By Gregg Boll, Director of Missions
I am always keenly aware that my mission as your Director of Missions is to help our pastors start well, pastor well, and finish well. Equally important is to help our churches accomplish their God-given mission and to bring our BR-KC churches together in partnership to plant new churches and revitalize (replant) declining churches. While this article is heavy in data, it is incredibly important for pastors and church leaders to consider as they develop their missions/ministry strategies. In my next article (part 3), I will share several recommendations for how pastors should interpret this data in determining the strategy and culture of their church in a way that is proactive, gospel centered, and hopeful, rather than reactive and driven by fear or anxiety. We should not be afraid or threatened by any of the information below, even the bad news, because I know that we “overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” and that the “gospel is powerful unto salvation to everyone who believes”. But, rather, may we be like those men of Issachar “who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do. (I Chronicle 12:32)
In Part 1 of this article, I laid out the reality facing our churches in a post-Covid, post-Christian world. Here is the recap from last month’s article:
- Membership among our SBC Churches has been on a 18-year decline.
- While baptisms have been declining since 1999/2000 for our SBC Churches, they have been on the rise since the low point of the Covid pandemic and are now near pre-pandemic numbers, but nowhere near their peak of 445,725 in 1972 vs. 250, 643 in 2024. https://ministrywatch.com/sbc-membership-drops-to-its-lowest-number-in-50-years/
- Gifts from SBC Churches to the Cooperative Program unified budget have declined in seven of the past 10 years, with receipts for the year just ended (2024) being 4.4% less than a decade ago.
The reasons for the above trends are many, but not complex:
- Membership in the SBC (and all mainline denominations) is far lower than in previous years because church attendance and church involvement have decreased among all generations over the last 20 years, with the exception of the last few years, as churches have recovered some of their losses during the pandemic. It is encouraging that church attendance is up among Millennials and Gen Z (see article link below) since Covid. Attendance is down slightly among Baby Boomers and The Silent Generation (Elders), but mostly unchanged among Gen X. An interesting population statistic is that Millennials overtook the Boomers as the largest generation in the U.S. in July of 2019, mostly due to immigration of people in that age group (ages 23-38). However, in spite of the fact that 61% of our NAMB/SBC new church plants are non-Anglo, we still derive most of our new members from middle-class white families (see SBC.net article below). A real, but less significant cause of reduced membership among SBC churches is that many have cleaned up their membership rolls and removed inactive and/or absent members.
- Giving to the Cooperative Program has continued to decline because the Silent Generation (Sometimes called Elders, born 1928-1945) who were highly sacrificial givers have mostly died or are unable to attend church, and Baby Boomers (born 1946-1963) are retired/retiring or are beginning to pass from the scene. Studies show that Baby Boomers give more actual dollars and give more per capita to churches than Generation X (born 1965-1980) or Millennials (born 1981-1996) because of greater accumulated wealth and being one of the larger population segments of the U.S. population. However, Millennials have a higher participation/giving rate, 42% compared to 30% of Boomers. The interesting finding about the difference between Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials’ giving patterns is that Gen X and Millennials are more likely to divide up their giving between their church and other para-church ministries they are passionate about. The result is that Gen X and Millennials have reduced their giving to their local church and increased their giving to faith-based ministries that appeal to their values and desire for community impact. Also, it is interesting that by 2021, Millennials’ giving had surpassed that of Generation X, and the gap continues to widen. We mentioned previously that persistent and increasing inflation has caused the “cost of doing church” to rise by nearly 40% over the last 10 years, forcing many churches to reduce their giving to the Cooperative Program and other mission endeavors beyond the local church.
- Baptisms are down (excluding the slight rebound after Covid) because of the reduction in practicing believers, a declining number of SBC Churches, and a deemphasis on personal and invitational evangelism by many churches. The SBC reached its highest number of congregations in 2018, with around 51,000 churches, but has been on the decline since then. Today, there are just shy of 47,000 S.B.C. Churches. Decreasing baptisms can also be attributed to churches experiencing mission drift and focusing on benevolent/social or “inside the walls” ministry activities rather than more missional and evangelistic emphases. To a lesser degree, fewer baptisms are attributable to theological conviction and a repudiation of the excesses of the revivalism of the church growth era, which often resorted to gimmicks and emotional manipulation to elicit decisions for Christ. This led to more baptisms and swelling church rolls, but is credited with increasing unregenerate membership in our churches. I do believe more churches and pastors are realizing that we may have overcompensated in the other direction towards an under-invitational model. We need to be challenging people to repent and believe the gospel each time the gospel is shared.
There are two huge factors I’ve yet to mention that have negatively impacted the size and strength of the Church in America, and specifically the Southern Baptist Convention. One is rampant individualism. The growing affluence of post-WW II America and the advent of social media have come together to produce an extreme individualism that erodes personal responsibility, basic empathy for others, and mistrust of and disrespect for authority. It has also allowed people to trust their feelings over facts and to relativize truth and deny objective truth. All of this has caused a repudiation of organized religion by many, at worst, and a disdain for it, at best. This extreme individualism most likely accounts for the overall decline in the percentage of Americans who say that religion is important to them. A recent 2025 Gallup study found that 49% of Americans say that religion has daily significance for them. This is the lowest level since Gallup began conducting this poll in 2007. This is a 17 percentage point drop from 2015, when 66% of Americans said that religion was important to them. The only larger, faster drops occurred in Greece, Italy, Poland, and Chile. In 2024, 64% of Americans identified as “Christian”. This gap between people identifying as “Christian” yet far fewer saying that religion is important to them certainly must account for the observed decline we see in all of the above church metrics: membership, giving, and baptisms.
A second factor which has had a significant impact on the strength of the church in America and people’s desire to participate in “organized religion” is the atheistic naturalism which became entrenched in our public educational system and has been taught as fact rather than theory for nearly a half century. Several generations of students in both public secondary and college education were taught that science precludes the possibility of God or the miraculous and that man is the product of time and chance, rather than a special creation of God. Confronted with the seemingly unquestionable truth claims of evolutionary science, many believers either abandoned their faith, left the church, or were otherwise intimidated into silence. It took the Christian community a while to form an adequate apologetic to counter the errors that the scientific community was using to silence believers. We owe a debt of gratitude to Bible apologists and apologetic ministries like C.S. Lewis, Francis Shaeffer, Josh McDowell, William Lane Craig, Lee Strobel, Ravi Zacharias, Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis), The Institute of Creation Research and many others for helping believers realize that the ‘truth once delivered to the saints’ is not only absolutely true, but the most intellectually valid and rationally consistent worldview one can hold.
I am aware that many of you have witnessed your church experience hard times in recent years and may not have completely returned to the strength of budget, attendance, and ministry presence you had before the pandemic. If that is your church, you’re not alone. Depending on which survey you read, 69% to 75% of churches in America are either plateaued or declining. My encouragement to you is to not be discouraged, but hopeful, and to trust the power of the gospel. We are beginning to see a greater openness to the gospel among Generation Z and, to a lesser extent, across all generations. Collegiate ministers tell us that this generation is seeking truth and is more open to having gospel conversations than any prior generation. Revivals are breaking out at several major universities, with thousands coming to faith in Christ. I’ve never heard so many collegiate athletes give glory to God when interviewed after a big win as I have in the last few years. Jesus said He would build His Church, and He continues to do that in remarkable fashion across the world. Just to put the worldwide growth of Christianity in perspective, consider this. In 2010, there were 2.2 billion Christians in the world. By 2022, there were 2.4 billion. By the end of 2024, there were 2.63 billion. Christianity is far and away the largest world religion. Every year, around 65 million people become believers in Jesus. We lose around 27 million to death, martyrdom, and apostasy, which means we have around a net gain of 38 million more people coming to faith each year, which breaks down to about 104,000 people every day accepting Christ as Savior. Friend, be encouraged. Stay the course. Fulfill your ministry. What you do is making an eternal difference, and your ministry is more powerful than you know.
https://www.sbc.net/about/what-we-do/fast-facts/
https://www.barna.com/research/young-adults-lead-resurgence-in-church-attendance/
Fewer Americans See Religion as Important to Their Daily Lives – Lifeway Research
