Thom Rainer

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Pandemic caused today's church woes? Troubling questions were there before that

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Pandemic caused today's church woes? Troubling questions were there before that

For the experts who examine trends in pews, the post-pandemic tea leaves have been hard to read -- with a few people going to church more often, others staying away and some still watching services online.

But it's important for pastors to note another sobering fact, according to one of America's most experienced observers of Protestant life. Here it is: The typical church has to keep adding members simply to keep membership steady. And it's becoming increasingly important to maintain a growing core of believers who are truly committed to faith and ministry.

"We used to have people we called 'social' Christians, even though that's an oxymoron," said Thom Rainer, founder of the Church Answers website and former dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

"Today, these people feel that they no longer need that 'Christian' label to be accepted in business and community life," he said, reached by telephone. "COVID sped things up -- made trends more obvious. But the pandemic was the accelerator, not the cause of what's happening."

Surveys since 2020 show that a "steady share of Americans -- about 40% -- say they have participated in religious services in the prior month one way or the other," according to a Pew Research Center report. But other details are blurry, since the "share of U.S. adults who … attend religious services once a month or more has dropped slightly, from 33% in 2019 to 30% in 2022."

Meanwhile, Pew reported that 7% claim they are attending services in person more often, post-COVID, while "15% say they are participating in services VIRTUALLY more often."

It's important to factor new realities into patterns seen for decades, noted Rainer. For example, in a recent online essay he argued that, if a typical Protestant church has an average worship attendance of 100, it needs to add about 32 attendees a year just to stay even.

Here's the math. The odds say at least one person will die -- a factor that rises for churches with aging flocks. Then, while mobility rates have slightly declined, it's likely that nine members will move away. Also, Rainer said years of statistics show that "your church will lose seven church members to another local church for every 100 in attendance."

The No. 1 factor in annual decline?

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COVID-19 and 2020: When clergy stress zoomed to higher levels than ever

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COVID-19 and 2020: When clergy stress zoomed to higher levels than ever

When training pastors and chaplains, educators frequently stress the need for "boundaries" between work and home.

Clergy need -- somehow -- to find "personal" time, along with face-to-face contact with loved ones. That challenge became more difficult in the age of smartphones, texting and emails, noted Marlon C. Robinson, pastoral care director at AdventHealth in Manchester, Ky., and a specialist in marriage and family therapy.

Then came the COVID-19 lockdowns and the pressures on clergy zoomed to a whole new level.

"Everything came home, all at once," said Robinson, reached by telephone. "Pastors were spending more and more time with their families -- jammed into one space. But this wasn't quality time. Everyone was at home, but they were staring at their own phones and computer screens. There was no intimacy, and all the pressures of ministry grew even more intense."

To make matters worse, the usual struggles with church leadership and finances were complicated by political warfare and conspiracy theories that, literally, began to shape how congregations handled worship, pastoral care, education and even efforts to keep sanctuaries clean and safe.

Instead of arguing -- to cite church clichés -- about the color of new carpet or outdated hymnals, the faithful were fighting about whether masks were necessary to save lives or merely "politically correct" virtue signals.

Meanwhile, people were sick, and some died, with their pastors and families on the other side of locked hospital or nursing-home doors. And it was illegal to have funerals? Attendance dropped, along with offerings. More than a few members vanished.

Ministers "are inundated with phone calls, emails, text and WhatsApp messages, and communications through a host of other platforms," wrote Robinson, in Ministry Magazine.

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There's nowhere to turn? When hurting people believe they have to flee the pews

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In the not so distant Baptist past, all Sunday services ended with altar calls in which people came forward to make public professions of Christian faith or to become part of a local congregation.

But it was also common, during the "invitation hymn," for church members to come forward and huddle with the minister for a few quiet, discreet minutes. The pastor would announce that they had come forward to "rededicate their life to Christ" and then ask those assembled to offer them hugs and prayers.

"That's something that we've lost, somewhere along the way. We need to regain that confessional part of the faith," said the Rev. Thom Rainer, head of LifeWay Christian Resources at the Southern Baptist Convention's headquarters in Nashville.

"It used to be common for people to go forward, rededicate their lives and get right with the Lord. … It was a chance to tell the pastor you needed help. It was important that our people knew they could do that."

The alternative is much worse, he stressed, in a telephone interview. If believers don't know how to reach out for help, or if they think they will be harshly judged if they do, they usually remain silent before using the exit door, for keeps.

The bottom line is shocking, said Rainer. If most churches could regain just the members who fled over the span of a decade -- for personal or private reasons, as opposed to dying or moving out of town -- worship attendance would triple.

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Crash course in how to offend visitors to your church

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For generations this greeting was included in the announcements during Sunday services in the typical American church.

The pastor or another leader would cheerfully say how glad the homefolks were to have visitors in their midst and ask newcomers to stand and be recognized. Members might even point at guests, to make sure they were spotted. Visitors would then be asked to share their names, where they were from and perhaps even why they were visiting.

A friendly gesture to help guests feel welcome or a sure-fire way to freak out introverted people who may have struggled with the decision to visit a pew?

"This is one of those things that truly divides people into two groups, depending on their personalities," said the Rev. Thom Rainer, head of LifeWay Christian Resources at the Southern Baptist Convention's headquarters in Nashville. Before that, he was founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

"Some see this as a sincere gesture of fellowship," he said. But for others "anything this overt may make them feel uncomfortable or even pressured."

At some point, some churches tweaked this rite and, rather than asking visitors to stand, asked members to rise -- while guests remained seated.

Rainer laughed, and added: "Now the poor visitor is surrounded and singled out even more. It's like they're in a spotlight. … They don't even get to mingle with others on their own terms, like normal people."

Southern Baptists without (many) baptisms

Visitors who enter Southern Baptist churches these days will usually see posters and pamphlets for everything from marriage enrichment retreats to tornado-relief fundraisers, from weight-loss classes to drives to find volunteers for African hospitals. But one thing is missing in the typical church lobby or fellowship hall, according to the leader of the denomination's LifeWay Christian Resources branch. It's rare to see appeals for members to join evangelism programs that strive to win local unbelievers to the Christian faith.

"Why is this? It's hard to say what happened to our commitment to evangelism. ... I'm not hearing any answers to this question that go deeper than anecdotes," said the Rev. Thom Rainer, who, before reaching what Nashville locals call the "Baptist Vatican," was founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

"It's like our people lost confidence in the old evangelistic programs that our churches had been using for years and years," said Rainer, reached by telephone this week during the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting, held this year in Houston. "That's understandable, but the problem is that they never bought into anything new and moved on."

This sea change is directly linked to a recent statistic that should be causing "sorrow and rising concern" throughout America's largest Protestant flock, he said.

Think of it as the Baptist bottom line: Local churches reported 314,959 baptisms in 2012, a sharp 5.5 percent downturn from 2011. Baptisms have declined six out of the last 10 years, falling to the SBC's lowest number since 1948.

While hotter issues -- the Boy Scouts of America and homosexuality, for one -- will grab most post-Houston headlines, Rainer posted a pre-convention essay online seeking candid discussion of this painful question: "Where have all the baptisms gone?"

"Baptisms are our way to best estimate the number of people we reached for Christ with the Gospel," he wrote. "When someone declares that he or she is a follower of Christ in our churches, that person is expected to follow through with baptism. ...

"Of course, baptisms are an incredibly important metric for us in the SBC. We use that metric to see how we are doing on eternal matters. Yes, the metric is fallible. ... But that does not explain why we mention it less and less."

So what has happened in recent decades?

* The decline can, in part, be explained by the fact that nearly 20 percent of the convention's churches have stopped voluntarily reporting some, or all, of their annual statistics. "We don't know if some churches have stopped sending in baptism numbers because their annual number is zero," said Rainer.

* It's impossible to ignore the fact that the fastest rising statistic in American religion -- among those who attend church -- is the percentage of people who attend nondenominational Protestant" congregations. In previous generations, some of these megachurches would have had Southern Baptist signs out front.

The charismatic flocks in the Assemblies of God are growing as well, noted Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research. Meanwhile, evangelism efforts remain strong in the SBC's growing number of African-American and Latino congregations. "It seems that the decline is largely in our predominately white churches," he said.

* Southern Baptists are strong in the rural Sunbelt and, while population growth in Southern States remains strong, Americans are increasingly moving to big cities and their suburbs.

* A key question Stetzer and Rainer agreed deserves study: How many SBC churches have stopped requiring baptism by immersion for those who move their memberships from churches that use different baptism rites?

* Another unanswered question: To what degree have birthrates fallen in Southern Baptist congregations? A decline would affect the number of baptisms among children and teens.

* SBC leaders would, if pressed, have trouble finding as many as 6 million of the nearly 16 million people whose names are on membership rolls in their churches. Why? Too often, churches have focused on mere "incantation evangelism" that expects people to recite a few "magic words" that prove they are Christians, said Rainer. That brand of faith is not enough.

"We have baptized too many members who seem to show no evidence of salvation," he said. The millions of missing members are "certainly not the kinds of believers who win other people to true faith in Christ."