By the grace of God and the tolerance of Dave Miller, I occupy the lofty heights of the SBC Voices Distinguished Chair of SBC Realism. Alas the chair is not endowed but I’m receptive to any offers.
Here are a few questions for the SBC hoi polloi:
Revitalization
Church revitalization has been a buzzword and a watchword since I took my first church in 1982. Do those who are practitioners and contributors to the concept have honest metrics that actually demonstrate the success or failure of revitalization efforts? I’m not accusing anyone of anything, just asking. What is the measure of church revitalization? Baptisms? Membership? Programs? Congregational happiness? We are a slightly declining convention of churches. The state conventions have revitalization staff, hold revitalization conferences, offer revitalization resources. Associations make attempts at this as well. Do any of these have demonstrable successes or is it just expected that with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, SBC entities should do something for revitalization?
Church health
If we’re not baptizing as many folks, if we have lower attendance, can claiming to be a healthier church be an appropriate metric? I understand the thinking but it sounds like a sales pitch to me. Same problem here with vague and undefined language. Better question, since state conventions like my own have long years of declining baptisms, will we start hearing about how we’ve worked hard to improve church health rather than more concrete measures? After all, we can claim greater health in spite of declining numbers. States spend around $300 million in CP money. What, ultimately, are we getting for that kind of investment? Staff, conferences, slogans and programs that cannot be measured? Just asking.
Cooperative Program
Nothing describes the SBC like our venerable Cooperative Program, almost a century old now. If the percentage of church offering plate dollars that go through the CP is a measure of CP market share, then we are managing a declining legacy brand. “Market share” has declined by over half over the last 40 years. Whatever eruptions of concern we go through, and we are in a years long push to reduce state convention share (the reduction is negligible to church members, a few percent), the bottom line has remained the same: we’re losing ground with the churches. We are plunging towards 4% in CP percentage. Can this ground be regained? Double digits are a fantasy dream.
Responding to clergy sex abuse
The SBC of 2019 doesn’t resemble the SBC of previous years in this regard. There was a time when Baptist Press would not touch a story of clergy sex abuse in an SBC church. There was a time when local church autonomy was the standard answer to questions of what “the SBC” does to stop sex abuse in churches and by clergy. Now, the deplorable topic is the subject at every level of SBC life. What remains to be done by “the SBC” about sex abuse?
Victims are given voices but they are, according to some, the wrong victims. Thorough, solid materials and programs are provided, many of these are free, to churches but the sources are suspect to some. The private MinistrySafe organization is the main source for SBC churches, at modest costs (my medium-sized church pays a few hundred annually for this), but is heavily criticized. Another organization, GRACE whose founder and Executive Director is Boz Tchividjian, is praised and preferred. Oddly, there is some competition for the attention and funding on church sex abuse resources. Both MS and GRACE will be featured at the national ERLC conference on sex abuse in October. SBCers are exposed to both. In my view both do well.
What remains to be done? Well, the creation of an SBC database of convicted, confessed, and credibly accused SBC clergy has yet to be created. Best I can tell, no one in current leadership has taken that off the table.
The beleaguered patriarchy
Exactly what place will the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood find going forward? I’m not seeing much of a role, but then maybe they will change the archaic name and try to find a place.
SBC President, 2020
Who will venture a run at the position of SBC president next year? Some have predicted that Tom Ascol, president of Founders Conference will run. Frankly, unless he comes out for pet eradication, I can’t see how he could have made himself less electable. I will make a wild conjecture that some megapastor will be hungering and thirsting after the position, although I still have the faint hope that some non-mega will be elected in my lifetime.
Fishing
Why don’t I fish more? Good question. I could fish any day of the week, including Sunday if I wanted. Nah, too hot; too cold; too windy; too sunny. Blah. Blah.
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Distinguished looking fellow, that.
Church revitalization and church health both seem like good things to me. From what I have seen of both, it seems hard to argue with them. I’m sure mistakes are made, and sometimes they dont work out. However, the basic idea of trying to take a church from poor health to good health seems like a really noble work for a pastor to take on. In a sense, it seems like most new pastors are engaging in some form of revitalization or pursuit of church health.
I did hear of a fellow who’s church was said to be declining because he had taken all of the inactive members off the roles, and their membership dropped from so many to not nearly so many. Yet the little group he had left were the people who actually showed up from week to week or were homebound. They began to grow but still seemed declining by the statistics.
I saw Boz Tchividjian mocking some guy he didnt think handled an abuse case well on Twitter. His stuff on the subject may be great. But if he started every training session with, “I may be mocking you publicly later”, I’m not sure he’d get as many takers on his stuff.
I’m all for church revitalization and church health. My point, made poorly I suppose, is that we should have some way to measure or evaluate the staff and programs that we label as such. If we are pouring staff and resources into church revitalization and health and baptisms and membership decline, maybe the money is better spent elsewhere.
Maybe so. That’s a reasonable thing to consider and to evaluate.
Unless the metrics of baptisms and membership are themselves flawed because baptisms are compared against times when baptism did not always accompany a genuine conversion… and by extension church membership rolls were inflated with unregenerate persons who are not likely to be active attendees, and more importantly participants.
So the common practice of comparing a more regenerate and active baptized membership roll to an inflated and inactive baptized membership might be something worth reconsidering.
Those are good points. This is a hard thing to measure under the normal metrics. These kinds of works often go through large losses in “membership” when they clean roles. To say, “Show me some results” might reasonably be answered with wait five years or eight years to see the fruit of this kind of labor.
Right. It is a long game.
Typical SBC metrics do not allow for that.
“I will make a wild conjecture that some megapastor will be hungering and thirsting after the position, although I still have the faint hope that some non-mega will be elected in my lifetime.”
May it be so. I myself have the nearly nonexistent hope that it will be a layman (or lay woman or lay person or whatever term is currently fashionable).
I’ll join you in that but don’t have much optimism about it.
The difference between GRACE and MS is MS ha a fiduciary responsibility to its churches. GRACE does not, and thus is entirely independent. That’s my understanding anyway.
Let us not forget BP is still slow to report on abuse, generally only takes “high profile” cases and has shown bias to other SBC entities by not contacting or using survivors’ statements.
FWIW.
I don’t think your first sentence is accurate. You could clarify what you mean by “fiduciary” relationship but in order to use MS products, recipients must acknowledge that they understand there is no lawyer/client relationship created.
My point on BP was that there is a vast difference in what they did (or did not) do in the past. BP isn’t a news gathering organization anymore, very few staff.
According to a 2016 CT article by Ed Stetzer that I read, the success rate is pretty low. Only 10-20% of churches in need of revitalization, qualified as plateaued or in decline 5 or more years, will actually make the changes necessary. Of that 10-20%, less will actually be revitalized. If a church has been plateaued or in decline 20 or more years, it’s about 1% that actually turn around.
Doesn’t mean you dont attempt it, but you’re talking about churches first of all willing to make radical changes, then have the stamina to see it through to actual revitalization. Most simply don’t
It’s not politically feasible but we should put our tens of millions of CP dollars where there is the best chance for success. We’re not doing that now. Activity, as the old saw goes, is not accomplishment.
Where do you think the best chance of success is?
Where the best results are shown.
Over what time period?
Give a new program or thrust a few years and re-evaluate. Some revitalization programs and staff have been operating for years. Should be easy to judge their results. Many of the states have staff charged with this. Seminaries have programs, staff, and faculty. Some associations also.
I would say that this same question could be asked about church planting. The SBC has spent lots of money on church planting with the idea that these plants would generate lots of new converts and increased CP dollars. Our denominational decline has not been stopped in spite of the large number of church plants we have started, and while many churches in need of revitalization have closed, I would venture to say that church plants have failed at about the same rate and at a higher cost.
True, but one number that is not declining is total churches, slight increases. It’s not unreasonable to attribute this to church planting by namb and others. New churches baptize at a higher rate than established churches, so factor that in as well.
I doubt anyone would argue that we should stop planting new churches. There are many suggestions for improving the survival rate of plants.
My opinion is that an expectation that newly planted churches will yield increased CP dollars is misplaced. I’d like to see data on this. Plants are required to give a certain percentage to the CP for a defined period. After that, what happens? Good subject to explore and discuss.
Evelyn;
Several years ago I spoke with the missions outreach director of our state convention and asked him to justify the enormous amount of funds being provided to not only new church starts but existing churches requesting to become members of our convention when it was obvious from statistics published by the convention that most of these churches did not contribute anything to the state convention or local associations – neither money nor participation.
I suspected they were joining forces with the state convention only to get monetary handouts and really had no intention of assimilating with the associations and convention.
I haven’t seen statistics from the NAMB grant recipients but I wonder if they may be similarly motivated.
Perhaps I am just a skeptic at heart.
Much more money goes to plants than revitalization or replanting. NAMB isnt funding revitalization’s on a church by church basis. That comes from the individual church or in the case of a replant, other churches. So we are investing much more in the slightly more successful planting strategy than we are revitalization’s. Both have massive failure rates.
Where is the future best focused upon? Well, the number of churches in need of revitalization outnumber church plants exponentially. So even with a low success rate, by sheer number, the possibility for impact is greater, keeping in mind that a church that truly is revitalized or replanted basically functions as a new church, with new church impact.
If the success rate is close, as it appears to be, revitalization’s have the far greater opportunity for kingdom impact simply as there are tens of thousands more opportunities
No links to Will “sue Southern Baptists” McRaney, please.
Adam, Did not know a thing abut McRaney, googled SBC church plants, his was first article with some hard numbers that seemed to justify his position. I did not know about his lawsuit issue and personally do not believe Christians should sue each other. I can assume that his legal issue would cloud his opinion of SBC decision making and operation. I am a layman and not aware of many of the inside baseball things that many here know. I am here to learn what I can and gain a perspective from the contributors here. History and background do matter in how events are interpreted . Just asking a thought that flashed in my mnd, what will be the position of many if and when a sexual abuse lawsuit is filed against an SBC church or the SBC itself. Not trying to hijack the comments and do not expect an answer as it is off topic, just thinking out loud. Thanks for the info about the lawsuit.
No problem, Steve. There are some sites to which we do not allow links in the comments. McRaney is one of those. Thanks for understanding.
Glad you broke your break for that one.
Fine. Let’s see hard data.
Revitalization is far more nuanced than planting. Many say they are revitalizing, but few actually make the necessary changes. Hard numbers are hard to come by due to this as determining when revitalization has occurred has no hard metric I know of. But let’s say the data of 75% or so of SBC churches being plateaued or in decline is accurate. That’s 35K churches or so. If 10% are truly revitalized, by my definition, becoming once again a vibrant, obedient church. That’s 3500. The last success rate for plants I saw was 20%. With less than 1000 plants a year, that’s low hundreds. The batting average is fairly close, but you get many more at bats in revitalization.
The association we’re in is currently led by a gentleman who began working with the SBC in revitalization back in the 70’s. He led the SCBC and NCBC in church revitalization, and has had his own consulting firm for 15 years or so specializing in this. I’ll see if he has anything more specific
William Thornton, is it true the NAMB pays for the homes of the new church plants? I read that the number totaled over 62 million in 2017 , more than the 7 million spent on evangelical outreach. This is where again where simple transparency would help so much. Is it worth the cost that the NAMB is spending on planting new churches near “old” churches” worth it and what really is the goal? Are we laboring to spread the Gospel or working on a social agenda? My church is going to open a store front satellite church 12 miles away that is needed like a hole in the head. It is 6 miles from an existing SBC church, .05 miles from an independent Baptist church but it is near a wealthy retirement community literally outside their gate. Am I being cynical? Has the devil got me clouded? We are not a “mega” church by any means. I now wonder if the new church will receive financial aid from the state or national convention. I am not going to pursue it as I do not want to be a negative influence . This is one reason I am here to learn what some knowledgeable people ponder and expound upon. So I do appreciate your and others bringing up some really relevant , close to home issues. I want the SBC to stay true to its purpose and the CP to be run well to promote the Gospel.
NAMB has some transitional housing. They don’t provide planters with permanent housing. Autonomy means churches can be stacked one on top of another. Nothing you can do about it.
I do not think NAMB provides financial support for campuses, only autonomous plants.
Steve, just a few years ago NAMB bought a house in our town for church planters. Two families can live there, time limit is six months. None of the SBC pastors in our town were consulted. I only found out when one of our members was asked to “manage” the house. She quit after a week because of problems. My church has a house that needs remodeled. I had asked IMB if they needed a missionary house in our area (San Francisco bay area) and they said no. I didn’t ask NAMB because I didn’t know they needed a house. NAMB spent at lease $800,000 on the house, could have used ours with well under $100,000 of work. By the way, we have done some volunteer electrical work at the NAMB house. We have taken welcome gifts when a couple moves in – but that is rare because those planters tend to have no interaction with the existing churches so we don’t know when someone moves in or out. We do currently have a good relationship with a planter who formerly lived in the NAMB house (providing space to park their equipment trailer, space for music practice). To be honest, knowing how NAMB has spent money in our area makes it hard to promote Annie Armstrong.
William, here is what our DOM says. Hes been working in revitalization since the 70’s.
1) 1 out of 10 churches who need to revitalize are able to do so
2) 6 of ten churches who need to revitalize refuse to do so
3) The next 2 out of ten will engage in cosmetic changes
4) The last 2 of 10 will engage in significant changes
5) of those 2, 1 will successfully revitalize
6) so of the 4 of 10 willing to at least make some changes, 1, 25%, will succeed
That’s based on nearly 50 years of him working in this
Your point about planting having massive failure rates is overstated. A Study done by NAMB, while a little dated, showed that plants survival rate at year 4 is actually 68%. The study is named Church Plant Survivability and Health Study 2007.
William Thornton:
You touched upon several downward trends in the SBC and, thus, its member churches.
I think the salient questions which you did not attempt to address, and which SBCers are avoiding like the plague, are questions that Industrial Engineers have utilized for many decades when analyzing any situation – who, what, when, where, why and how.
Granted many will say asking those questions is too controversial, divisive or mean-spirited but the method has served many businesses well in correcting incorrect processes, procedures and methods for many, many decades.
Yes, doing so it would mean that a few toes would be stepped upon in the process but sometimes that is necessary in order to get things back on the track onto which God has ordered us.
Two thoughts on this post: First, probably most folks would define “revitalization” as growing again. If a church has been declining or plateaued, then to start growing again means it is revitalized, at least to some extent. Second, it is easier to plant a new church than revitalize an old one. Why so? For the reasons mentioned above by Jeff P. Most churches are not willing to make the changes necessary to grow again. A good book on this is Terry D. Smith’s “Changing Course” (Available on Amazon).
It’s more than just growth people wise however. Its every facet over a set period or the growth was just a temporary bump. Its growth measured not just in attendance, but households added, that shows evidence of biological, transfer and growth through conversions. Growth in finances as measured against inflation. Growth in community involvement and discipleship in as much as that can be measured. A growing vision. And a growth in a willingness to reassess and adjust every 7 years to keep moving forward
Usually, by this time of the year, someone has been put forth as the up and coming nominee for SBC President. I’m surprised there wasn’t someone waiting in the wings already. Is Ken Hemphill going to make another run at it? That may be one of the clear signs that things in the SBC are changing and it is making some progress in growing out of its provincial backwardness and into genuine shared leadership. Or maybe all of the pastors and ambitious wannabees on the trustee boards are aging and don’t have the energy to stay in power any more. If I were still a member of an SBC church, I’d head to the convention and nominate Dr. Dwight McKissic. Not just for the purpose of turning heads and getting attention but because the SBC needs someone who can see things for what they are and be open and honest in evaluating them and working toward genuine improvement.
Does the SBC have a place where it distributes church revitalization materials? Several years ago, a church where I served bivocationally used Barna research’s plan, laid out in Barna’s book, Turnaround Churches. But the problem with the research was that Barna could not find enough “revitalized” churches to consistently back up the plan he set forth with actual data. Last time I checked, he still did not have enough “turnaround” churches to establish a data base. If the SBC’s revitalization plans for churches are based on data, I’d like to read it and see what they’ve got.
Focusing on metrics:
I’ve taken intra-church surveys over the years, usually when a pastor left or we had an intentional interim. But even the Long-Term Planning Committee didn’t seem interested in plumbing or tracking those surveys over the years. Too tedious and depressing; high resistance to honest self-assessment. Yet these same churches routinely require metrics & proof-of-results in order to continue annual line-item budget donations to local parachurch ministries, right? So, in the local nonprofit I helped with, we did metrics. We wrote before-and-after questions on attitudes & relationships,, tracked employment & education rates, family reunification, sobriety, volunteer service, and especially our good rate — and testimonies — of those who came to a saving belief in Christ. Occasionally these exercises convinced us change was needed. Some churches need that eye-opening motivation too. Not everything can be tracked or measured, of course, and we can never be the Holy Spirit. But humble willingness to examine oneself is good.
…can think of six seminaries, a dozen state conventions and some other entities that ought to hire you, Karen.