SBC church giving, membership drop amid concerns about abuse, women pastors controversies
As the nation’s largest Protestant denomination navigates declining membership in regions that are historic strongholds, it also faced another year of revenue decline, according to recent reports.
The Southern Baptist Convention saw a 4.3% drop in giving to its budget at the national level for the most recent fiscal year compared to the previous year, the SBC Executive Committee recently reported.
Though a product of various economic factors, it coincides with other insecurities about controversy and division in the Nashville-based SBC and its effect on the denomination’s health.
Mainstream conservatives worry about an effort from opposition conservatives, who want to pull the convention further to the right, to enshrine a ban on women pastors. Meanwhile, opposition conservatives continue to warn about the liability of clergy sexual abuse reform.
At the SBC annual meeting in June in New Orleans, delegates, called messengers, overwhelmingly approved an abuse reform task force to continue its work for another year. Messengers also voted to uphold the ouster of two churches with women pastors, including California megachurch Saddleback Church, and a constitutional amendment to permanently ban women pastors. The amendment requires ratification at next year’s SBC annual meeting.
Then, North Carolina megachurch Elevation Church left the SBC in what some considered an early sign of more churches leaving over the constitutional amendment on women pastors. Critics of the measure worry it too stringently binds the SBC’s doctrinal statement with its constitutional standards for affiliation.
Last month, the SBC Executive Committee laid off staff and acknowledged expenses related to abuse reform and a third-party investigation played a part, which opposition conservatives felt proved their point.
The SBC’s various downward metrics are difficult to pinpoint to one issue. Annual revenue for the SBC Cooperative Program — a budget for the denomination’s 12 national agencies, called entities — declined year-over-year about half the time in the last two decades, according to an analysis of SBC financial records.
The recent statistic about 4.3% annual revenue decline doesn't account for another share of church giving to the Cooperative Program exclusively for state conventions. On average, state conventions receive at least 60% of the total share of church giving, while the other 40% goes to the national SBC entities.
Also, the denomination’s internal census reported in May that church membership declined for a 16th consecutive year. Recently, Lifeway Research, a division within the Brentwood-based publishing arm of the SBC, reported more geographically specific data.
“It is increasingly difficult for a church to see growth today,” said Scott McConnell, Lifeway Research executive director, in a news release. “Southern Baptists have never had more declining churches and fewer growing churches than we see today.”
About 73% of average Southern Baptist church attendance is fewer than 100 people, according to Lifeway Research. Suburban churches, which are especially prevalent in the South and Midwest, far outnumber urban and rural churches. The latter two each account for less than a third of the total.
Southern Baptist church membership declined in almost every U.S. region except for New England. Membership in the SBC’s 10 largest states dropped between 7% to 13%, except for Florida’s 20%. The most growth was in Washington, D.C., Maine, Iowa, Minnesota and Rhode Island.
Send Network, the SBC’s church planting arm, will focus more energy in the next decade on planting churches in urban and racially and ethnically diverse communities, said Send President Vance Pittman in an interview in June.
Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Southern Baptists wrestle with statistical losses amid controversies
