Southern Baptists have taken a not-so-secret sense of pride in being the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. We have been equally proud of being the largest Baptist group in the world. At times, we have flaunted our size and corresponding power.
Southern Baptists are big. Total membership exceeds 16.25 million baptized believers. Add to that the number of people within the Southern Baptist community (nonbaptized participants and family members), and our size more than doubles. In Alabama, one out of every four residents is a member of a cooperating Baptist church. Southern Baptist churches received more than $11 billion in tithes and offerings last year, according to Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) sources. The value of congregational property nears $50 billion.
Our seminaries are the largest Christian seminaries in the world. Our missions enterprise is the largest. As Southern Baptists, we seem to take pride in being the largest in most everything.
But there is an old adage that says, “What got you to the top will not keep you at the top.” And when one looks closely at Southern Baptist life, there are signs that indicate danger in the road ahead.
Financially churches are sending a smaller and smaller percentage of undesignated receipts to missions causes through the Cooperative Program (CP). In the 1980s, undesignated receipts for churches went up 5.71 percent on average. Gifts through the CP increased 6.83 percent that decade. But in the 1990s, the pattern changed. Undesignated receipts for churches went up 4.91 percent, while gifts through the CP went up 1.68 percent. This decade, church undesignated receipts went up 5.42 percent, while CP gifts increased by 1.95 percent.
In the ’80s, CP receipts averaged 10.5 percent of undesignated receipts of the churches. In the 1990s, that fell to 8.73 percent. For this decade, the percentage fell to 6.9 percent. For the last year of record, the average was down further to 6.08 percent.
Southern Baptists are known for evangelism. We believe every person must make a personal response to Jesus as Lord and Savior. But baptismal statistics show us flagging. The only time Southern Baptists baptized at least 400,000 people for five consecutive years was 1971–1976. Our largest single figure for baptisms was 1972 with 445,725. For 2008, the last year of record, the number of baptisms was just more than 342,000. That is a drop of more than 25 percent. The actual numbers show a downward trend for the past decade from 415,000 in 2000 to 342,000 in 2008 (SBC Book of Reports, 2009).
Scholars who study the life cycle of volunteer organizations — including churches and denominations — contend that these organizations are bound together by shared values, goals and hopes. Such a conclusion should not be surprising. It is exactly what the Bible says. Proverbs 28:19 declares, “Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained” (NASV). In other words, without an overarching structure of values and goals, people do what is right in their own eyes.
Interestingly those who study the lives of nations point to the tendency of people to believe they are accountable only to themselves as a sign of internal decline (See “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” by Paul Kennedy).
These scholars argue that the only way an organization can stay vibrant and dynamic is by constantly renewing itself. That should sound familiar to Southern Baptists. In 1979, we began a 25-year struggle called the conservative resurgence. In 1995, we reorganized our national convention structure. Five years later, we redrafted our doctrinal statements — the Baptist Faith and Message. All held out great promise, but none resulted in a renewal of the SBC or Southern Baptists.
Today the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force is again examining how Southern Baptists can work together to reach the world for Jesus Christ. While what goes on in the meetings of the task force has not been made public, several leaders of the effort have been vocal about the need to change the way missions funds are divided between state and national conventions. Perhaps such an effort is misdirected. The renewal needed may not be in terms of programs or structures. The renewal needed by Southern Baptists may be in terms of shared values, goals and hopes.
Baptisms, for example, have not declined because Southern Baptist leaders for the past 30 years were less evangelistic than their predecessors. Nor is the decline because of lack of effective programs or denominational structure.
George Barna points in an entirely different direction. In his book “The Seven Faith Tribes,” Barna concludes the best evangelism grows out of people’s respect for the Christian’s character and lifestyle. Unfortunately he says polling data shows that evangelical Christians in America are not seen as loving. He declares that the public perception of the character and lifestyle of evangelical Christians is one reason evangelism has been ineffective for the past quarter of a century. Evangelical Christians are seen as a people who try to argue others into the kingdom of God rather than love them into God’s presence. We are seen as a people who take pride in our moral supremacy, insist on our own correctness and blame and fight with one another like members of a neurotic, dysfunctional family.
Barna writes plainly. Evangelical Christians — Baptists among them — must stop “competing, complaining and condemning” if we want to make an impact on society for Christ. Instead Christians must start “cooperating, communicating and contributing.” For Baptists who have lived as long as this writer, those qualities sound like values and goals that used to characterize Southern Baptist life. Christians also must hear again the echoes of warning about people accountable only to themselves and see again the efforts of some to do things themselves rather than work cooperatively with fellow Baptists.
Southern Baptists have long taught that beliefs matter because it is one’s beliefs and values that inform one’s actions. That is why the renewal needed by Southern Baptists is a renewal in the value of cooperation, the importance of communications, the willingness to collaborate with fellow believers for the good of God’s Kingdom and the commitment to contribute to the total missions effort.
What is needed is more attention to relationships, not programs, more attention to values not structures. Without such a renewal, the noble experiment of a Baptist convention of church, association, state and national bodies may degenerate into a competing, comparing, complaining, condemning likeness of those who have thrown stones of criticism at Southern Baptists for more than 150 years.
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