by Sandy » Mon Jun 15, 2015 9:09 am
I know part of Stetzer's business is analysis of the membership data, but it is interesting that I've never really seen much from him about how it was gathered, or how to get a bunch of independent, autonomous churches to submit the ACP (Annual Church Profile) that contains a lot of information which many of them apparently do not consider all that important. There was a time when most of the DOM's in associations spent a lot of time and effort calling and goading churches into getting their forms turned in so they could be 100% in the association's annual report, but judging by the number of carry overs and blank lines in the state convention annuals, that's not happening anymore. Maybe Stetzer's office at Lifeway could come up with a more accurate way to gather data, or a more effective way to get churches to do it.
Churches and denominations decline for varying reasons. The drop off in attendance and membership in mainline denominations, which started in the 60's, and which has continued into the 21st century despite all kinds of efforts to arrest it, involved different reasons and patterns of decline than what has been a more recent decline among conservative Evangelicals, including Southern Baptists. The two standard Southern Baptist answers for every problem, "Be more committed to missions," and "Do a better job of evangelism," are probably connected to the root of the problem, but there's more to it than that. The methods of "doing evangelism" that were so successful in the 50's, 60's and 70's depended on social conditions and cultural life that are much different now. The way we do church is a cultural model more than it is a Biblical one, and so far, few have figured out how to separate the Biblical elements of "ecclesia" from the cultural model in such a way as to reach into the non-Christian community and win converts, at least, not in post-denominational, post-Christian America. We have some who have figured out how to do traditional church culture big enough and entertaining enough to deplete smaller congregations and gather in bigger groups, and that's about it.