Southern Baptist Convention sees largest single-year membership decline: What to know about why

The Southern Baptist Convention saw its steepest single-year decline in membership in 2022, continuing a 16-year downward trajectory, due in part to up-to-date member rolls.

Meanwhile, the Nashville-based SBC saw an increase in church giving last year, according to the SBC Annual Church Profile. Lifeway Research, a division within Lifeway, or the SBC’s publishing arm, released the yearly report Tuesday.

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Here are the major findings from the data analysis for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination:

Key numbers

There are currently 13.2 million members and 47,198 churches in the SBC. More than 180,000 people were baptized and average weekly in-person worship attendance was 3.8 million people.

Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky and Mississippi are the leading states for the number of churches, church membership and average weekly in-person worship attendance.

Undesignated receipts of giving to the SBC’s Cooperative Program budget totaled more than $9.9 billion, according to data from state Southern Baptist conventions that collected financial information.

Change over time

There are 457,371 fewer members and 416 fewer churches in the SBC in 2022 compared to 2021. The difference in members is the largest single-year drop in 100 years, according to a news release.

Membership in the SBC has been declining since 2007.

However, giving was up by 2% and in-person worship attendance up by 16% in 2022 from the prior year.

The catch

Like many Christian denominations in the U.S., church membership is declining. But other factors are contributing to the SBC’s declines in 2022.

“Much of the downward movement we are seeing in membership reflects people who stopped participating in an individual congregation years ago and the record keeping is finally catching up,” Lifeway Research executive director Scott McConnell said in a news release.

The issue of outdated records has unexpectedly come to the forefront when the SBC Executive Committee, which manages SBC business outside of annual meetings, voted to approve recommendations to disfellowship churches in September and February. After the votes, some of the disfellowshipped churches said they had not been active in the SBC for years.

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The oversight group responsible for recommendations to disfellowship churches explained that it was intentional about communicating with churches prior to the executive committee vote.

“The Annual Church Profile process is an annual effort to seek to get the most updated information about congregations in the Southern Baptist Convention,” McConnell said in a statement. “This process prompts those involved to check this information and to submit changes. But not every congregation responds to these requests.”

The SBC will meet for its next annual meeting in June in New Orleans.

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 Baptist Convention membership declines in 2022