William Thornton is the inimitable SBC Plodder.
“No one goes to the convention anymore,” laments some of the brethren who have been around long enough to remember the sardine days where 20,000, 30,000, and 40,000 messengers could pack into a meeting venue.
2010 Orlando 11,070
2011 Phoenix 4,814
2012 New Orleans 7,814
2013 Houston 5,103
2014 Baltimore 5,294
Toss out Orlando, the attendance bump for which we can thank Mickey Mouse. Look askance at New Orleans because it’s a nice venue with the crawfish, beignets, and all that. That leaves SBC attendance in the 5k range. Pretty low for a denomination where millions gather each Lord’s Day to worship in almost 50,000 churches.
Consider this: The North American Mission Board’s SEND NORTH AMERICA conference scheduled for this summer already has over 7,200 registrations. Toss out maybe a couple of hundred unpaid registrations and that is 7,000 registrants paying $129 per person (early registrants paid $89) to attend.
The SBC annual meeting costs zip, only food, transportation, and lodging, nothing to attend.
So, why would seven thousand Southern Baptists pay good money to attend an SNA conference when the SBC meeting is free?
There are a lot of reasons why in 2015 Southern Baptists aren’t that keen to attend the SBC annual meeing and slap backs, glad hand, and engage in the annual bragfest with old friends.
- It’s boring.
- There’s nothing much going on these days.
- Folks don’t see much value in attending.
- Nothing much will change in the old ship SBC.
- Neither my presence, my vote, nor my voice count for much in the SBC.
- Decisions are pre-made by an oligarchy of SBC grandees and conventions just ratify them.
Factor in the reality that a vocal segment of SBCers don’t really like NAMB and the attendance figures are indeed impressive.
I know I’m odd, but I enjoy the SBC. It’s a chance to fellowship face to face with a lot of guys I only interact with online during the year. Of course, that also means I actually HAVE to interact with a few of the knuckleheads here face to face (did I say that outloud?). The SBC is what it is – a business meeting. It can be improved, but we can’t make it what it’s not to bring in a crowd. Obviously, if you want higher attendance, have the thing in Orlando, New Orleans, probably Atlanta, perhaps Charlotte –… Read more »
Hey, Charlotte is just down the road. I might come if it’s in Charlotte!
Actually the fellowship does sound appealing. There are some guys I’d like to meet.
By the way, I was pleasantly surprised at attendance at Baltimore last year. Yes, it was an election year. But it was a city out of the SBC wheelhouse – long way from Texas/OK etc.
I was expecting something more in the 4000 range. That we were bigger than Houston was something I found shocking.
For me, the pastor’s conference makes the SBC meeting more attractive. Some of the auxiliary activities that are popping up help motivate me to attend as well. I enjoy attending.
To be perfectly honest, and maybe this is a marker of my increasing age, but I used to like the pastor’s conference better than I have in recent years.
Depends on the speaker. I skipped out on some. Some were awful. Some preached sermons I had heard them preach before. And a couple were really good. H.B. Charles is my favorite preacher in the SBC right now.
H.B. Charles is a great preacher. He is also old school, that’s why I like him.
Dave,
I’m only 44 but give me the old time preachers any day. I went to some of the pastor’s conference in Houston. I wasn’t impressed.
We have lots of great preachers in the SBC but everyone seems to want the new cool hip preachers.
I want to listen to preachers who simply exegete Scripture. Don’t care if they are hip, Old, Young, Southern Baptist, Acts 29, or some independent church on Saturn. Just give me the guys who exegete the text.
That’s cool Tyler. You have ever right to your preferences, and like you I prefer to hear the scriptures exegeted. I also prefer the old school method of preaching.
Because you mentioned the SNA event specifically, I am going to sound off for a moment. Not because anyone is listening, but because it will make me feel better. I am not planning to attend the SNA event in August. It was initially on my calendar, but when time came to buy a ticket, I opted out. I got an email in early January telling me that I could buy a ticket for $99. Also in that email, I was told that if I have a group of 25 or more, we could buy tickets for $45 each. The church… Read more »
What if small-church members used social media, or maybe even an app, to create a group for purposes of ticket discounts? Find 24 other folks who want to go to the same event and sign up together. Would that work? Would there be anything unethical about it?
According to the email Participants have to be from the same church to get the discount referenced.
Orlando 2010 was the year of the Great Commission Resurgence report, so I’d say a minor controversy was as big a reason there as Mouse. Which goes to show that some of your thinking is right — people come when they think it’s important to come.
But GCR also marked a generational shift from CR to the Happy Calvinists. They seem to severely discount the idea that a group of believers and the Holy Spirit can make some decisions *better* than professionals. (And for generational reasons, I think, not necessarily theological reasons.)
I’m having trouble following this comment?
It’s easy to understand, Tarheel. Calvinists are incapable of relying on the Holy Spirit…
…or that’s a red herring and it has nothing to do with attendance at the SBC Annual Meeting. You pick.
Dear Greg: Your remark must have been meant in good humor, because I have quite a few books in my library on the Holy Spirit. Many of them written by Calvinists and every one of them shows or displays or represents that he is completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit for the accomplishment of any good. You must know that our Founding Fathers, Roger Williams, Dr. John Clarke, William Screven, Richard Furman, Silas and Jesse Mercer, Isaac Backus, John Hart, Shubal Stearns, Daniel Marshall, Samuel Harris, John Leland, John Taylor, John Gano, Luther Rice, William B. Johnson, Basil Manley, Sr.,… Read more »
🙂
Greg,
That’s how I took it too – but wanted to make sure I was understanding his implication correctly before I responded – so I asked for clarification.
In the meantime I’ve decided that no matter the intent of the implication – I’m going to treat it as a red herring – I think that’ll probably be best.
Tarheel, Greg –
See my long-ish reply below. I tend to think of the current group as “Happy Calvinists,” because they’re the newest participants. But it’s probably more fair to say we currently have a “Late Boomer/Early GenX coalition.”
Whatever the label, the current generation isn’t as sold on congregational meetings, and the SBC operates like a big congregational meeting.
That’s not theology as much as age; 9Marks holds member meetings very highly.
Jon: I agree with your deeper analysis. I honestly do not believe that the Calvinist tag–Happy or otherwise–led to any kind of useful conclusions, hence my use of the term “red herring”. In a post-modern culture we see rejection of authority, mass-customization of belief, and rejection of bureaucratic–i.e. “military structured”–organizations as kind of “megatrends” (to borrow from John Naisbitt). Add to that the immediacy of online interactions–both social and less expensive traditional media–and an unwillingness to change to support influence by the current generation and you have an opportunity for “slow growth” (if not demise) over time. In discussions on… Read more »
The problem with the user experience of Southern Baptists is that the Convention is an extra-biblical structure, one borrowed from Masonry and the federal government. There is some scriptural justification for the local association, but one will search long and hard to find any justification for State Conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention followed by the Boards for the various institutions as well as the other organizations. This is not much debated or discussed today, but it was in the 1800s. The Landmarkers and their setbacks among Southern Baptists might explain why the discussion over the legitimacy of the conventions… Read more »
Sorry, it might read cryptically. I mean to say that 2010 was different from the following conventions, in that it struck a chord with two different groups. It drew people who were broadly interested in the Convention staying relevant. It also drew younger people who, at the time, wanted to see not just relevance, but a generational change. It was the passing of the torch from the Charles Stanleys of SBC-life to the Johnny Hunts. A side effect of the generational change, however, is that this newer group doesn’t believe as strongly in the ‘rightness’ of congregational meetings. If you look at a… Read more »
To put it another way, Convention attendance is a combination of people who think ‘what’ we do is important, as well as the ‘how.’
We’re in a time where the average Baptist is more concerned with ‘what’ than ‘how.’
As practical as I am, I think ‘how’ explains some of the difference between us and the exhaustion of the Protestant mainline.
William,
Thanks for your article, I actually found it encouraging. I mean the fact that more people will pay good money to go to a conference in support of missions than they will to sit through a 2-3 day business meeting is awesome.
In answer to your question, if I had a $1000 dollar conference budget, I would spend it going to the E.K. Bailey Expository Preaching Conference in Dallas, TX.