Sep 5, 2008
Southern Baptist Success? Maybe
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I’ve spent 3 days away finishing drafts of my dissertation. They are off to the editor and to the professor. I was not going to post this week because technically I’m on vacation until Monday, but I just couldn’t let these two posts go without commenting.
A couple of days ago, my friend Steve Addison, an Australian, had a post entitled Southern Baptist success? Maybe. He states:
I keep bumping into church leaders of different persuasions whose goal it is to see their church plants grow to 500+.
If you want a case study of how it’s done, try the Southern Baptists. I’ve just finished a 1994 article by Roger Finke that shows between 1920 and 1990 the average size of a Southern Baptist church soared from 115 to 396. Impressive.
The other trend he noticed was the dramatic increase in seminary trained professional clergy. Before 1950 the Southern Baptist seminaries produced 10,000 graduates. From 1950-90 the number grew to 60,000.
The Southern Baptists heritage was all about small churches and lay leadership. Today it’s professional staff and large churches.
Bigger churches. Trained clergy. Sounds like a recipe for success.
Maybe.
I commented on Steve’s post that the irony is that 1950 was the year Southern Baptists started our trned downward, increasing at a decreasing rate to the point that membership has declined this year. And the trend in a continuing decrease unless something drastic is done.
Correlation? Maybe.
We’ve trained people how to do weddings and funerals and run a church. What we haven’t taught them to do is release people to do ministry, to reproduce, and to consider God’s kingdom before the church’s (or pastor’s) kingdom.
Which brings me to the second post I want to highlight.
Bob Roberts blogged this week about How DFW got the Buckle on the Bible Belt. He states:
People sometimes make fun of Dallas-Fort Worth being the buckle on the Bible belt. It isn’t anymore. It’s unbuckled. The stats are in and church attendance is around the 17% mark – in northeast Tarrant county where I live it’s probably more like 9%. We think because we see churches and some of them big that we are churched. We are not. A lot of the shelves (pews) are empty in those stores! The ones that are full are often filled with people looking for a different kind of church – not Jesus! If we were “churched” anywhere near what we were just 35 years ago at a minimum we would have to double the number of churches out here.
For some pastors that would freak them out – more competition! We need to shift our mindset from one that says “I pastor a church to reach this community . . . ” to one that says “I pastor a church to create communities of faith in this community all over.” One thinks like a preacher/pastor the other a missionary/mobilizer.
And I thought DFW was supposed to be the most churched area in the country!
I heard an interesting statement last year at a missional leadership conference by a Canadian Southern Baptist. He said, when churches go mega, the kingdom decreases. Why? Because they kill a lot of small & medium-sized churches.
Maybe instead of growing tall and increasing overhead, churches should reproduce and increase the kingdom.
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“The Southern Baptists heritage was all about small churches and lay leadership. Today it’s professional staff and large churches.” …It’s great to get all the education and training you can to do ministry, but let’s lose the titles; we can all be ministers or leaders.
Why be a mega-church? Often more community and a sense of a faith family comes through smaller, closer churches. Often the mega-churches become theme parks and country clubs. Let’s stick with the faith family mentality.
I love this …
We’ve trained people how to do weddings and funerals and run a church. What we haven’t taught them to do is release people to do ministry, to reproduce, and to consider God’s kingdom before the church’s (or pastor’s) kingdom.
Can I quote you at the next FBC business meeting when they discuss why attendence is low and “how do we get more people to attend service”?
I think a big problem we have is that pastors are looking too much like managers. It’s become a game of Priestcraft- where pastors compete for limited resources. Resources are important, but let us not forget that ‘if we build it they will come’. In other words, if pastors/leaders truly come to Jesus themselves and make Him and His teachings forefront in their lives, being willing to live in poverty if necessary, they will naturally amass followers. People are hungry for TRUE CHRISTIANITY and they want to associate with TRUE CHRISTIANS, not just Christians in name. Too often we here of preachers who make their duty the persecution of other faiths and peoples or who aggrandize themselves or seek for money and power rather than humbly, meekingly, and lovingly, seeking to bless everyone around them, like Jesus did.
I just ran across your site this morning while researching depression in the ministry. I just wanted to let you know that I enjoy and appreciate many of the posts you have on here.