by Ed Pettibone » Fri Sep 26, 2014 8:12 am
Ed: Sandy perhaps you need to check your stats according Brian Koonce staff member of The Pathway, reporting from Baltimore in June the SBC now has fewer the 50,000 churches you claim, His figure is 45,000 he further points out the total Messenger registration at 5,294 which was up from the 5,103 at Huston in 2013. Maryland alone was up from 66 to 449 When the SBC last met in Baltimore the in 1940, 74 years prior, attendance was 3,776.
The unofficial state-by-state messenger registration numbers are as follows: Alabama, 248; Alaska, 15; Arizona, 20; Arkansas, 172; California, 98; Colorado, 28; Connecticut, 8; Delaware, 23; Florida, 288; Georgia, 379; Guam, 1; Hawaii, 10; Idaho, 4; Illinois, 92; Indiana, 74; Iowa, 4; Kansas, 27; Kentucky, 251; Louisiana, 170; Maine, 1; Maryland, 429; Massachusetts, 10; Michigan, 29; Minnesota, 3; Mississippi, 198; Missouri, 143; Montana, 5; Nebraska, 2; Nevada, 26; New Hampshire, 5; New Jersey, 39; New Mexico, 31; New York, 67; North Carolina, 427; Ohio, 89; Oklahoma, 128; Oregon, 2; Pennsylvania, 106; Puerto Rico 4; South Carolina, 243; South Dakota, 4; Tennessee, 423; Texas, 320; Utah, 8; Vermont, 6; Virginia, 497; Washington, 5; Washington, D.C., 20; West Virginia, 40; Wisconsin, 6; Wyoming, 6. There were 256 messengers that were approved through the credentials process but were unaffiliated with a state convention.
I wish he had provided figures for the two competing conventions in each Texas and Virginia. When you consider that many large churches send more than one messenger you can be sure the percentage of churches sending messengers is less than 10 %.