Southern Baptist Convention sees membership drop below 13M

The Southern Baptist Convention’s annual census reported 241,000 fewer members and 292 fewer churches in 2023, another yearly drop for the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

Lifeway Research, a division of the SBC’s publishing arm, said in its annual church profile on Tuesday there were 46,906 Southern Baptist churches and 12.9 million members in 2023, down from 13.2 million in 2022.

The consecutive losses in key measurements for years have contributed to differing arguments within Southern Baptist circles for the best remedy, most recently leading to six candidates for convention president announcing their bid ahead of the SBC annual meeting in June in Indianapolis.

The SBC is far from alone in encountering these types of downward trends within American Christianity, but the anxiety is compounded with unique financial challenges surrounding abuse reform, for example.

Opposition conservatives, who are trying to pull the SBC further to the right, have responded to the declining membership and finances by emphasizing evangelism and, at times, shifting focus away from abuse reform.

Meanwhile, many mainstream conservatives are calling for more support for abuse reform and initiatives to promote greater racial and ethnic diversity among Southern Baptist leadership to avoid deterring future generations of prospective churchgoers.

“We struggle with major issues like eradicating racism and stopping sexual abuse,” said Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee in an opinion column on Tuesday that accompanied the latest data. “We are a fractious, willful, sinful bunch, and we sometimes act like it.”

Iorg recently stepped into his position as the highest-ranking employee for the convention’s administrative arm, which is comprised of about 20 staff and an 86-member board of elected representatives. Of all the SBC-affiliated agencies, called entities, the executive committee is perhaps most acutely feeling the pressures of converging declines in membership, churches and giving.

In February, executive committee members reported another yearly decrease in total receipts to the Cooperative Program, a denomination-wide budget that receives income from church giving and that benefits many of the SBC entities.

For the executive committee, that decreased giving was a factor in recent decisions to lay off staff and approve a smaller budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year. Meanwhile, the SBC’s two mission agencies — the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board — have continued to receive steady Cooperative Program funding. An ongoing task force review is looking at a 2009-2010 initiative that ultimately changed the distribution formula for Cooperative Program funding, and a report with the task force’s findings is expected by May 13.

Previous year's SBC data: Southern Baptist Convention sees largest single-year membership decline: What to know about why

‘Do more than one thing at a time’

Total SBC membership has declined by 3.3 million since its peak in 2006 where there were 16.3 million members.

Yet this year’s annual church profile also includes some growth, namely baptisms and average weekly attendance.

“More than 4 million people gathered weekly in Southern Baptist worship services (about four times more than combined NFL attendance on any weekend in the fall),” Iorg said in an opinion column.

In the newest annual church profile, the highest-ranking states for total membership and total churches are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Total baptisms were up for a third consecutive year, a sign of success last seen 30-plus years ago. Send Network, which is the SBC church planting arm, has been shifting priorities in recent years to engage more urban and bilingual communities. The organization recently named a new vice president to lead its initiative focused on church planting in Hispanic communities.

The latest data, albeit discouraging in some areas, shows “the Southern Baptist Convention actually can do more than one thing at a time,” said SBC President Bart Barber in an opinion column that accompanied the latest data release. “We have witnessed gains in church attendance, and we have simultaneously made consistent progress in bolstering our churches’ defenses against sexual abuse.”

Barber has served as the highest-ranking elected official in the convention since 2022, and will conclude his second and final term after he presides over the upcoming SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis. The absence of an incumbent running for reelection led to the recent surge of six candidates running for SBC president.

A notable addition to the latest annual church profile were statistics on churches’ policies and practices for preventing and responding to sexual abuse. Some state Southern Baptist conventions received more responses than others, lending to drastically different figures depending on the state. But on average:

• 58% of churches require background checks for staff and volunteers working with children and students.

• 36% of churches reported their staff and volunteers are trained in reporting sexual abuse.

• 16% of churches reported that staff and volunteers are trained in caring for abuse survivors.

Most recent SBC abuse reform news: New nonprofit to lead SBC abuse reform efforts after delays in launch of abuser database

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on social media @liamsadams.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Southern Baptist Convention: SBC has 300 fewer churches as members