Marty Sandiego Is Not Who We Thought He Was
Topic: Denominations, SBC, SBC News| Written by: Todd Littleton|Interrupted for breaking news we continue Marty “Carmen Sandiego” Duren’s series we have themed, “Where is the SBC?” Since Marty dropped off the Outpost map some conjectured his displeasure with the Outpost. Instead, Marty has been living out of the reality he now experiences and is writing here in part 2.
We’re Not Who We Thought We Were.
One of the more replayed video clips over the last few years was that of NFL head coach Dennis Green of the Arizona Cardinals. Following a loss to the Chicago Bears in 2006, which his team had led 24-3 in the fourth quarter, came the inevitable press conference. An obviously ticked Green exploded like a man who’d been celebrating Cinco de Mayo for a month. “The Bears are who we thought they were,” has become a favorite line for sports fans ever since. What Green was saying was, “They had nothing on us. They were the team we prepared for and we let them off the hook. We should have won the game.” It was slightly more colorful in the original language.
In thinking through this series, the word “disintegration” was intentionally chosen over the word “collapse.” I do not think that we will wake up one morning in the next year to find that the United Methodists, the Lutherans, Episcopalians (in their various stripes) or SBC will have closed the doors and shuttered the windows. I do think that we will continue to see decreasing viability of meaningful gospel influence in these organizations to the point that, like water against a rock, the slow erosion results in an unstable foundation and eventual cessation of denominational existence.
Linked in Ed Stetzer’s warning shot were two papers by J. Clifford Tharp, Jr. one with the following chart indicating “Total Membership” and “Resident Membership.”
Tharp’s brief analysis included these three points: 1. Trends in Membership (both Total and Resident) are becoming very flat; 2. Total Membership is dangerously close to beginning to decrease; 3. The gap between Total Membership and Resident Membership is widening. Observant readers will notice that if the top line flattens and the gap between the two widens, then necessarily the bottom line is beginning or continuing a downward arc. On this chart, that means that Resident Membership is decreasing. As we know and will soon reconsider, Resident Membership itself is a misleading measure of biblical membership and should not be considered an accurate accounting.
We’re not who we thought we were.
A second chart (below) tracks SBC baptisms from 1950-2004.
As you can see, baptisms have remained virtually static for more than 1/2 a century (there is a minuscule increase of 45 per year). The US population in 1950 was 152,271,417. Non-stop growth brought us to 281,421,906 by the year 2000. In a non-scientific but well thought through series of observations, Nathan Finn suggests that the Southern Baptist Convention is probably reaching no more than 100,000 “unreached Americans” per year while in their book, “Who Will Be Saved?,” Paul House and Greg Thornbury write:
Statistics compiled by the North American Mission Board…reveal that as many as half of all adults baptized in Southern Baptist churches are rebaptisms of persons already baptized by Southern Baptist pastors. Another 40 percent of adults baptized are Christians from other denominations who have never been immersed. Only ten percent of all adults baptized in Southern Baptist churches are making first-time professions of faith.
And this from what is widely considered the most evangelistic denomination in the U.S.
We’re not who we thought we were.
In her new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, Christine Wicker takes both Southern Baptists and evangelicals to task for their faulty reporting of their actual membership totals. She notes, for example, that:
Only 7 percent of members who’ve been in a Southern Baptist church five years of less are true converts, meaning sinners who weren’t raised in the church but came through a profession of faith in Jesus. If you took out the Southern Baptists who married unbelievers and brought them to faith, hardly anybody would be left.
Behind the thesis is that there are not nearly as many committed, Bible believing, Bible following Christians in American as we have all been led to believe, the former Dallas Morning News writer (and former Southern Baptist) pegs SBC active membership at just north of four million. Though Wicker finds herself somewhere between an agnosticism and an reluctant atheisism, her understanding of what genuine church membership should be is decent. She refuses to acknowledge that the SBC consists of 16+ million members, stating, “How many members a church has is a pretty worthless measure of reality…[only] about two-thirds are even residents of the same town as the churches they belong to.”
We’re not who we thought we were.
Not content with exposing the SBC’s lack of clothing, Wicker also points out that the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) does not have its claimed and oft trumpeted 30 million members. There are sixty denominations that make up the membership of the NAE including the Assemblies of God, Church of God, Church of the Nazarene and the Evangelical Free Church of America. According to Wicker’s research, the total membership of the fifty member denominations listed in the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches 2007, the American Religion Statistical Archives and the denominations’ own Web sites the grand total of the members is 7.6 million people. Active membership would be much less–less than half actually. So, what of the elusive 30 million count we’ve all heard. No one, not even NAE president Leith Anderson knows for sure. The 1990 NAE record listed only 4.5 total members.
We’re not who we thought we were.
What does this mean? Is the issue a matter of simple math? No. The issue is that, not only have we been well behind the population growth curve, we didn’t have as great a number in the starting blocks as we had been led to believe. Since every age group of baptisms is decreasing except those who are under five years old and since the number of those graduating from high school and leaving church is increasing and since the ranks of admitted unbelievers is the fastest growing “faith” category in the US, there simply are not going to be enough people to keep denominations, which are dependent on heavy financial investment, afloat. As denominationally oriented church members age and die (and they already are) younger people will not give tithes to churches that insist on supporting failing bureaucracies, thus leading further down the Post Denominational road.
We’re not who we thought we were.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:30 am
I appreciate Marty’s thoughtful post. His points are well-taken. However, what is the link to denominationalism? Statistically, the SBC is nothing more than the sum of its parts. If the SBC disbanded tomorrow and all its churches went independent would there be an increase in evangelism? Would we reach more people?
For me, the solution will be to pray for revival in our denomination and then in myself. Perhaps there is need for a reform or elimination of denominational structures, but people will not be won to Christ merely because we get rid of bureaucracy.
We must recommit ourselves to the prayerful, powerful, critically-contextual, abundant proclamation of the gospel. Until we do, we should not be surprised when our statistics are not what we wish them to be. We may not be what we thought we were. To me, the question is: will we become what we ought to be?
May 13th, 2008 at 6:06 am
Todd-
First and most importantly, I’m not limiting “denomination” to the SBC though, admittedly, it’s the one that I’m most familiar with.
You said: We must recommit ourselves to the prayerful, powerful, critically-contextual, abundant proclamation of the gospel.
I hear this over and over. I’d like to see some evidence of Southern Baptist pastors who’ve been graduating from CR dominated seminaries for the last 15 years and are not doing what you suggest. Every single SBC pastor that I know is doing so and, surprise, none of them are very concerned about the denomination. We are dealing with two different issues.
The point that I will argue later is that the increasing influence of churches will be inversely proportional to the decreasing influence of denominations. The personal revival of every single Southern Baptist does not mean that the SBC will revive; it may mean just the opposite.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Marty,
I agree that they are separate issues and you may very well be right about denominationalism as a whole.
However, our particular denomination is supposed to be an association of cooperating churches. I can only speak anecdotally, but most Christians I know, including most pastors I know, do not witness very often. In my (admittedly limited) experience, Baptists are not living out what we say we believe in terms of actually sharing the gospel.
I am not trying to be trite or pull out some worn out cliché. I honestly believe that we are generally lacking in all four of the adjectives in my original comment. We do not pray enough nor do we pray specifically for the lost. Our evangelism, when it does occur, often lacks power and offers only Bible facts without the corresponding call to repent and believe. We do not do the hard work of contextualizing our approaches so that the gospel is proclaimed in a way that is understood by the hearer or the contextualism is done uncritically so that it removes the offense of the cross. Our evangelism is sporadic and infrequent.
If these are not the case for you and those you know, then PTL, we need more Christians like you and your friends. Let’s multiply that kind of commitment to Christ’s mission to those around us and spur one another on.
Blessings,
Todd
May 13th, 2008 at 8:43 am
What we USED to know about our current church-growth problems (who knows WHAT we know NOW–we ACT as if we DON’T know ANYTHING these days!):
1. With God, it doesn’t matter where you come from–it matters where you’re going (need to know the current condition, and the reasons for it; still, need to plan to do something about it and act on that plan as a Body, with our senior pastors–whom our congregations will follow better than other church staff–in the lead);
2. Part of the SBC’s growth problem is spiritual–the other part is administrative/infrastructure/educational; to ignore the second part is to continue to decline, also (church problems often begin as administrative problems–attrition/migration, low quality ministry, unresolved issues; then, the problems become spiritual ones; God seems to permit the first longer than He permits the second);
3. Some need to pray more; others need to pray better, not more (prayer represents “spirituality which is passionate individually” and “worship which is inspiring corporately”–see Natural Church Development research); at some point, the act of praying must conclude and the act of putting feet to those prayers must begin (relates to NCD’s “structures which are functional continually” and “leadership which is empowering primarily”);
4. Putting new believers into small groups not healthy enough organizationally to keep them perpetuates and compounds the SBC’s growth problem (return to the basics of biblical growth, as Rainer’s “Simple Church” concept suggests–makes precious resources go further, too; do the basics exceptionally well BEFORE doing anything else);
5. It isn’t merely reaching folks; it’s also keeping folks (must SUSTAIN the RATE of growth over future decades; God designed people to “wind down” physically/spiritually/emotionally over time, but He made the compensations which please Himself [nighttime/times of refreshing/relationships] to wind us back up again and to keep us going);
6. Talking/preaching isn’t teaching, and listening isn’t learning (for folks in our churches to “get” it, will have to teach/coach/train them–that can’t be done during 30 minutes of preaching on Sunday mornings); 90% of professional educators, even, cannot get a concept entirely new to them without the guided practice which leads to continual independent practice of the new concept;
7. Biblical church growth is spiritual, numerical, ministry, and missions (cf. Gene Mims’ “Kingdom Principles” writing)–so EVERY church, despite its potential size or geographic location, CAN grow continually;
8. Andy Anderson’s Church Growth Spiral: only model for ministry I’ve seen which, when implemented over time, sustains the rate of growth in many important areas (including financial; is the end of money worries in all congregations); nothing better has come along (if going to try something anyway, why not try it?);
9. annual ACP reports appear necessary–can’t speak with as much accuracy without them (e.g., “folks attending worship alone give 50 cents per person per week–but people attending both small groups and worship give $32 per person per week”–and, “1 out of 400 baptized annually if attending worship alone–but 1 out of 4 baptized if attending small groups and worship”; complete the ACP–fully and honestly–each year);
10. the most innovative thing most Southern Baptist congregations and their staffs can do is: WORK HARD continuously implementing the tried-and-true basics for church health/growth; nothing about the world has so changed that those basics won’t still work IF WE WILL; until God begins making people differently than He has for thousands of years (not likely), His church in the 21st century still has a chance (God has put Heaven in our hands, to make much of it what it will be when we arrive there).
More for those who want it.
The Perspective of an SBC Minister of Education
May 14th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I think that all too often, we confuse the SBC (or any denomination) with ‘the church.’ It is not. The SBC is man’s organization with success measured by the world’s standards, i.e., ‘nickels and noses.’ The true spiritual church, I believe, is nothing more than that described early in Acts where new believers gathered for fellowship, prayer and studying the teachings of the apostles. The fruit of their labor was the ‘fruit of the Spirit,’not numbers. While there were great numbers, I do not think they looked to those as signs of success. What they rejoiced in was the opportunity to share Jesus’ ministry (and His persecution). If they used ‘nickels and noses’ as the measure of success, they would have to face the proposition that Jesus was not successful since He did not do so well by worldly standards either. Consequently, the demise of an organization which ’succeeds’ (or not) by world standards is really quite irrelevant. I thank God that the statistics highlighted in this post bears this out. The SBC does not need revival, spiritual revival has come to individuals who learn to grow in their relationship and understanding of Christ. God is not in the business of saving man’s organizations, but people!!… and neither should we.