What Can Stop Southern Baptist Decline?

In anticipation of the 2014 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, the SBC’s LifeWay Christian Resources issued its annual report on church statistics, and for the seventh straight year, the SBC’s overall membership declined. (Here’s my coverage of the 2013 report and annual meeting for WORLD Magazine.)

The University of North Carolina’s Molly Worthen, in an important essay on the decline, has asked whether the denomination’s Conservative Resurgence has “failed.” (The Resurgence was Southern Baptist conservatives’ campaign to regain control of denominational seminaries and agencies, accomplished in the 1980s and ’90s.) If denominational growth is the presumed test of success, then yes, the SBC is failing, and much soul-searching is required. While the SBC’s decline does not yet match the massive implosion of the mainline denominations, the statistics are bleak, and especially the declines in baptisms of millennials does not bode well for a thriving future.