SBC Must Recapture Urgency of Salvation, Baptism, LifeWay's Leader Says
by Allie Martin
April 29, 2004
(AgapePress) - An official with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) says recent statistics show that the denomination has lost its focus.The SBC reported a record membership of 16,315,000 people, and 43,024 churches in the denomination. The latest figures reflect a membership growth of .41 percent, down from the percentage of growth reported in 2002. Also, the number of baptisms in SBC churches decreased for the fourth consecutive year.
Dr. Jimmy Draper is president of LifeWay Christian Resources, which compiles the annual church profile. He says these statistics reflect a lost sense of urgency in the SBC. "The only real way the Kingdom grows is through people being saved," he says, "so that's a very important figure for us to be focusing on."
To put the figures into context, Draper says these growth figures may be understood to mean that "last year it took 43 Southern Baptists one year to win one person to Christ." And perhaps even more disturbing, he notes, is the fact that more than 10,000 SBC churches did not baptize a single person last year.
According to LifeWay's president, while baptism is not a prerequisite for salvation, it should be emphasized for new believers. "The scripture, as I understand it, indicates that the first act of obedience and identification of a new believer is baptism," he says, "and if we minimize baptism, then we've been disobedient at the very outset of someone's beginning life with Christ. So that trend is very distressing."
Draper says pastors and church leaders will be challenged to recapture their sense of urgency in reaching people for Christ during the SBC's annual meeting, which is set for June in Indianapolis, Indiana.
