“When will the SBC stop lying about how many members they have?”
“The SBC reports 15 million members but no one can find 10 million of these.”
“SBC membership figures are a total fraud and they should repent.”
I like a good, indignant gripe as much as any SBC pastor and I haven’t been above figuratively slapping my beloved denomination around for the differential between reported membership and average attendance. I’ll confess to having said something along the lines of the second quote above: “The SBC reports 15 million members but no one can find 10 million of these.” If LifeWay offered a $1 per head bounty on these “lost” members I bet some could be found. But on the subject in general of ‘inflated’ membership numbers, no one can argue with the righteous SBC preacher in high dudgeon over the assumed disgrace of church membership.
But this is mostly a phoney war.
No one argues that the SBC is slightly declining as a denomination. Every SBC leader I know of will say this. There’s no spinning it. Baptisms, the best indicator of future membership trends, have been declining for years. Church membership has dipped below 15 million in the last reporting year. But no one should confuse declining baptisms and membership with the way churches report their numbers. (The figure for average worship average attendance has only been asked of churches in recent years.)
Here is total membership reported followed by weekly worship average attendance for selected years:
2018: 14.8 million 5.3 million
2016: 15.2 million 5.2 million
2013: 15.7 million 5.8 million
There is a wide differential between total membership and weekly average attendance, about 10 million.
Are these “lost” members, folks no one can find? Does this differential represent a total disgrace to Southern Baptists? Is the figure a symptom of all that is wrong with us: lack of evangelistic fervor, lack of concern for and committment to “meaningful church membership,” or abject capitulation to civil religion and cultural christianity?
I think not. It is probaby more of an indicator of a mature church with untidy lists.
We are reporting numbers about like we always have. That is, there has been no dramatic change in the differential between membership and average attendance. Both are declining. And, there has to be some differential between membership and average attendance for no other reason than folks don’t attend church every Sunday. Is twice a month the standard now for being called “regular” at church? I think so.
When I arrived at my first church as a pastor, a 188 year old rural church, I had exactly zero experience with a median sized SBC church, a rural church, or a congregation where the pastor relates to all of the membership. The membership rolls in that church were lists kept in the church safe along with the antique common communion cup in which real wine used to be sipped by congregants, one after another.
I had sense enough not to launch into a crusade to tidy up the membership rolls but I did examine them closely, pray for all of the folks on them regularly, and attempt to contact all of them. Some had moved on to other churches. Some had moved to other places but never moved their membership. Some lived away but would support the church occasionally with a donation. Others loved to come back for special events. Given a chance to meet with any of these ‘inactive’ members, I would listen to their stories and generally encourage them to get in a good church where they lived. Some had already done this and we didn’t know about it. Some had done this but liked maintaining a membership in their childhood or ancestral family church.
An untidy membership roll didn’t hinder me or the church from being evangelistic. It didn’t slow down the church from having missionaries called from among us and from enthusiastic support of our overseas workers. I can’t think of a single negative impact from the church’s preferred method of maintaining a membership roll.
Our autonomous churches handle membership according to their own unique history and circumstances. It’s their business, not anyone else’s. If your church likes a strict roll, fine. If your church is unorganized or lax about mainting good rolls, it’s none of my business.
In the SBC as a whole, I’d offer the following observations on this:
- The SBC isn’t “lying” about numbers. They are reporting the numbers churches give them.
- The gap between average attendance and membership is about what it has been for years. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s bad. But it’s not new.
- How my church keeps its membership roll is none of your business.
- I’m seeing pastors and churches who don’t care the least about any type of membership roll and aren’t interested in filing statistical reports to the denomination.
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One anecdote that provides an exception to the point that no one is lying about numbers. When lists of megachurches in the SBC began to be publicized there were an unexpected number of churches that reported their attendance at the threshold number, 2,000. I’m guessing that figure was provided just to get the church into the category of ‘megachurches.’
I’d add that if the church is small and a handful of people, folks who have all but ghosted the church, could show up and swing a vote then the pastor and church might be wise to address their constitution and by-laws.
This isn’t as sexy a topic as, say, complementarianism. I’m betting on 3 comments. Seems the crusade for “meaningful church membership” has foundered but I’d be interested in your level of concern for your church rolls, pastor, and what you did about it.
“Phoney” vs “Phony” I’m writing for vast numbers of international readers. Consider SBCV to be very progressive in this regard.
Question, but first some background. I’ll be working with my pastor over the next few months to examine our church’s approach to membership, from an overall philosophy, to the nuts and bolts of policies and record keeping. We are a growing Baptist church of around 300-350 in weekly attendance, and we practice congregational governance, which means that membership remains an essential element in our local body. One side note – most of the people at our church are either new Christians or do not have a Baptist/congregational polity background. Question: can anyone point me to some solid resources that provide some guidelines or examples for this task? (International reader here, by the way, Rev. Thornton.)
I remember at my first church I pastored, we had 200 members on roll but we averaged around 75 people every Sunday. Our town had around 1000 people. To the church’s credit, the 200 people were living and breathing humans who legitimately wanted to be listed on our rolls. We knew where they lived and they were proud to claim our church and even welcomed my visits but they never darkened the doors of our church during my 4 years. Many claimed to know everything going on at the church but for some reason, they never would attend. My next church, we had legitimately 600 members and around 300 showed up every Sunday. Crazy thing is they were never the same 300. Many of our people attended twice a month and changed out. That is my experience for what it is worth.
Here’s your 3rd comment… The church I retired from had almost 400 members and when I got there, were averaging around 50. I asked why there were so many members/non-attenders, the answer was simple. We had a cemetery that allowed members to get a substantial reduction in price per lot. So people joined, got the discount and never came back.
After 2 years, we decided to do something about it and just contact the people who were never there members. Most of them had forgotten about their membership or moved or had died (we knew where they were). So we removed a lot of people at their request…. especially when they were re-assured that they would not have to pay more on their lot.
We were not lying for those years. We never really bragged about how many members because we knew there was a disconnect, but didn’t know how to do anything about it.
Had the same issue. I thank God I was allowed to serve a church without a cemetery.
Barry: Church admin handbooks used to cover this in a fairly uniform manner for SBC churches and some general principles are obvious but I can’t point you to a single resource. I’d cherry pick the 9 Marxks stuff.
Thanks. I’ll take a look.
I know there are a number of churches that do not report, and that number is probably growing. Full disclosure, our church doesn’t put a high priority on it. Part of it is because, while we keep detailed records on financial figures, we don’t count worship attendance regularly, or Sunday School attendance or any other group gathering much. You are never going to get fully accurate stats if there are churches (like mine) that do not report. There’s always going to be speculation in the numbers because of that.
The great majority do report, 76% for the latest ACP and was actually up a couple of points. The data have never been “fully accurate” but seem to be comparable; it’s voluntary, not a required census. My point, maybe poorly made, was that the difference between attendance and membership hasn’t changed appreciably.
William,
If 76% do not report how do we know we have 15 million members?
Or if only 76% report, how do we know we have 15 million members?
We know SBC churches “reported 14.8 million members” because that is what the churches reported. LifeWay makes some routine adjustments to the numbers, it’s technical, but the point is that year-to-year comparisons are valid.
It’s the best data available.
It’s floundered, not foundered. There’s a comment!!! Lol
Actually, “foundered” is a perfectly good word, “sink like a stone.” But I’m impressed that even a schoolmarmish commenter read through to the end. Good work and God bless you.
I hate to use “floundered” because it reminds me that I ought to be fishing, not blogging.
William, I always appreciate your thoughtful articles, and I am serving in Ugands so SBCVoices keeps me informed with what’s happening in SBC so thank you. I have a question concerning the serious of the responsibilities of pastors to care for their sheep that God has entrusted them with. Should we not take serious our membership role because of the great call on our lives as pastors?why would you not remove folks who have fallen away after trying to restore them back to membership? Our membership at our church basically reflect the attendance because when someone left we work with them to get place in another body or we remove them but kept reaching out to them.
We certainly should. An untidy membership roll (and I wish folks would be more careful to use “roll” rather than the incorrect “role”, pardon my schoolmarmishness) doesn’t necessarily mean the pastor or church fails to take their flock seriously.
God bless you in your service in Uganda.
Thank you William. I think you are correct that we cannot make a blanket statement, but I was a member of 1st Baptist with a membership of 1200 with attendance of 400 and my pastor was voted out by 600 people who most were members but never attend church. I know probably a rare occurrence of misuse membership but I’m afraid this happens much.
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I get that, Johnny, and have pondered as a pastor how to avoid that situation. The details matter. If 600 of 1200 members believe a pastor change is needed, that’s tough to argue with…but maybe I misunderstood you.
Churches can have any process they want for voting but certainly should pay attention to the matter.
Barry, I recommend The Broadman Church Manual by Howard Foshee. You can buy it on Amazon. I wrote a post about this a year or two ago. I believe it is worthwhile for a church to examine its roll every five years or so. A church I served did this. We chose a committee of three long-time members. They contacted the folks on the roll or their families. We discovered some members had died. (That is a good reason to check your roll periodically. Why continue to report dead people?) They also discovered some folks had joined other churches. (Dropping them eliminated double reporting.) Of course, some members had moved away, but they wanted to maintain membership in their “family church.” We honored those requests. The committee’s contacting reactivated two people.
Mark, thanks for the book recommendation, and for the tips on procedures. It’s great to hear that a process that some churches avoid can actually be a great way to reconnect with people that may have fallen off the radar.
The committee did its work well. There were no ruffled feathers or hurt feelings. If you need some help, you can contact me through Mid-America Baptist Seminary. God bless!
Thanks for this article. I am currently working on my DMin in this area. “Engaging Non-Attending Church Members With the Gospel”. While we need to clean up our rolls, we need to be careful that we don’t miss the opportunity to share the gospel with those non-attending church members as we pursue the process of biblical church membership.
Barry, a couple of resources by 9 Marks that you may find helpful are: Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus by Jonathan Leeman and What is a Healthy Church Member? by Thabiti M. Anyabwile.