“If we don’t start paying attention to the realities … by the year 2030, we will be proud to have 20,000 rather than 44,000 Southern Baptist churches.” That’s a quote from outgoing Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page recently.
“You’ve got massive numbers,” he said, “maybe not a majority but massive numbers of evangelical churches out there, yes, Southern Baptists also, who are small groups of older white people holding on till they die.”
Ed Stetzer, head of Southern Baptist affiliated LifeWay Research, says that growth rate has slowed in recent years.
Now, he says, the convention has started a downhill slide.
“If you look at the demographics, the trends are not positive,” Stetzer said…
“It’s hard to kill off a church,” he said. “I do think the convention will be smaller in the future. My hope is that we will be smaller and stronger.”
From here.
“Smaller and stronger.” These guys might want to be careful. They are starting to sound like some of the things leaders of The Episcopal Church have said about the glorious future of that church.
HT: BHT
I graduated from SWBTS, and was ordained in 1997. For me, worship services in the SBC were man, or “pastor” centered with the sermon being the primary focal point. I felt that worship needed to be more, deeper. The study of Church History confirmed for me that the SBC is far from the trunk of the original church tree.
Deciding I needed to be closer to the roots, I left the SBC in 2001 for the Episcopal Church and have never looked back.
The Episcopal Church provides deep, meaningful, rich worship, which is God-centered, rather than man-centered. It is worship that is un-obtainable in the SBC.
I’m a baptist pastor who attended an Episcopal service this morning because I had “a day off” from teaching at my church. While I agree that the Episcopal service was able to induce reverence in 10 seconds of less, and generally conveyed worship that is both God-centered and attractive, I’m not yet able to make the switch. For one reason, evangelical ecclesiology has taught me that evangelism is the main thing a church should be good at. The Episcopal tradition is good at worship, but evangelism needs serious work. If they were better in this area, I would have an easier time trading “the Church of Nickelodeon” for The Church of Holy Communion.