I know that the membership numbers published by the SBC are not particularly representative of the actual number of participating individuals in the churches, with somewhere around 7 million designated as "non-resident members," the report shows 15.3 million members, and an average weekly worship attendance about a quarter of a million souls south of the 5 million mark. That's down from 16.6 million members, and an attendance of near 6 million a decade ago. I don't know what William means by "fuzzy," since the bean counters at the SBC thrive on numbers, and publish a 500 page annual report full of details. If a church stops sending in its annual church letter, then the report reflects its figures from the last year it reported for five consecutive years before it is dropped, so the actual number of members reported annually probably isn't accurate, and maybe that's fuzzy. It's hard to see how attendance, which has dropped by almost a million in a decade, is fuzzy. Losing 1.3 million members out of a starting point of more than 16 million a decade ago is about an 8% drop, which, if I am reading their statistics correctly, is about twice as high a figure as the UMC. More than a third of the losses have happened since 2014. That indicates an accelerated rate of decline. Maybe it is because churches are clearing their rolls of "non-resident" members, I know our church did that back in 2008. But the attendance figure should be the alarming one. That's not roll cleaning.
Likewise, the giving is also declining. Total gifts to all SBC churches has dropped by $600 million from 2010 to 2014 according to the exec committee report that I attached. Cooperative Program giving has dropped by $30 million in that same period, with the steepest drop coming between 2013 and 2014. The link below doesn't include the 2015 figure, which according to the annual rounds of at $465 million. There's some fluctuation in that giving, and I'd have to look at the record to see if the years when it slightly increased coincided with the browbeating emphasis on state conventions, but with the biggest decreases in total dollars received coming in the past three years, I don't think I'd call that "flat" exactly. The actuall dollar difference is a $30 million drop. How many SBC agencies or institutions other than the mission boards even have a $30 million budget? That's a lot to cut.
It's interesting, too, that the overall economy grew by almost 12% during that same period of time, with wage growth right at 4%. Most Baptists would be loathe to admit that their church giving may have been affected by that to the point where it would have been much worse without those figures. I doubt that President Obama will be getting a thank you card from Frank Page.
http://www.sbc.net/pdf/cp/GivingStatistics2015.pdfIf that's "flat," then I'd hate to see what the SBC calls a "decline".