Baptism Sunday on Sept 8 to help sagging numbers

[Sandy]

I haven't seen a report about the emphasis put out by Southern Baptists on any reported numbers, though I found this in the Baptist Standard.
https://www.baptiststandard.com/news/ba ... s-decline/

This sort of reminds me of the "high attendance day" in October that we used to have to help improve outreach and get the Sunday school numbers up. There's nothing wrong with the emphasis, hopefully it encouraged some churches to examine their evangelistic effort and see where it might be lacking.

A denomination emphasizing a conservative evangelical perspective and claiming that was the key to stopping a slide into liberalism which would produce a declining membership and attendance was supposed to resolve this issue, not be figuring out how to solve the problem. The decline in membership is serious, the drop in baptisms should shake the foundations, since that's what it is built on. The birth rate might be part of the problem, though there are plenty of kids raised in SBC churches who are gone by the time they graduate from college, either never returning or off to the megachurch that is most likely independent, non-denominational and charismatic enough to hold their interest for a few years.

[William Thornton]

I'll go on record as predicting a slight increase in baptisms when this year's data is announced.

[Sandy]

Do you think that will be the result of the baptism emphasis, increased awareness of the problem or getting more churches to turn in their reports, though 70% is better than it has been.