Southern Baptist Big Dip in Membership

The nation's largest Protestant denomination continues to see a decline in membership. I just posted about this on adamfoxie* yesterday. 

When these religious nominations that preach love, understanding and fairness for all find themselves in  a bind when the gay community starts coming out of the closet and making their presence known in the government, the courts, workplace and!!! churches. 

These people find themselves in limbo. How can they preach what they oppose? Is it not of anyone concern what two consenting adults do in bed? So they are going to deny them human rights or gay rights or what ever you want to call it but you can’t deny they/we are human and should be treated equally. Any black person that would deny us or be offended because they were humans in slavery but gays that feel so oppressed that their only way out is suicide? Are not as human?? How can they say they walk with god? May be is not god who they are following. Christ never referred to gays but to love. 

The only one in robes talking about gays, homosexuality,sins, ex-comunication is the pope. May be that’s who they follow, then I would understand because I understand the Catholic religion and anyone can read  the holly book of history what the papacy is and how started and their blood and theft history.

 For whites I say haven’t they learn that denying people fairness it does not serves them. They have gay kids, family, friends also;  They will not like people denying to them what they deny to gay people, human gay people, american human gay people? 
         
Being in an enterprise in which I live by statistics because when I see no one is reading is time to pack up and go. I know what people are telling me in afghanistan even if it was just one person who went to my site and read a story. It could be a soldier or the head of state but I am getting a message.  Particularly if it goes to 5 or 20   {Adam} Talking about statistics:

Statistics released Tuesday by the Southern Baptist Convention's Lifeway Christian Resources show membership in 2011 decreased by .98 percent to just under 16 million. That marks the fifth straight year of decline.

The number of churches increased slightly, but the total number of congregations dropped as the denomination lost several church-type missions. These are smaller congregations that are supported by larger churches.

The number of baptisms increased slightly last year — an important measure for a denomination with an expressed mission to win souls for Christ. But Lifeway Research President Ed Stetzer downplayed the significance of that gain of less than 1 percent.

"Baptisms had their second lowest year in the last 50 years, so this is not a time to pull out the party hats," he said.

Stetzer said the overall trend is that baptisms and membership are declining for the Nashville-based denomination. And for membership that decline is accelerating.

Those changes mirror the declines that mainline Protestant denominations such as the Methodists have been seeing for decades.

Duke Divinity School Professor Curtis Freeman, who directs the Baptist House of Studies, said the Southern Baptists had resisted the trend, in part because of their commitment to evangelization.

"I think that, in some ways, they are every bit as passionate about evangelism as they've always been," Freeman said. "It's just that culturally the tide is going a different way. ... It's increasingly becoming a secular culture, not a Christian culture."

Stetzer agreed that the culture is changing, but said that was no excuse for decline. He noted that some denominations, such as the Assemblies of God, are still finding a way to grow. Southern Baptists can do that too, he said, but not if they continue to operate as they always have.

"Denominations don't change until the pain of staying the same grows greater than the pain of changing," he said.

The statistics were released on Tuesday, a week ahead of the denomination's annual meeting.

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