SBC Baptizes Almost No Millennials

JM said:

I consider Baptists as Protestants from the Puritan Reformed tradition and see no reason to claim otherwise. The SBC is not a denomination but a collection of churches that get together and pool their money for different religious tasks, etc.

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If we use the word I hate the most, autonomous, then you're right. That's where i dislike being a part of Baptist church. The only difference between nondenominational and Baptist is Baptist tend to be more likely to be extreme right


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JM said:

Mike, you're Lutheran, right?

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I'm not. I've been a Baptist all my life. Lutheran theology is something I stumbled upon in podcasts when struggling with problems I saw in evangelicalism.


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Well, could the problems noted be because God sent a famine of the hearing of the Word of God ?
(not just Baptists / Lutherans/ Protestants; overall; but here specifically for problems noted in the OP and later in this thread)

yeshuaslavejeff said:

Well, could the problems noted be because God sent a famine of the hearing of the Word of God ?
(not just Baptists / Lutherans/ Protestants; overall; but here specifically for problems noted in the OP and later in this thread)

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Do you mean to say that these churches may have lost their punch? These are churches which made history by bringing the Gospel, by making it available, by asserting the right of all men and women to have access to it. And this applied to ordinary people both at home and around the world. So if these denominations (and the Methodists) have weakened in that respect, it is especially regrettable.

It's a very interesting subject. Don't have the time to post properly right now but definitely an interesting conversation so I'll drop in tomorrow.

Hope you're having a blessed week, all.

JM said:

That's what I meant by Divine pruning in the op.

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Cool Confirmation :
When I first read it, I saw the underlined and the post below it in the op,
and entirely missed the top line with "pruning" .....
The word "drought" brought to mind the "famine" of the hearing of the Word of God Scripture.....

OP:
"Divine pruning has begun.

Quote:

The report identifies five problems behind the baptism drought:"
...
..

yeshuaslavejeff said:

Well, could the problems noted be because God sent a famine of the hearing of the Word of God ?

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Sure.

Despite the negativity given about baptisms, Dr Van Voorhis also stated America has the greatest % of Christians its had in US history.

At some point baptisms are going to decline.

They did the same exact report in 2014.



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mikedsjr said:

I'm not a historian. But I have listened to an historian,Prof. Daniel Van Voorhis, state in the early 1800s the % of professing Christians in America was under 10%.

There are hi points and low points. The church should not be concerned about numbers as a barometer of spiritual health. I find that there is value in the concerns of the church but I believe millenials generation is just being more natural to their values than past generations who crowd into church like its a country club. The country club Christian is dying out. Thats it.


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If that last two sentences are true then THANKS BE TO GOD!

JM said:

I would like to see how they define "Christian." It may include those who NEVER attend church, JW's, Mormons, whatever.

Yours in the Lord,

jm

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Probably. His first approach is academic when doing research.


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Besides the low numbers of Millennials being baptised, two other things struck me:

It seems that about 2/3 of members are in-active! ("15.7 million members and 5.8 million Sunday worshipers" reported). Is this not a big concern? Here in England, it is normal for typical Sunday attendance to be similar or higher than membership. There will always be people away on any given Sunday (illness, holidays, working, less committed) but this is normally more than balanced by children, visitors, and non-members. In fact, we have the opposite problem: people who are regular, committed, and involved but are unwilling to become members.

Doesn't this also have a practical problem of having inquorate members' meetings?

The other surprising thing was mention of children's baptisms. Is it normal to baptise infants and young children in SBC churches? How does that fit with believers baptism?

Perhaps the lower numbers of Millennials being baptised just indicates that this group is more honest, and people are not willing to be baptised and become nothing more than non-active or nominal members? (which is the point Mikedsjr made in #9) Are the Millennials missing from SBC churches? Or jut not willing to be baptised?

Any decline is a concern. And a decline among younger adults does need to be taken seriously. However, America is still many years away from the situation in the UK.

Well at least the SBC now has something else to worry about and can briefly stop all the infighting over Calvinism and Arminianism.

HantsUK said:

Besides the low numbers of Millennials being baptised, two other things struck me:

It seems that about 2/3 of members are in-active! ("15.7 million members and 5.8 million Sunday worshipers" reported). Is this not a big concern? Here in England, it is normal for typical Sunday attendance to be similar or higher than membership.

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For what it's worth, the reverse is the case in the USA. This may by due, in part, to denominations exaggerating their membership totals, and that may in turn relate to them being in "competition" with so many other branches of their own denomination and other, similar, denominations; but in any case, many church bodies report more members than ever show up for worship. I think that, because of this, there is a little bit of a trend developing in the direction of using Average Sunday Attendance as the benchmark instead of reported membership totals.

But the same jockeying and exaggerating will occur as, for instance, with the Episcopal diocese I read about only recently that has taken to including the numbers of children attending obligatory chapel services in private, church-related schools as part of their ASA, simply to keep those totals up.

Well at least the SBC now has something else to worry about and can briefly stop all the infighting over Calvinism and Arminianism.

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Ah, but that's not predestined to be!

But the same jockeying and exaggerating will occur as, for instance, with the Episcopal diocese I read about only recently that has taken to including the numbers of children attending obligatory chapel services in private, church-related schools as part of their ASA, simply to keep those totals up.

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I was married at my UMC which I attended in middle, high, and a little during summer in college. They automatically converted me to membership at my new address once married. I think I was finally purged last year almost 6 years later, while I was also a member at a Baptist church. It's normal for churches to have people who have moved or simply ceased attending on the books. Some churches (including SBCs) often don't check up with old churches when members transfer.

To get back to the topic at hand - I notice we all are guilty of using terminology that can dance around things a little, but one thing I will point out about the SBC is that an SBC church can hold a rather wide range of views. For example, we all know the Calvinistic Baptists (or even Reformed Baptists) vs Arminian Baptists, but at an association meeting one SBC minister preached on kenosis (ironically apparently the product of a Lutheran pastor) which could be tied to larger heresy. For the record, there is no push to kick that church/pastor out or any retribution.

While I do not agree with the poster that the SBC is not a denomination, I do agree that what passes as the SBC is not exactly a unified body in doctrine. That said, you can at least find some agreement in believer's baptism with few exceptions, though I have noted in past studies that the amount of very young baptisms is creeping up. So SBC's may even lose that final distinction.

I don't dislike the Baptists because I are one for now, but I wish there would be a return to understanding what made us Southern Baptist is more than voting Republican and saying "ya'll." Baptists can't draw on their age (which, IMHO is a bad argument anyway because the Orthodox stand over to side waving "Hi!" when you start talking about the age of churches.), but we can draw on some Anabaptist tradition (like it or not) which mainly deals with the separation of church (and how to suffer righteously) and state which is very valuable for the looming times. We can also draw on the Particular Baptist side of the house which recognizes God's great holiness, wisdom, righteousness, and power.

For the record, I do think the harvest metaphors and refiner's fire metaphors are in full swing these days. That said, I cannot find any satisfaction in the numbers bound to hell: “If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.”

That's a heckuva mission statement, but I think it captures the heart of God. And by the way, he was a bit Calvinist.