Where do we go now? Membership, Attendance, Baptisms, and Giving Down in the Southern Baptist Convention
On May 28, 2014, LifeWay Christian Resources, in cooperation with Baptist state conventions, released their Annual Church Profile report. While celebrating an increase of 91 net churches, taking our total number of churches to 46,125 churches, along with our now 4,789 church-type missions, overall, we registered a:
DECLINE
*In Membership
*In Attendance
*In Baptisms
*In Giving
This trajectory we are on is approaching a danger zone unlike anything we have seen before in our generation. As a pastor, questions abound, such as:
- Will we face the reality of where we are?
- Will this decline continue?
- Will we see an acceleration of this decline?
- Will we ever see a reversal of our present direction?
While these questions are real, I would like to answer a question that every Southern Baptist pastor, layperson, church, and leader needs to answer for themselves and the ministry they lead or are a part of. The question is…
Where do we go now?
I have been active in Southern Baptist life for years. Over the years, we have never lacked for urgent pleas by leadership, evangelistic initiatives, new, exciting resources, or commitments made regarding one or all of these. Yet, we continue to decline.
Could it be that we are coming to an end of ourselves, realizing we cannot get this done on our own? The culture is becoming more unfriendly to the gospel, and our convention of churches is becoming known for decline. Even the recent report regarding our lack of baptisms, as a convention, received attention by secular periodicals. In fact, if you missed my evaluation of that, please read about it here.
Where do we go now?
1. We need a Great Awakening!
It is time we realize we cannot reverse where we are on our own. It is time to seek the Lord! Yes, we need a Great Awakening. For months, I have been calling upon Southern Baptist pastors and leaders to come together to call out to God in extraordinary prayer. Why? I wrote last week what I have been saying and will say again today:
There is no great movement of God that ever occurs that is not first preceded by the extraordinary prayer of God’s people.
If our personal conviction from God’s Word and the history of the church does not convince us of the need for extraordinary prayer, perhaps the continual statistical decline of the Southern Baptist Convention will. Our number one need is to begin to call out together to God in extraordinary prayer for the next great spiritual awakening in America.
Without question, it is time to seek the Lord together. We need a Great Awakening!
2. We need to accelerate our pace of completing the Great Commission!
Our “business as usual” pace will not reverse the decline. Through God’s power, we need to rise up, come together like never before, and accelerate our pace of completing the Great Commission. In a recent interview with Baptist Press, I spoke to this specific need.
We need to review what we say we believe about the lostness of humanity, the power of the gospel, our hope for heaven, and making disciples of all the nations. When we do this, we will accelerate our pace of completing the Great Commission.
Unquestionably, it is past time for us to deny ourselves, cease any infighting or quarrels, remove the walls of bias, division, and preferences, and in Jesus’ name, deny ourselves, come together, and accelerate our pace of completing the Great Commission in our generation. We need a massive spiritual movement of extraordinary prayer for a Great Awakening and a massive strategic movement toward accelerating our pace of completing the Great Commission. While both need immediate action, I know the former is imperative ultimately to the latter.
Yours for the Great Commission,
Ronnie W. Floyd
Dr. Ronnie Floyd is the President & CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee.
Pastors and Christian Leaders: It is time for the Next Great Awakening
Everything in American life today points to our greatest need: the next great spiritual awakening in America. I believe there is a growing desperation rising up within the people of God and a continual expectation that God is going to do something great in our generation. I believe it is time.
It is time to cry out to God
I have now been part of leading prayer gatherings with over 1,500 pastors. In three of those four gatherings, my friend, Bill Elliff, talked about the importance of crying out to God. He uses an illustration that has captivated me each time he has used it. Let me tell it in my own words.
Imagine that you are called upon to pray for your daughter. As you pray, you would pray as any parent would, for all of God’s blessings to be upon her life. While passionate, the urgency is non-existent. Let’s suppose time passes and this same daughter is captured by a terrorist and no one knows where she is located. Your mind goes in one thousand directions at ninety miles an hour with all of the things that she could be going through. Now, when you pray for your daughter, how would you pray?
Without question, you would cry out to God with great passion and urgency! You would call out to Him in your complete brokenness and need. As your heart would be breaking, you would call upon Him with all you are to come and spare your daughter.
What does all this mean? This is the real condition of our lives, our families, our churches, and our nation. We are under the influence of a mighty terrorist named Satan, who has lied to and deceived us. It appears he is in charge.
Now in urgent desperation, we must cry out to God for our own spiritual lives! We must cry out to God for our own families! We must cry out to God for our churches! We must cry out to God for America!
There is no great movement of God that ever occurs that is not first preceded by the extraordinary prayer of God’s people. Pastors and Christian leaders, it is time to cry out to God in brokenness and desperation. As urgency increases, we must believe with all we are, that the only answer for our nation is spiritual awakening.
It is time to unite together
While many who read this may not be Southern Baptists, I want to speak for a moment specifically to my brothers and sisters who are Southern Baptists. It is time for us to unite together for the purpose of crying out to God in extraordinary prayer for the next great spiritual awakening in our land. We cannot expect God to move in our midst if we operate in a culture where we are more carnal and splintered, than spiritual and unified. God blesses the unity of His people and the unity of His church! No one believed that more than Jesus Himself.
We must come together for the sake of our future. We must come together for the sake of America. We must come together for the sake of reaching all the nations. For this sacred effort, all of our selfishness, carnality, and personal preferences must die. It is time to unify in order to pray for the next Great Awakening.
It is time to accelerate the completion of the Great Commission
I am convinced it is time to come together in agreement, to pray in an extraordinary way, for revival personally, revival in the church, and spiritual awakening in our nation; so that the Great Commission will become escalated to its rightful priority and accelerated to its completion in our generation. Revival is the manifested presence of God. If experienced personally, God shows up in your life powerfully. If experienced in the church, a fresh, mighty power of God’s presence comes upon the church. A spiritual awakening occurs when a region becomes God-conscious, resulting in great numbers of people coming to Christ.
If and when these things occur, and I am believing God for them to, we will see the Great Commission become our ultimate priority, and there will be a commitment to accelerate it to its completion in our generation. We will abandon ourselves completely for the purpose of seeing the gospel presented to every person in the world and to see disciples made in all the nations.
Yes, in our lives and our churches, and even within our Southern Baptist Convention, we need to see the Great Commission accelerated to its completion. Let’s come together in Jesus’ name, pray extraordinarily, and act upon the Word of God today. It is time for the next Great Awakening!
Yours for the Great Commission,
Ronnie W. Floyd
Dr. Ronnie Floyd is the President & CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee.