Florida Baptists report banner year in number of baptisms & churches

Apr 28, 2009
BARBARA DENMAN
Florida Baptist Convention

JACKSONVILLE (FBC) --The 2008 church year was a banner one for Florida Baptists as they baptized 41,790 new believers into the Kingdom and netted an additional 96 new congregations, underlining the Florida Baptist Convention’s continuing emphasis on the priorities of evangelism, starting new churches, and strengthening existing congregations.

The 41,790 baptisms reported in the Annual Church Profile represent the highest in the past six years and resulted from 34,414 baptisms conducted by Florida Baptist congregations (an increase of 4.51 percent over 2007); and 7,376 baptisms in Haiti. The work of the Confraternite Missionnaire Baptiste de Haiti is directly supported through Florida Baptist Cooperative Program and state mission offering funds.

David Burton, director of the Convention’s Evangelism Division, said he is seeing a renewed evangelistic commitment from pastors across the state. “Philemon 6 is grabbing the hearts of many these days,” he added.

“Our staff is emphasizing intentionality much more than years past and I believe it is working,” Burton noted. “Pastors are becoming more aggressive and creative in outreach and direct evangelism.”

An all-time high of 2,907 Florida Baptist congregations were reported in the ACP, which represents a net increase of 96 new congregations from 2007. The increase in congregations combines 2,343 fully constituted churches with 564 church-type missions.

These churches include1,937 Anglo congregations; 250 African-American congregations; and 723 ethnic congregations, which include 305 Haitian, 305 Hispanic and 113 congregations of 18 various other ethnic groups.

The increase in congregations can be attributed to Florida Baptists’ commitment to planting new churches to keep up with the state’s population growth and mobility as well as its complex ethnicity, explained Cecil Seagle, director of the Convention’s Mission Division.

Each year, a number of older churches will cease to exist. The challenge for Florida Baptists is to offset the decline by starting healthy new churches.

“The good news is that we planted 137 new congregations last year and saw a significant rise in newly constituted congregations,” Seagle said. As a result, the number of church-type missions decreased, which in itself is a “healthy, Kingdom impacting measurement,” he said.

The 2008 ACP statistics were gathered from reports completed by 2,482 Florida Baptist churches for the church year, October 2007 through September, 2008. A total of 428 congregations did not report, which most likely would increase totals, said Lonnie Wright, director of the Convention’s Information Support Services.

In other statistics, Florida Baptist churches reported 1,016,726 in total membership, a 1.72 percent drop from the previous year; and 789,919 resident members, a 1.32 percent decrease.

The slight decline in membership may reflect a shift in how churches count members, explained Wright, adding that many contemporary and language churches do not stress membership, but participation.

In other findings, average worship attendance reported a slight decrease to 450,809 in 2008 from 453,439 in 2007. Reported Sunday School enrollment declined by three percent to 542,121, yet average attendance grew a half percent to 273,963.

These statistics do not give a complete picture of Bible study being done by Florida Baptist churches, said John Boone, director of the Convention’s Sunday School Department.

"I believe we have more people involved in Bible study than ever before,” Boone said, “but I think it’s being done in a different format now.”

The methodology of the contemporary church stresses a small group Bible study concept over traditional forms, explained Boone, which are called by a variety names, including life groups, Bible fellowship, community groups and small groups.

“I think there is confusion about how to report these groups as Sunday School,” he continued, which affects the ACP totals. He did note, however, the department is committed to providing conferences throughout the year to help churches know how to do small groups more effectively,

Participation in several traditional Southern Baptist programs also declined from the previous year: discipleship, less than one percent drop to 175,343; Woman’s Missionary Union, 7.6 percent decline to 37,991; and Florida Baptist Men, down nearly 12 percent to 19,385. Involvement in women’s ministries, however, grew by 12 percent to 69,561.

Florida’s sagging economy is seen in giving by churches with declines reported in undesignated receipts, total gift receipts, mission expenditures and associational missions giving.

Giving dropped during the church year—from October 2007 to September 2008-through the Cooperative Program, two percent; Lottie Moon Offering for international missions, 13 percent; and Annie Armstrong Offering for national missions dropped nearly eight percent. A ten percent increase in Maguire State Mission Offering and a slight increase in other designated funds were reported.

Email this Article Print this page

Login ID:
Password:	Forgot password?