While the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) saw the number of churches in 2006 increase by 524 and reported more than $11.3 billion in total receipts, LifeWay Christian Resources President Thom S. Rainer reported April 17 that total baptisms in the SBC fell for the second consecutive year.
According to the Annual Church Profile (ACP) gathered by LifeWay, baptisms last year dropped from 371,850 to 364,826, or 1.89 percent, eclipsing 2005 as the lowest annual total since 1993. The 2005 ACP reported a 4.15 percent drop.
"While it is certainly encouraging to see new Southern Baptist churches being birthed, our baptism totals once again show that we are not doing an effective job stepping up to the task of sharing the gospel with a lost and dying world," Rainer said.
The drop happened despite an ambitious goal for Southern Baptists to baptize 1 million people in 2006, a thrust launched by the SBC’s immediate past president and Alabama native, Bobby Welch, at the outset of his two years in office in June 2004.
Named the "Everyone Can!" Kingdom Challenge, it targeted 2006 as the year when Southern Baptist churches, for the first time, would reach 1 million baptisms — more than doubling the number recorded in recent years.
Current SBC President Frank Page, pastor of First Baptist Church, Taylors, S.C., said, "To hear news of a continued decline in baptisms is discouraging. However, Dr. Bobby Welch’s emphasis upon evangelism and soul-winning is nothing but an echo from God’s heart. Therefore, his pleas are biblically based and God-inspired. However, our obedience continues to lack both substance and passion."
Page said he is "working closely with our North American Mission Board (NAMB), our state partners, directors of missions as well as others to bring to our nation a true long-term, flexible, multifaceted evangelism strategy which will enable us to help our churches know better ‘how’ to implement the wonderful encouragement from Dr. Welch and others to be soul-winners."
"Please pray for this national, continentwide strategy," Page added, noting that it will be partly unveiled during the SBC’s June 12–13 annual meeting in San Antonio.
Welch, the newly named strategist for global evangelical relations with the SBC Executive Committee and retired pastor of First Baptist Church, Daytona Beach, Fla., assessed the positive results of the campaign and voiced concern about what the baptism decline means for Southern Baptists in a column for Baptist Press April 17.
The decline in baptisms "in the face of an all-out effort by so many sounds the most urgent cry Southern Baptists will ever hear, and it comes from the handwriting that is now on our wall — and it is this: BACK TO THE FIELDS!" Welch wrote, referencing the "harvest fields" of non-Christians across the nation and the world.
Harry Lewis, interim executive vice president of missions with NAMB, said a decline in baptisms "is never good news for Southern Baptists. However, for the 364,826 people who did receive Christ as Savior and follow Him in believer’s baptism, it was the best news of their lives."
"Every Southern Baptist should be both informed and alarmed that our declining baptism trend means we are not coming close to keeping up with population trends," Lewis said, noting that many SBC churches are plateaued or declining.
"This should call us all to have a renewed passion for sharing the good news with our family, friends and neighbors," Lewis said. "… We should be reminded that God’s plan for reducing lostness in North America is still His people in His church, sharing Jesus with every lost person through the power of His Spirit. When we as Southern Baptists recognize the serious consequence for those without Christ and become intentional about sharing Christ with others, spiritual renewal will come to North America, and our baptism trend will reverse."
Roy Fish, longtime professor of evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, who recently served as interim president for NAMB, said he was "grieved" by the latest report.
"This is what we will continue to see as long as churches are ministering outside the context of spiritual awakening," Fish said. Putting recent baptism statistics into the larger perspective of history, Fish said past significant upswings in SBC baptisms have been linked to larger spiritual movements.
"In the early 1900s, Southern Baptists saw their largest year-to-year increase in baptisms and that was in the context of a global awakening that was taking place," Fish said.
In the 1950s, nearly a full decade of baptism increases stemmed from what Fish called "the Mid-Century Revival." The 1970s, he said, "were also times of increase in our baptisms and that was a spill-over from the Jesus Movement."
Fish was quick to say that even outside the context of spiritual awakening, churches that are obedient and consistent in evangelism will see results.
"Even when the spiritual tide is out, there are still pools of God’s activities, and churches will see success if they are faithful in sharing Christ regularly," Fish said. (BP)
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