They are some of America\u2019s most infamous religious statistics and conservatives have been known to quote them with glee.<\/p>\n\n
The United Churches of Christ lost 14.8 percent of its members during the 1990s.<\/p>\n\n
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was down 11.6 percent. The United Methodist Church fell 6.7 percent and the Episcopal Church another 5.3 percent. But there was nothing earth shattering in the Glenmary Research Center\u2019s 2000 data. The Protestant mainline has been fading for a generation.<\/p>\n\n
The Southern Baptist Convention\u2019s new leader knows all that.<\/p>\n\n
The Rev. Bobby Welch also knows that his flock\u2019s totals have crept higher in recent years. But he isn\u2019t gloating. He\u2019s worried about the fine print in the baptism pages of the North American Mission Board\u2019s \u201cStrategic Planning Indicators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThe last thing I would want to do is put down what people call the church-growth movement,\u201d said Welch. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of fine people doing fine work and we have some fine churches out there that are growing. But I do think that sometimes we forget that just because we have church growth doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re growing the church.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cSometimes, we get so focused on filling up our church buildings that we forgot to ask if we\u2019re winning any new people for the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
This is the way Welch talks when he starts wrapping his soft northern Alabama accent around the scriptures, statistics and theories linked to his favorite topic \u2014 evangelism. But the veteran pastor of the First Baptist Church of Daytona Beach, Fla., doesn\u2019t talk much about the kinds of large-scale evangelistic projects that grab media attention. His passion is for quieter forms of one-on-one persuasion that have a steady impact on church life.<\/p>\n\n
That\u2019s why he cares that the number of baptisms has declined in Southern Baptist churches four consecutive years. What is just as disturbing, said Welch, is that the SBC\u2019s baptism rate had been parked on a statistical plateau since 1951 \u2014 averaging 384,000 a year while the nation\u2019s population boomed.<\/p>\n\n
Immediately after his June election as president, Welch announced a high-profile project to promote evangelism efforts from coast to coast and beyond. He got himself a star-spangled bus and set out on a 25-day, 20,000-mile marathon to visit each of the 48 contiguous states and, by airplane, Alaska and Hawaii.<\/p>\n\n
The goal is to baptize 1 million people between June of 2005 and June of 2006, which would require a jump of 600,000-plus over last year\u2019s total of 377,357. The purpose of the bus tour was to get people to take this challenge seriously, he said, during a post-tour visit to South Florida.<\/p>\n\n
Part of the problem, he said, is that too many Southern Baptists are camped inside their big, safe, healthy churches and think this is enough. Most of them believe that the church is supposed to win converts \u2014 sort of.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cNot all evangelicals are evangelistic,\u201d said Welch. \u201cThey say they believe in evangelism, but they don\u2019t get out and do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The denomination\u2019s baptism statistics reveal other sobering truths. After the age of 11, it becomes increasingly difficult to win converts \u2014 even among children in church families. Also, only 40 percent of the adults baptized into Southern Baptist congregations are true converts. The rest were already members of other Christian flocks.<\/p>\n\n
Welch describes this in blunt language: \u201cWhat that means is that we\u2019re not reaching the pagan pool. \u2026 We\u2019re just rearranging the furniture inside the church.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Christians have all kinds of excuses for why they don\u2019t talk to other people about faith and forgiveness, heaven and hell, he said. It\u2019s easy to say that modern Americans believe that \u201csoul winning\u201d is rude and intolerant or that all religions are paths that lead to the same eternal destination. Truth is, some people don\u2019t want to talk with real people who are facing real problems in the real world, he said.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s no harder to talk to people about Jesus today than it ever has been,\u201d he said. \u201cThe problem is that we\u2019ve been frightened away from even trying. We\u2019ve become content to wag our finger at the world and tell it how sorry it is and how good we are, instead of telling people about the grace of God. We\u2019ve got to get over that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They are some of America\u2019s most infamous religious statistics and conservatives have been known to quote them with glee. The United Churches of Christ lost 14.8 percent of its members during the 1990s. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was down 11.6 percent. The United Methodist Church fell 6.7 percent and the Episcopal Church another 5.3 percent. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[214,1534,342,811],"class_list":["post-1305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church-growth","tag-evangelicals","tag-evangelism","tag-southern-baptist"],"yoast_head":"\n