The Southern Baptist Convention is “catching up with the Methodists” in dwindling numbers formerly known as the “mainline decline,” the denomination’s head statistician said June 10.
LifeWay Christian Resources recently released figures indicating baptisms reported by churches in 2012 were the lowest since 1948. Ed Stetzer, head of LifeWay Research, said he is more concerned about a 50-year trend first identified by a predecessor, Cliff Tharp, who died in March.
Stetzer told an audience at the SBC Pastors Conference that Southern Baptists were growing in the 1950s at an annual rate of about 3 percent. In the 1960s that slowed to 2 percent and then gradually to less-than 1 percent in the 1990s.
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