“My name is Chuck. I am a Southern Baptist and I am addicted to positive news.”

By Dr. Chuck Kelley

That variation on how to introduce yourself in a substance abuse program is how I feel when I hear or read most reports on the state of the Southern Baptist Convention. We had a stunning illustration of the power of this addiction to positive news at the 2025 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Last year messengers asked the North American Mission Board to implement the recommendations of the Post-GCR Review Task Force and provide information about the results of its church planting program to the Convention this year. In the NAMB report to the SBC this year, the requested information was not given, nor was its absence explained. In the Q & A time, a messenger asked Dr. Ezell why he did not provide the information requested by the messengers at the 2024 meeting. His response: “I don’t have to share that data. It was a request, not a mandate. Compliance is optional.” That was a stunning, historic moment. To my knowledge it was the first time in SBC history an entity head refused to provide ministry-outcome data requested in a vote by SBC messengers. It was not sensitive information about personnel. There was no legal risk or risk of endangering other aspects of NAMB’s work. It was merely a request for ministry results of the task assigned and paid for by the SBC. What made his response all the more stunning was the refusal to offer any explanation for the failure to comply with a simple request for basic information. Wow!  Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention and Southern Baptists in our churches, welcome to my world. NAMB does not want to disclose some of the outcomes of its efforts to anyone: academic researcher or Convention messengers. Apparently, the news is bad. Leaders know Southern Baptists are addicted to positive news. They hate to share negative news.

I began research into Southern Baptist data when I was a doctoral student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and I never stopped. The catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina on my Seminary and my city interrupted that research. For two years I was fully immersed in the overwhelming task of recovery. Eventually the North American Mission Board brought SBC evangelism workers to New Orleans for their annual meeting, and they asked me to address them on the state of evangelism in the SBC. That gave me a reason to restart my research with fresh eyes, and I was shocked by what I discovered. Southern Baptists were in for some bad news.

A fundamental shift had taken place in Southern Baptist life. After finishing my doctoral work and joining the NOBTS faculty in 1983, I told students in all classes and participants in evangelism conferences inviting me to speak that Southern Baptists were on an evangelistic plateau. I also reminded my hearers for more than twenty years that no plateau lasted forever. Eventually, the SBC would either experience fresh growth or begin to decline. During the first decade of the 21st century, the shift finally happened. Our statistics began to stay down. The day of bad news was dawning. Decline had come to the mighty Southern Baptist Convention. I shared that insight for the first time with those evangelism workers at the NAMB conference, and later, after additional research, I began sharing far and wide a warning that Southern Baptists were beginning to look like the next Methodists. Methodists had once been the largest Protestant denomination in America, famous for their evangelistic and missionary zeal. That zeal faded. Methodists eventually set the record for the fastest loss of membership in the history of American Christianity, and they have an identity today that founder John Wesley never imagined. When decline started to take root in Methodist life, they failed to respond to it. They never mounted a serious effort to recover from its effects. Today we are where Methodists were.

Southern Baptists tend to confuse Bright Spots with Trendlines. Statistical reports may yield some bright spots in any given year, even when the same reports indicate that the trends across the board are downward and a matter of concern. Rejoicing in bright spots so much that you fail to recognize and respond to the indications of downward trends makes emerging problems ever more difficult to resolve. When an organization recognizes it faces serious problems, develops plans to address those problems, and works diligently in spite of obstacles and difficulties to implement those plans, bright spots can be an encouraging sign of progress. But when bright spots become an excuse to avoid recognizing foundational problems, allowing them to get worse, and delaying the implementation of plans to overcome the problems, the harm is greater than the benefit. The latter scenario is the one facing the Southern Baptist Convention. A mission offering may be up, or baptisms may be up, but those bright spots do not indicate the SBC is healthy and growing. Take all the basic SBC stats from this year and compare them to the same stats from 2010, when the GCR proposals were adopted, and the bright spots lose their brightness. The downward trend is unmistakable. Compare those same stats with the statistics from 1990, and the differences are even more stark. Bright Spots tell you where you are. Trendlines tell you where you are going.

Here is a fast take on where the Southern Baptist Convention is today, based on the official statistics published each year in the Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention. Decline is working its way ever deeper into Southern Baptist life. A diminishing number of churches are participating in the Cooperative Program. On any given Sunday the number of people filling a Southern Baptist pew is down by one third (2,000,000 plus) since 2010. The post-GCR strategy of the North American Mission Board is underperforming on an epic scale. A massive emphasis on church planting weakened, not strengthened our evangelistic outcomes. NAMB refuses to report annually the number of church planters it employs or the survival rate and continued SBC identity and participation of the churches it starts at the five-year or ten-year marks after launch. The average number of baptisms per church since 2010 is down dramatically, and the combined total of North American and International missionaries was down from by 3,645 in 2023 as compared to 2010. After announcing a goal in 2013 of starting 1,500 new churches a year to keep up with population growth, the actual number of new church plants reported in ,2023 was 608. These are only some of the indications of the growing reality of decline in Southern Baptist life.

At the 2025 SBC, we learned that NAMB is withholding basic information about its ministry outcomes from the Southern Baptist Convention. One wonders: Do the Trustees of NAMB have access to this information? The question Dr. Ezell refused to answer at the SBC concerned the long-term viability of the new churches started by NAMB church planters. Ten years after their launch, how many NAMB church plants are still functioning, still identifying as Southern Baptist, and still engaged with the Convention in supporting the Cooperative Program, the mission offerings, etc. The question is very important in order to understand the likely future of the SBC. In years to come, will the SBC be a Convention of aging churches slowly losing their vitality over time, or are we in the process of continual renewal by steadily adding new and fully engaged SBC churches to work alongside existing churches to extend and enhance the Great Commission impact of the Southern Baptist Convention. Good strategic planning for what lies ahead requires information like this. Why not give the Convention paying for this church planting program access to such data?

This is not a time for Southern Baptists to get mad. It is not a time to look for a person or persons to blame. Southern Baptist leaders need to know that we can handle disappointing news and face challenges with resolve, not rage. This is a time for Southern Baptists to buckle up and get ready for some tough news, some hard choices, and the necessity of working up hill for years. We are a Convention in decline, and decline is a beast to overcome. We need to be committed to do whatever is necessary in order to reverse that decline for the sake of reaching a lost world. We cannot fix problems we do not know we have or overcome obstacles we do not see in the road. The celebration of bright spots can encourage us in the battle against decline, but we must maintain our focus on the crucial issue of making progress. Are we making real progress in overcoming and pushing back lostness, or is lostness a rising tide threatening to engulf us? No denomination in American history has ever reversed decline once it reached the scale we see in today’s SBC. That does not mean it cannot be done. Southern Baptists were the first to turn away from theological liberalism. God gave us a plan and some excellent leaders. It took ten years with the conservatives who wanted the change fighting tooth and nail all the way, but the results were profound and lasting. May God have mercy on us and give us the necessary grace to be the first to win a fight once again.