A Paradox

[Joseph Patrick]

From Joseph Patrick...aka Gerry Milligan

I am continually amazed (since Donald Trump's victory) how many of the radical right, (you know, those who criticized the president at the time) become very angry, aggressive and generally churlish toward anyone who might dare to voice a question about our president-elect?

Let me quickly say that has NOT been my experience here on Baptist Life, but so many of those aggressive, name calling persons claim to be Christians> Am I alone in this?

[Haruo]

Probably not, though I know so few people who like Trump and/or hate Obama or Clinton that I'm probably not really competent to say.

[William Thornton]

Could you offer an example?

[Dave Roberts]

[William Thornton]

Why would a sensible guy like you get facebook notifications like this goofball?

[Dave Roberts]

[Jim]

A college degree? WOW! Thornton, you are definitely out of order, insensitive, and altogether unmindful of what constitutes credibility. Shame!

[Joseph Patrick]

[William Thornton]

Guess Gerry wasn't around here during the ihatebush years.

I don't buy the broad generalization about those believers who voted for trump. Most in my circles were anti-Hillary. Everything flowed from that.

[Haruo]

[Joseph Patrick]

[Rvaughn]

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

[William Thornton]

Facts: The CP, mired in a long, slow glide downward, has stabilized, not increased its rate of decline. Most SBC statistical measures are declining slowly. Numbers of of churches are up slightly. For the moment the cooperative program has settled at about 5% of church offering plate undesignated offerings. It's still a massive funding scheme, providing hundreds of millions to SBC causes.

[Sandy]

According to the SBC annual, membership peaked in 2005 at 16,600,000. The current total, as reported, 15.3 million, is 1.3 million less, or about an 8% decline in a decade. The largest single decline in membership since the 1800's was this past year, according to their own reports, more than 200,000. Each succeeding year the number grows larger, so it's hard to call that "stable." Weekly attendance is declining proportionate to the membership drop.

"Former SBC president Frank Page suggested that if current conditions continue, half of all SBC churches will close their doors permanently by the year 2030" That's from the Christian Index, 2011.

I have to admire the dogged determination of denominational leaders in the SBC who have gone to extremes to prevent a drop in the CP funding of the missions program. They've beaten the drum of support for overseas missions, and browbeaten state conventions into adopting a 50-50 split. Still, the giving has declined. And the well that they're drawing from is drying up. Overall contributions to churches are declining at about the same percentage as the membership, not accounting for inflation, at least, if their annuals are correct.

[William Thornton]

[Dave Roberts]

[Sandy]

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.pdf

If that's "flat," then I'd hate to see what the SBC calls a "decline".

[Rvaughn]

[Sandy]

If I'm not mistaken, unlike Virginia and Texas, where both state conventions still provide Cooperative Program support to the SBC, the SBC will not accept CP gifts from the BGCM, even though they had some churches that wanted to do so, because it would require recognizing their legitimacy.

The conservative oriented conventions in Texas and Virginia are, as William said, about the only state groups that are at a 50-50 split with the SBC. Of course, they have less of their own infrastructure to support, don't own colleges and universities, hospitals, nursing homes, etc.

[Dave Roberts]

[William Thornton]

The new group never appears in any list of SBC state conventions so I presume they are same type as the various CBF state conventions. I see no budget for them nor membership info. If the SBC executive committee has refused to accept their legitimacy as a state convention, I'm not well versed in all that. I think they spend a lot of missions money on lawyers in that state.

[Dave Roberts]

[Jim]

SBC churches in Kentucky exceeded their CP projections for the fiscal year by more than a million dollars and gave $8.9 million through Lottie Moon for a total of $31.2 million from one of the poorest states, this while the offshoots seem to be trying to makes ends meet. Even though somewhat stagnant, the SBC is relatively stable not least because diversity/political correctness has not replaced its GOD.