, a Texas pastor and current president of the denomination, called the report encouraging news. Barber said that if membership at churches had risen and not using a rise in attendance or baptisms, he’d be concerned. Barber added that membership numbers can often be less accurate than baptisms or church attendance.
“The numbers which can be up are the numbers I’m watching,” Barber told Religion News Service. “We know who got here to our Sunday school. We know who got here to our small-group Bible study. And we’re good at counting baptisms. We have walked people through a process and we’ve dunked them in water and we all know their names. We can tie every considered one of those numbers to a person person.”
Perhaps probably the most concerning data related to sexual abuse, a problem SBC leaders have struggled to handle effectively.
Along with membership, baptisms and giving numbers, 29 of the SBC’s 41 state conventions also collect data on how their churches are addressing abuse. Fewer than two-thirds (58%) of churches in those states said they required staff and volunteers who work with kids to have background checks. Fewer than half (38%) said their staff and volunteers have been trained on report abuse, while fewer than 1 / 4 (16%) have been trained on look after survivors of abuse.
Barber said that those numbers, especially the background check percentage, aren’t surprising. The average SBC church, relatively small and sometimes in a rural setting, can rarely afford to support a full-time pastor or the staff, volunteers and policies needed to forestall abuse. Those churches, the SBC president said, often have well-loved volunteers working with kids and think they’re resistant to abuse.
“But that is unsuitable,” said Barber. “Abuse happens in rural churches too. It’s necessary to assist churches like that see that they do have to take these precautions.”
The SBC’s 2-year-old abuse reform implementation task force hopes to have latest training material for churches, including policy guidelines, able to hand out at this 12 months’s annual meeting in Indianapolis in June.
Some states have asked churches about their sex abuse prevention policies up to now but that is the primary time those questions have been included within the national Annual Church Profile.
Bruce Frank, a North Carolina pastor running for SBC president, said that more data can be needed before leaders know whether the convention is making progress on reform. But Frank, who served on a previous task force arrange to help in investigating abuse, said background checks are a vital part of constructing churches safer.
“For anybody who works with children and students, a background church is the fundamental, base-level safety requirement,” he said. “It’s rather a lot easier and quicker than it’s ever been before. We want everybody to reap the benefits of that for the protection and security of their ministries.”
SBC leaders have long encouraged churches to examine volunteers and staff backgrounds, and the denomination passed a series of reforms in 2022 geared toward addressing sexual abuse. But those reforms, including a ministry check website to list abusive pastors and leaders, have largely stalled. No names have been added to the ministry check website and there is no such thing as a everlasting funding plan for abuse reforms. A latest nonprofit established to oversee reforms has received little support for funding.
© Religion News Service
