Interview: Dr. Bill Day of the NOBTS
One of the main topics of concern for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) over the past 20 years has been the “plateauing” and declining level of membership in the denomination. According to a survey conducted 20 years ago, some 70 percent of the SBC's 42,000 churches suffered membership loss or stagnation, while only 30 percent of the churches experienced an average of 2 percent or more growth per annum. A recent survey conducted by Dr. Bill Day of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS) showed similar results in terms of church growth between 1999 and 2003. However, the study also found that when more exacting guidelines reflective of "healthy" growth patterns were applied, only 11% of the SBC churches passed as “growing.”
In a November 15 interview with the Christian Post, Dr. Bill Day explained the new criteria and definition used during the demographic study as well as the other startling facts found during his 2-month research at the NOBTS.
What surprised you the most from the study results?
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The reason I did the study was to see whether the study that was done 20 years ago would produce the same results today. I basically found that the percent of growing churches remained unchanged using the same definitions we used 20 years ago. So I began looking at the data and the definition and I discovered that the definition had some serious flaws.
We were defining churches that were growing that had not seen any conversion growths at all in some of the previous studies. So how can you say the church is growing when there was no one converted?
This flawed definition was surprising, first of all, and so I looked at the data and came up with better definitions.
When I applied what I thought was a conservative criteria, the 30 percent of growing churches dropped to only 11 percent. That was the second surprise.
What new criteria drew those results?
There are four parts to the new standard. The first criterion had been the one used for 20 years: having 10 percent growth in total membership over five years. That’s an average of 2 percent growth per year, but it doesn’t have to be 2 percent ever year. Some churches could grow faster on one year and slower the next.
To this criterion, I added that the church, in order to be considered a “healthy” growing church, needed to have baptized at least one person during the beginning and final years of the five year study.
Third, the church needed to have a member to baptism ratio of thirty five or less. Let me further explain this. Several decades ago, the member to baptism ratio for SBC churches was around 25. That ratio had been increasing year by year up to the present. Now it is about 41 to one. What this means is that for every 1 baptized member, there are 41 members who are not baptized. So I set a very conservative estimate at 35.
When I applied this criterion, I discovered a shocking thing, which was that of the 13,000 churches that were considered “growing,” 1,400 of them have not baptized one person. Some churches that were considered growing needed 1,400 members to baptize one member; this group cannot be considered “growing” in our definition.
I added one more criterion: Twenty five percent of the growth had to be “conversion” growths. This means that if the church could have 75 percent “joining,” but at least 25 percent of the new members had to be of a converted growth.
When we applied these criteria, the percentage of healthy growing churches dropped to 11 percent.
How and when will your new standards be integrated?
I plan to be using this right away. What I’ve done is try to pose the problem to our denomination and ask for feedback about my proposed definition, because somebody else may come up with additional criteria.
We have a group of people at the SBC that constitute the Southern Baptist research fellowship, and I presented these new criteria at a meeting at Atlanta, Georgia recently.
I said, “Let’s come up with a better standard.” My effort was not necessarily so this standard is the one we should use, but rather that we should come up with a better standard than the one used 20 years ago.
Do other denominations normally use the old criterion to measure church growth?
Other denominations have looked at growing churches from the perspective of total membership growth. And while there are specific standards each denomination sets, usually, they apply the level of membership growth as the standard measurement for church growth.
Do you believe the pattern of declining church growth reflects Christianity as a whole or in part?
I think Southern Baptists have been looked upon as a major denomination that unlike many of the mainline denominations, have continued to grow. And while the growth of the SBC has pretty well leveled off, it was still a comfort to note that 30 percent of our churches were growing. And this study shows that only about 11 percent are experiencing healthy church growth.
As the associate professor of evangelism and church health at the NOBTS, what form of evangelism do you fell would be most effective to change this pattern?
The president of our seminary said he felt there was a decline in passion on the part of our denomination to reach non believers outside of our churches. In other words, there was a greater zeal to reach the non Christians in the nearer past than there is today. There just needs to be a returned zeal that we need in our denomination to see more than the growth we get naturally when children are added to the family. What is lacking is the desire to seek the population at large.
Are there any other comments you would like to make about the study?
Well, this study looked at several other things. But one of the things the questions that have often been asked is where the fastest growing churches are located. For example, are churches growing faster or slower in rural areas as compared to metropolitan areas?
Using the new definition, I found that it really didn’t make a difference where the church was located. There are churches in small villages, small towns and cities, medium-sized cities, and large cities. Basically, churches in all four places had the same level of growth between churches of similar size.
Some people think that just because I’m located in a rural area I can’t see much growth; some pastors think this way. But this study showed that churches were growing at about an equal percentage in all areas. It didn’t quite matter where you were in regards to the location of the church.
I also looked at the growth as compared to the age of the church. The younger churches have a greater chance of growing than an older church. The study showed that churches that are 50 years or older are growing much slower than churches that are 20 years of age or younger.
And we looked at healthy churches as compared to the size of the church. I found that churches that were very small – with 100 members or less – had the least growth. Also, churches with membership between 100 and 5,000 were growing at about the same rate, a bit higher than the smaller churches. However, when you get to the churches with over 5,000 members, you get about twice the level of growth.
Why do you believe larger churches grow so much faster?
Probably because the leadership of the pastors at large churches tend to be evangelistic, and they have a greater tendency to lead growing churches.
Did you conduct any studies to see the growth of ethnic congregations?
One of the things we sought to do was to identify churches that were growing extremely fast. There are churches that during five years have experienced tremendous growth. One of those churches was an African American church that experienced a total membership growth of over 2,000 percent. Then there was another African American church that did not experience that same percentage growth, but still experienced 48.8 percent growth in five years. The Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, which is located in New Orleans, jumped from 5,120 to 7,280 in membership. These are just a few, because there are too many to name.
That’s one of the bright spots the study found, because while under the new definition, only 11 percent of SBC churches are growing, there are also churches all over the country that are experiencing remarkable growth.
Dr. William H. Day is the Associate Director of the Leavell Center for Evangelism and Church Health and the Associate Professor of Evangelism and Church Health at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Day received a B.A from the University of Florida in 1968, an M.S. from Purdue University in 1972, an M.Div from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1976, and a Ph.D from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1999. Prior to beginning his teaching career as the Adjunct professor at NOBTS in 1999, Dr. Day served as the President of the Miami Baptist Association’s Pastor’s Conference, a member of the board of trustees of the Baptist Hospital in Florida, a member of the State Board of Missions of the Florida Baptist Convention, President of the North Miami Broward ACTS, and as the moderator of the Halifax Baptist Association.
