Agony
We’ve read for some time about the coming tsunami of church closures and now at least one state convention has a program and staff person whose responsibility includes “serving interested churches that are near closing and helping find creative solutions like mergers, cooperatives with other churches, or even utilization of property for church planting.” Sad to see but I’m glad there is a resource person in this area for churches to utilize. A sub-plot in this church closure/merger business is will be megachurches grabbing the assets of dying or dead churches for their real estate value. It’s quite sad, agonizing, to watch a church die.
Irony
Some are loudly complaining about the number of allegedly Calvinistic CEOs of our SBC entities, yet the reaction of Southern Baptists as a whole has been quite positive. Both NAMB and IMB, whose leaders are on the complaint list for certain circles of SBCdom have presided over record offerings. Both entities had serious leadership failures that have been corrected. Midwestern seminary seems to be doing better with their new leader. It is ironic that while these entities are clearly stronger, criticism mounts…but I understand that it’s not about good leadership or greater support from the churches. There’s also a certain irony in a kitchen table theological statement, one that was created by no one elected by any SBC body and has been adopted by not one SBC body and which has the written support of .00007% of Southern Baptist members, being foisted as the requirement for the next SBC entity CEO hire.
Enmity
I happen to think that theological tensions in SBC life are not inherently unhealthy but may become so. We’ve always had various theological subsets in SBC life, the most notable of which is Calvinists and Arminians (choose your own labels if these cause your teeth to grind). When one anti- group chooses language that is clearly and deliberately pugilistic, perhaps there is a whiff of enmity that needs addressing.
Apathy
Pick a random, faithful Southern Baptist church member. These theological tensions are irrelevant to them I suspect, and are lower on the ecclesiastical priority scale than important matters such as the election, which side of the church the flag goes on, and the preacher’s tonsorial preferences.
___________
…but we can look forward to this June’s Pastor’s Conference.
Mormons could have been elected as entity heads and the people in the pew would not care. They would just dutifully send in their CP dollars ‘for missions’ when ONLY $5-10 FOR EVERY $100 GIVEN goes to what they think it all or at the vast majority goes to.
Please show any situation where “$5-10 for every $100 given” goes to what Southern Baptists think it goes to. That’s not even close to true—even in state conventions that keep a high percentage of CP dollars in state. Honesty & truth matter, and this comment shows appreciation for neither.
The avg person in the pew thinks $CP GOES all or nearly all goes to INTL missions to provide direct help to missionaries in their work. In MO we keep $60. So that leaves $40. Everything but NAMB and IMB is maybe $10 (my guess) of that leaving $30. IMB and NAMB split that 50/50…down to $15…and then perhaps 50% of that goes to missionaries on the field…$7.
Lots of “nearly’s”, “guessing”, “”perhaps”, and ‘Maybe’s’ in your statement that you are offering as though it were authoritative….
Reminder: We are not talking about Tom Brady here and you are not Roger Goodell.
The average to the two mission boards would be about 30% of that CP offering plate dollar. Let’s not have fake news here, please. 😉
Even if you just limited it to IMB we’re talking between 18-26% of church CP giving depending on the state allocation. That’s not including NAMB, seminaries, which are approximately that much again.
I think a little more specificity would help clear up any misunderstanding. In Alabama, the average SBC church forwards 7.17% of all undesignated receipts to the Alabama State Board of Missions. (See http://ricklance.com/2016/04/11/ten-cooperative-program-facts/). Thus, for every $100 that a person puts in the plate in the average Alabama SBC church, the church keeps $92.83 and $7.17 goes to the SBOM for the CP. Of that $7.17, the Alabama SBOM retains 45.5%, or $3.26 and forwards the remaining $3.91 to the SBC. In 2015 (the last year that I could locate an official document detailing an actual percent allocation, see http://www.sbc.net/pdf/cp/2014-2015CPAllocationBudget.pdf), the IMB received 50.41% of the SBC CP receipts. This would mean $1.97 of the $3.91 that the SBC receives from the SBOM goes to the IMB.
Thus, for each $100 given to the average Alabama church, only $1.27 ends up going to the IMB. Obviously this is only 1.27%. If, however, we are considering only funds forwarded by churches to the state for the CP, that percent goes to $27.47 ($1.27 to the IMB/$7.17 for the CP).
Glad you gave the link Rick Lance’s article because it led to to one erroneous conclusion. When Lance says that “Of total receipts received by the SBOM in 2015, the SBC received 55.5 percent” what he means is NOT that the state retains only 45.5% of the CP dollar but that if you add in the Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, and other smaller designated offerings the SBOM keeps only 45.5%.
One of my complaints about how states communicate their financial information is this exact technique which confuses people like you into thinking that the state keeps much less of a CP dollar than they actually do. I make no judgment about intent in this.
Alabama is the leading CP state by the most important measures. It keeps close to 60% of a CP dollar.
“It keeps close to 60% of a CP dollar.”
In the most recently approved CP budget, the percentage split is 53% state and 47% national, so it is actually much closer to 50% than 60%.
http://bit.ly/2ikTTs4
Thanks for the latest information. Alabama is ahead of almost all of the other legacy SCs.
William,
Appreciate the link to the SC story. That’s a great move by them. I had not seen that yet.
Also in the story and related to your 10 questions article:
“Heard from Hollingsworth the result of a board inquiry about the financial feasibility of maintaining the convention building in Columbia. Hollingsworth reported that although there is unused space as a result of downsizing from 112 to 70 staff members, over the past several years, factors of geography, strategic church service, ministry partnership, and financial stewardship don’t add up to the disposal of the convention building at the current time. The building, which was paid in full upon completion in 1994, is 82,760 square feet in size.”
I think we can all appreciate leaders who evaluate all possibilities for efficiency and effectiveness. It’s good to know that questions are asked and answered are researched. That’s good leadership.
South Carolina Baptists can be proud of this report and the direction of their state convention.
I was in SC when the building was built. It was needed. At some point I’d guess that SC baptists would receive an offer for it that would be quite attractive. It’s Class A space in a great location. I appreciate that leaders keep folks informed by anticipating and giving straightforward answers to questions.
To add to the apathy column, why will 90-95% of the members of SBC churches never share their faith? Why do only 6-8% of the graduates of our SBC seminaries go to the nations? Have we made the Great Commission a suggestion and not a command?
Now back to class at one of the six seminaries built and supported with CP dollars. This student appreciates the support of current and past churches that made my studies possible. Thanks also for those who give to Lottie every year so we can send people to the ends of the earth to reach the lost.
Pray that I share Christ everyday with both truth and grace. Thanks.
State Conventions, Local Associations, and smaller churches decline, downsize, and some go away.
Seminaries, large churches, and church planting grow.
The two mission boards are in between the continuum with decline, then growth.
We’re seeing a pretty significant realignment here of people, power, and finances in SBC life. No wonder there is so much ruckus over who gets to control it all – or who gets a piece of the pie. Not to be cynical, and this is just a hunch, but most of this isn’t about mission, per se. It is about making sure that certain groups have a say and a place to land for their tribe.
And, when I said, “most of this” I meant the controversy over what was happening, not what was happening itself. That can very much be about mission, if it is handled correctly.
I have been saying this exact thing for 5 years or more. The controversy over Calvinism is not at it’s heart about theology, it is about control. That’s why you see more and more of this nonsense touting what % subscribe to a certain position, quotas based on these imagined percentages, and a misguided attempt to connect every appointment to a conspiracy launched at SBTS.
It’s almost comical if it weren’t so sad.
William, good article.
Question…you keep say “we” when referring to the SBC pastors conference – does that mean that the great plodder will be making a cameo in Phoenix?
I would really like to meet you face to face.
Not sure…would love to. No church…no budget account. I’d love to see the hoi polloi.
Great post. I can’t believe that normally descent folks continue to have the Calvinist/Armenian debate, but then again I guess we do need something to fight about as Southern Baptists.
I think it’s indicative of something that hasn’t been talked about enough: spiritual maturity. Let me tell you what I mean:
We are generally content to leave people on an average level of spiritual maturity. At least a few factors are at play here:
1. The general anti-intellectualism in the culture at large infiltrating the culture. There is a war of pride in this one. I love my family. There is one branch of my family that can be trying at times if only because they’ve always practiced a bit of one-upmanship. It’s hard to share anything you are doing without someone coming out with some story they have about themselves that tops it. We do this in church too. Use a big word that people don’t know and they will get mad at you. Why? Because it makes them feel stupid. It wounds the pride they have that they are in some way better than you. They get especially angry when you try to teach them something that they don’t know. It makes them feel inferior. Because it makes them feel inferior, they are wont to accuse you of being prideful of the knowledge that you have. In fact, as a psychological mechanism they relegate the topic to a place of unimportance. What they know is more important than what you know. They may not say it that way, but they have no problem educating you on what they know but won’t have a thing to do with learning what you know. The interesting thing is that it often goes both ways.
What ends up suffering in this whole practice is that necessary intellectual pursuits like Christology (it’s important to get the Gospel right) or the doctrine of revelation (which is where we found ideas like inerrancy and inspiration) get cast aside in favor of other things. What are these other things? Next…
2. The prosperity gospel lite. Now we all generally agree that the prosperity gospel is fundamentally a denial of the true Gospel, although I’m sure that most of us know people in our congregations who are straight-up prosperity gospel people. However, most of us practice some diminished form of prosperity gospel. How many people in our congregations think that if everyone in the US would only turn back to God then our nation could be great again? After all, we believe that God will bless us (with a good job, pay raise, healthy kids, long life, etc.) if the whole nation got on board with Christianity. If we can get prayer back in schools, stop killing our unborn children, get people to work hard instead of doing all these drugs, and get people to come back to church then we know that the result is what God really wants for us: to make us into a prosperous nation and that our prosperity is the thing that will glorify him. That’s not the gospel.
3. The sense that the purpose of the Gospel is to get people to come to church. This just kind of flows from the previous one and seems kind of superfluous after having typed out all that above. However, I’ll leave it in part to say this: We too often think that proclaiming the Gospel and getting people to come to church are the same thing. Now it’s true that obedience to God and a genuine concern for the things of God will cause a person to be a good church member. However, generating good behavior in public is not what the Gospel is all about. The fact that many of our people think it’s what the Gospel is all about is an indication that they don’t know the Gospel very well if they know it at all. They are theologically deficient (see my first point above). Good theological instruction helps people apply theology to their everyday lives. It’s important stuff. If people are this theologically deficient, then good behavior becomes rooted not in theology but in culturally accepted norms. We fool ourselves into thinking they “get it” if we have some pretty good culturally accepted norms among our church culture. That’s why people come to concern themselves more with the style of music, the color of the carpet, or whether we have a Sunday night service or not. They are trying to protect the thing that gives them a sense of normalized good behavior.
This results in a culture that they expect the pastor to help protect:
4. The sense that pastors need to appease people in order to get people to come to church and not tick off the current church members. People expect the pastor bring people into the church. Many of you all are pastors. How many of you feel this drive? In part it feels like success if you draw a lot of people. After all, the mega-church pastors are often seen as the successful ones. So maybe we try to emulate them to achieve the same success. Some members of our churches want to try the new stuff in order to get more people to come to church. After all, it works the big guys. Some members of our churches think we will get more people to come to church if we keep everything the same. After all, it worked for their parents and grandparents. We are torn between what we should change and what we should leave alone when the only thing that truly matters is that we feed our flocks in such a way that they grow more mature in their walk with Christ and increase the flocks by faithfully proclaiming the true and full Gospel.
Co-sign. Well stated my brother.
Jim, that’s it in a nutshell. (Hey, perhaps we could do a book and title it something like “Nutshell Theology.”)
That actually sounds like a really good idea, Dave. A succinct systematic theology accessible to people with limited knowledge of the Bible and church history that inspires them to continue learning. We’ll have to wait until I get through with my seminary courses (in about 3 years) before we get “cracking,” however.
Gee whiz,Jim, I’m nearly 70. Could you hurry up?!
At 50, I’m still young by comparison. If we were Moses, we’d still have the Exodus ahead of us.
No one has commented on William’s mention of churches taking over failing churches. That is happening more and more. Mega-churches take over failing (or closed) churches and reopen them under the mega-church’s label. My son and his family attend a campus of the Woodside Bible Church in Michigan, in the suburbs of Detroit. From visits there I know that Woodside has absorbed several struggling churches at the request of those churches. I am not criticizing what Woodside is doing. Woodside Church is theologically sound, and they also start new campuses. Surely, it is a good thing that these churches gain a new life and that a gospel witness is provided in those communities. I believe Harvest Bible Chapel in the Chicago area has also absorbed a number of struggling churches. What do the SBC Voices readers/commenters think of this trend?
I would like this idea a lot better if the mega-churches saw these re-openings as bona fide church plants, with a view toward increasing local church autonomy, rather than satellite branches of the main campus.
Amen, David.
I agree with David here. It’s kind of like a city-state. This would be like a church-association in the same way, where a single church acts like a whole association. On the one hand, there sometimes comes a need for the help of other churches beyond just pooling our resources.
For example, a bad pastor comes along, commits egregious transgressions, and for whatever reason the deacon board has lost the power to oust him. They need other churches to come in and help. I’ve seen this happen.
Another example was a few years ago now when our sister church lost several of their older folks in an accident when the church bus blew a tire. We sent half our pastoral staff to help their pastors deal with the fallout, a healthy contingency of deacons to run security for them when the media came to town, and several teachers to cover Sunday School as many of them were either involved in the accident or had family members who were.
So we need associational support in that way. What happens here is that the uber-mega church comes in and takes the place of the association. On a lighter note, it reminds me of the recent piece in the Bee where a giant Andy Stanley was destroying small churches in Atlanta.
Jim, I absolutely love your comment here, and the example of your church helping out a sister church in need. While I don’t believe in “connectionalism” per se, I think at times church autonomy on steroids moves us away from the cooperative mindset of the NT Church-churches.
I agree, David. This is one reason why I joined an SBC church rather than an IB church when my wife and I left the Lutherans.
What would be nice is autonomous churches filling the void of a struggling church. If a megachurch, the easy to attack faceless “foe”, purchases the land/building that a struggling/dying church occupies then I see a few clear issues. First the area must be a vibrant area as megas are smart enough to not go where no one lives. Secondly the current church is clearly not reaching that area. If they were they would not be struggling/dying. The third issue is that another church is willing to fill that void and try to reach the community there. Should that not be celebrated rather than beat up? Finally the issue is reaching the lost with the gospel of Christ. If a church is not focused on fulfilling the Great Commission then why should they exist? That is harsh but SBC churches should not be museums focused on the past nor owners of a piece of real estate. Reach, teach and release should be our motto and if the focus is inward then what are you doing?
The issue that bears watching is the church that agrees to take over and revitalize in some fashion the dying church, is deeded the property, gratis, closes the church, sells the property and puts the money elsewhere. Some churches have disbanded and have given their property to associations or to an ethnic church (neighborhood changed), etc. No problem there.
Not common. One tiny church near me (not SBC) sits on property worth several million. Magnet for ecclesiastical vultures.
Louis, your post has had me thinking, and debating whether to post a response in this thread. I am a pastor of a dying church in a dying community. I don’t say that as a prophet (nor am I complaining), but just say it as an observer of the “natural order” of things. Our church ceasing to exist will be a natural result, barring unforeseen changes, as natural as the inevitable death of the aged. The young people of our community have relocated to cities where there are jobs and opportunities. The old people (the saved ones at least) are relocating to a city whose builder and maker is God.
I wonder if we (generally) have bought into a false narrative that a local church should never go out of existence? We must put it on life support, when, if that were one of us as an individual we would say, “Don’t continue to keep me alive by unnecessary extraordinary means.” Things change, people move, cities and societies flourish and die. A church is the people, and where there are not “two or three to gather together in Jesus name,” there is no church. If there is a place where there are people and no church, it is a place to carry the gospel (and if people respond, baptize them and teach them the things Christ has taught). If there is a place where there are no people, let the pine trees grow and sell the timber.
We will continue to minister in our community as long as the Lord wills (we ain’t dead yet!), and believe it is God’s calling and important to do so — but if death comes we will thank God for the memories and follow where he leads.
This is a good discussion on take-overs. As usual, I appreciate David Rogers’ comments. Louis makes some excellent points. Personally, I encourage dying SBC churches to deed their properties to their association or state convention so that the association/convention can restart the church. In urban settings this is usually an ethnic rather than an Anglo church. I know that Sojourn Church in Louisville has purchased church properties in the inner city and established new Sojourn campuses. This should be commended. Lots of pastors say, “Why doesn’t the association help _______ church so that it doesn’t die?” I know from personal experience that most declining or dying churches refuse to change. They welcome help from the association to keep on doing business as usual, but they reject suggestions that they change their worship style, change their programs, or add language ministries. They would rather die than change. So sad! Mergers are a great approach, but they don’t seem to happen much. The negotiations are really complex.
Mark,
Are you aware of any good merger success stories? I would be interested to know (if anyone has ever researched this) the factors behind mergers that succeed vs. mergers that fail.
Not Mark but this church http://www.tccherrydale.com has been touted by NAMB as such a story. The cynic can say that four became thus we lost church numbers but one healthy church can reach more than four unhealthy ones.
Four became one.
An edit button after posting would be a great addition here for people like me.
David, I know that Antioch Church in Louisville merged with another church (can’t remember the name), and that has gone well. I believe there was another merger in Louisville before that, but I have not heard how it went.
Check out Family Church led by Jimmy Scroggins in South Florida. They have been able to recycle dying churches into thriving neighborhood churches.
http://www.familychurchnetwork.com/
I’m glad to hear about this. I taught Jimmy at Southern Seminary. He is a great guy.
I hope what I wrote did not sound harsh. It was not meant to be. In NorCal I was recently a lay member of a church in need of revitalization. It was planted after WWII by Southerners and now two generations later it was held together by widows. It had not adjusted to the demographics of the community and had not reached out enough. That is not all on those lovely members as there had been bad decisions by many over the years that produced the decline.
The days of a family moving to town and looking for a church have passed out there and the same has happened in the South too. A sign and open door on Sunday at 11 is not enough.
I was on the Pastor search committee and found that many men living in the South who expressed a call or a heart for the Bay area magically lost that call/heart after we told them they could only buy a house nearby if they were independently wealthy. Half a million gets you a studio condo with condo fees on top. You’ll need close to a million to get an actual house and we could not pay enough to make that happen. NOBTS mistakenly listed us as being in Lafayette, LA instead of CA and the resumes came in an avalanche. None were interested in CA. Also if being insulated in a conservative GOP blanket is important then NorCal will feel mighty cold to you.
A church in Fremont deeded their property to Golden Gate seminary to continue to serve the Lord. It is sad when churches close but it happens. I guess my main point is that it is better for the gospel to be proclaimed and for souls to be saved and lives transformed than for “my” church to stay open as a living museum, as some do.
I visited the First Baptist Church in America in Providence, RI. The guide started by telling us that Baptists see the church as the people of God and not a building. I said amen. I asked how many members, it has a large sanctuary, and he said less than 200. I asked how do you keep the lights on and he said they had a large endowment. He said the main argument for the last century was over whether or not the doors to the baptistry should be open or closed and my heart sank. I asked about their outreach to Brown University and RISD, which are across the street from the church buidling.and the other schools in town. He said they had no outreach because, “they wouldn’t be interested.” I wanted to cry. The church had become a museum not Christ’s bride.
Louis, if you mean me, no I did not take it as harsh. Though I don’t agree with you on all points, I think we agree on your point that a church is not (supposed to be) a museum. I love church history, but a church simply existing for the purpose of continuing to exist is pointless.
My trepidation in replying was unrelated to your “tone”, but in regard to how it might sound to pronounce my church a dying church in a dying community. But it is not something we as a church are unaware of, or have not talked about or thought of. If things continue the same and the Lord doesn’t come back, one day in the future the community where we are will only be a nostalgic spot on an old map.
To be clear, I did not mean to say in the first post that we are keeping our church going for the purpose of keeping it going. There are real people here who need real ministry.