So. Baptists face declining membership

Southern Baptists are facing glum-looking numbers as their national convention begins today in Kentucky.

Membership in the 16-million strong denomination is dropping. They lost 38,000 members between 2007 and 2008, the last of four stagnant years, according to Convention numbers. Donations to missionaries fell $30 million short of a $170 million goal this year.

Southern Baptist Convention President the Rev. Johnny Hunt of Woodstock has criticized “bloated” Convention bureaucracy, which he said leads to “poor stewardship.”

Other leaders in the last year have blamed various groups for losses, such as those responsible for missions.

David W. Key Sr., director of Baptist Studies at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, said Southern Baptists blamed their own moderates and liberals for problems in the past. The Convention shed its moderates as it became more socially and theologically conservative in the last two decades. Now, they are beginning to look inside for fault, he said.

Southern Baptists’ narrowing definitions of who Christians are in a society that is diversifying is one reason the group is losing membership, Key believes.

“You no longer have the luxury of saying that everybody has to look the same,” he said.

Hunt declined a request for an interview.

A key Hunt ally, Danny Aiken, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina, admitted to problems in the Convention.

“We have lost focus as to why we exist, both as a convention of churches and as a local church,” Aiken said.

The lack of growth is because Baptists are not preaching the message of salvation in Jesus, as they have in the past, he said.

Hunt, who pastors a growing megachurch, has proposed an aggressive campaign of evangelism and social action, such as feeding the hungry.

Aiken expects Hunt to appoint a committee to recommend changes on state and national levels, and Hunt’s ideas about reducing bureaucracy have attracted supporters.

Other leading Baptists have reacted negatively to Hunt’s criticisms.

It has been the hot topic in Baptist blogs, said Roger “Sing” Oldham of Tennessee, director of communications for the Convention.

Oldham said the tone of Hunt’s call is to remind Baptists of the practices that made them successful in the past: evangelism and the priority they put on the Bible as a guide for mankind.

“You have a new generation coming along, perhaps, that has not been on their radar screen,” he said.

But looking to the past would be a mistake, according to Key.

“They tied their growth to spiritual correctness,” he said, and there are fewer people willing to accept so many restrictions in belief. How are you going to get more folks when you keep narrowing the field?”

For information:

• Convention web site

• Baptist web site