Grace Baptist Church in Springfield, Tenn., was in tough straits two years ago.
The church had gone 12 months without a pastor. Sunday morning attendance hovered around 120. And, in 2008, the Southern Baptist congregation baptized only three people.
That changed last year when a new pastor and a new approach to ministry led to 53 baptisms and 200 new people showing up on Sundays.
The SBC church near Nashville highlighted here certainly has stats that most churches can only envy: 53 baptisms of “believers” (even if only age 7, as in the photo of the boy) and an increase of 200 in ASA when the previous ASA had been only 130, more than doubling the congregational attendance in only 18 months. That’s incredible, which is probably why it was chosen as such a dramatic example.
Of course, there’s a lot more to fostering church growth than merely focusing on evangelism and reaching outside the church’s four walls. But maintaining or recapturing that outward focus is absolutely crucial.
But I had to chuckle when I saw the picture of the boy being baptized. Unfortunately, while Southern Baptists ardently claim to uphold the sole validity of “believer’s baptism,” that by no means amounts in practice to the baptism of adult converts. Very often, it merely means the norm is the baptism of older children and adolescents from Christian homes, with the majority of SBC members probably having been baptized between the ages of 8-14. Which (IMHO) sort of “waters down” the meaning of believer’s baptism.
But I’m glad they’re growing. Just out of curiousity, I wonder how many of the increased number of baptism came from Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church? I understand Saddleback had a fantastic year in 2009, and around Easter last year they added a stupendous 2000 or so in ASA in just a couple months. Amazing. Praise God.
It can be done.
David Handy+