For years now, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been desperately spin-doctoring and obfuscating their terrible metrics to look better to their flocks. But this year might represent a whole new low for them. Despite a few gains in some metrics, the overall picture couldn’t look more bleak. Today, we’ll check out those metrics—and learn what they tell us about the this ailing denomination’s near future.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 5/2/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now!)
SITUATION REPORT: Wake up, babe! The 2024 SBC metrics sneak peek just dropped!
When I finally saw the SBC’s 2024 metrics show up on their official site, Baptist Press, I screamed like a tween girl at a boy-band concert in 2012. Why, I’d only just snarked them the other day for taking so long to get those figures up! And oh, what a treat they are!
Here’s the summary sheet they linked in their post (local archive), and the relevant numbers from it:

First, the good: Baptisms rose a bit, and their baptism ratio’s around 1:51. That ratio is the most important SBC metric of all; it indicates how many SBC members the denomination needs to capture one baptism. So I bet the denomination’s leaders are very happy to see that ratio improving. Additionally, attendance at weekly worship and Sunday School/small group has risen slightly.
Now, the bad: Everything else.
No, really. The SBC’s membership continues to decline, with membership falling by almost 260k last year, dwindling them down to 12.7M now from their 2006 peak of 16.3M. They’ve lost the equivalent of the population of Richmond, Virginia.
The big story with the SBC’s new metrics: An ongoing lack of transparency
And for yet another year, the SBC’s leaders declined to share their total receipts amount. This bit is where the SBC goes from bad to worse in terms of transparency.
Organizations like the SBC get designated and undesignated donations. The SBC largely runs on undesignated donations. For decades, they shared the total amount of donations they’d received the previous year, then broke that number down into types. But since the 2023 Annual Report, they haven’t done that. These days, we only get undesignated receipts. Then again, given how poorly the undesignated receipts are doing this year (a USD$469M decline), I can make some educated guesses about what the entire enchilada looks like right now.
Making the situation look even worse, Lifeway published a blog post that gives us a little more context about that net 260k loss of members:
For the first time since the late 1980s into the early 1990s, the Southern Baptist Convention saw four consecutive years of growth in baptisms. Not only have baptisms climbed out of pandemic levels, but the 2024 numbers also topped the last pre-pandemic year—2019. Southern Baptist churches also added 173,156 other new members, which is similar to pre-pandemic numbers. [Source: Lifeway]
If Lifeway is adding 173,156 “other new members” to those 250,643 baptisms, that indicates a grand total of 423,799 total members added. But instead, they suffered a net loss of 259,824 people. That sounds like 683,623 people left.
This metrics report represents peak SBC dishonesty. It’s an excellent example of just where evangelicals’ walk fails to uphold all their talk.
But that’s only a small part of the overall fail on display here.
Other metrics pointing to impending disaster
This report is purely astonishing.
The SBC continues to bleed churches, despite opening new ones scattershot everywhere they can every year. Their total count dropped to 46,876 this year from 46,906 last year. That’s a net loss of 30 churches. SBC leaders haven’t disclosed just how many churches they opened last year, but Lifeway, their official publishing and research arm, reported 1200 churches lost in 2022. That year, they lost a net of about 400 churches, with 79% disbanding (almost entirely through closing shop for good) and 18% disaffiliating from the denomination. With hardliners in the SBC antagonizing less-extremist churches more every year, I’m sure the proportion of disaffiliations is much higher now.
Enrollment for Vacation Bible School (VBS), their last best hope for indoctrinated unattended children, is likewise down. That’s got to be a rough blow, given how hard it’s getting for them to gain access to children anywhere else.
One interesting decline occurred within “Associations.” These SBC clubs serve specific groups like “Baptists in Georgia” or “Baptist high-school teachers.” Whoever these associations are, they’re nine fewer this year—and those declines occurred in otherwise-strong SBC areas like Texas and Mississippi. Of perhaps greater interest, no state-level conventions reported any increases in associations. It looks like this metric is on a slow burn of a decline: In 2020, they reported 1,114 associations, and in 2021, 1,100. This number likely reflects mergers with other groups. Downsizing is a good idea when the money train slows down.
How to (not) claw back a half-billion dollars
When the metrics report first dropped, I barreled into the washroom to tell Mr. Captain about it while he showered. I couldn’t wait one more minute. And then this happened:
Me, out of nowhere: Honey! 2024 metrics finally dropped! The SBC’s undesignated receipts are down nearly half a billion dollars!
Him, trying to catch up to my context: That’s a lot.
Me: Oh, but wait, that can’t be right. It must be $469k. I must have mentally added some decimal places. Let me go recheck those numbers….
Me: ….Nope, it’s $469M all right. No wonder they’re selling so much real estate lately.
That crack about real estate is true, by the way. They are in fact selling some very prime real estate lately. In fact, a lot of SBC-affiliated places seem to be doing that of late. Just this past January, Gateway Seminary was set to sell the land one of its regional campuses occupied. As well, starting in September last year the SBC’s leaders began to put their headquarters building in Nashville up for sale. This past February, they finally listed it for $35M.
The SBC’s leaders hope the proceeds will help them afford sex abuse settlements. I think it sounds like a good start, at least.
The SBC’s posting metrics we haven’t seen for decades
Rewind to 1975, the last time the SBC had 12.7M members. (All years mentioned appear in the following year’s Annual Report. Annual Reports can be found here.)
That year, the SBC’s 35k churches baptized almost 422k people—producing a baptism ratio of 1:30. Annual Reports back then didn’t reveal total attendance, but they reported 7.2M people enrolled in Sunday School classes. Lastly, they took in total receipts of $1.38Bn, which a government inflation calculator tells me is worth about $8Bn today.
Last year, with the same number of members spread among 46,876 churches, the SBC baptized 250k people, landing them a baptism ratio of 1:51. Undesignated receipts total $9.5Bn, a drop of $469M from $10,027,338,119 in 2023. As for total receipts, who knows? In 2021, the last year we got totals, they reported $11.8B. I’m guessing that’s sunk into the $11.3-11.5Bn range by now.
As well, in 2024 2.5M people were enrolled in all of their church-adjacent groups: Sunday School, small groups, etc. Combined with dismal Vacation Bible School enrollment since their glory days, this metric speaks to the SBC’s continuing failure to resonate with younger people.
The upshot: With 11k more churches and about 7x the cash, they’re half as effective and have far less engagement from their remaining members!
Watching the SBC hump doorknobs is funny, at least.
An overall set of metrics pointing to the near-future of the SBC
The overall picture here is that of a denomination in decline. Its various endeavors waste far more money for smaller and smaller returns, but its leaders remain desperate to keep the donations flowing in. Their fanbase is declining, likely because more moderate members are being winnowed out. What’s left is becoming polarized—with those remaining in the pews doubling-down on the creepy controlling vibes the SBC sends in spades.
This is a recipe for disaster. The SBC’s leaders can no way, no how handle an increasing proportion of extremists.
The total receipts situation speaks the loudest to me here, though. I’ve always found it suspicious that SBC leaders stopped telling their members about their overall money situation right as their decline was worst.
Sure, I can certainly imagine some legit reasons for them to disclose only undesignated receipts. The spotty reporting they’re getting from member churches is one good reason for it. But they’ve always had spotty reporting, and they still disclosed total receipts. So why stop now?
One answer that springs to mind immediately involves the #1 rule in evangelicalism: Never talk about losses. Only wins. They also don’t ever talk about the metrics of their annual Spring Break evangelism drive, Beach Reach, unless they’re very impressive indeed.
I’m guessing total receipts look really, really bad, so SBC leaders are reluctant to overload the flocks with Negative Nancy numbers. What they do report speaks between the lines to their overall and worsening of decline. They’ve got 1975’s membership, modern bills to pay, and no effective plans to reverse their trajectory.
It’s like they’re trying to remake Avengers: Endgame in someone’s garage with a nonexistent budget, but I’d actually enjoy that endeavor. It sounds like it’d have a lot of heart and charm.
The SBC? Not so much.
Reactions around the Christ-o-sphere to the SBC metrics drop
Sometimes, evangelical media ignores really bad news for a while. Not this time. This time, their spaces buzz like bees in a summer meadow.
Christianity Today covered the story with an eye toward emphasizing the SBC’s increase in baptisms and attendance. That seems to be the overall tenor with sites that are friendly to neutral with the SBC.
The Tennesseean interviewed Tom Buck, an SBC hardliner, to get an airily-dismissive sound bite about all the churches leaving the denomination lately—like the megachurch NewSpring. Their reporter even called that creepy weirdo “a leading voice among an opposition conservative faction in the SBC.” I bet he liked that, though it makes me wonder why they couldn’t get an actual leading voice from the hardliners.
That said, I think Tom Buck does speak for the hardliners here: If the remaining churches drill down harder on their platforms, they’re fine with the rest leaving.
The Center for Baptist Leadership, one of the primary strongholds of the SBC’s hardliner faction, has already been howling for metaphorical blood over the SBC’s lack of transparency about funds. On Wednesday, they published a post agitating for the SBC to release their annual IRS Form 990 to members.
And the hardliners pounce!
I guess the hardliners don’t remember vehemently standing against that idea just 2-3 years ago. It was something the enemy faction wanted to do, so the hardliners generally opposed it. Very obviously, the last thing they wanted was for the flocks to find out exactly where the money’s going. (Similarly, the hardliners completely opposed any transparency in reporting sex abuse to the public.) But now all of a sudden they’re pushing for financial transparency?
That move tells me the hardliners think their new cause, whether it’s adopted or not at this year’s Annual Meeting, will give them the ammunition they need to stage their biggest battle yet for control of the SBC. I can’t blame them, either. Despite all its problems, the old girl still lays enough golden eggs to entice any control-hungry schismatics. They won’t leave to go start their own new denomination until they’re certain they won’t win this war.
Before the SBC’s leaders finally move out of their cushy digs in downtown Nashville, though, I hope they try to find their lost authenticity. Maybe it fell between some floorboards, or it’s stuck in the corner of some dank supply closet. Perhaps someone hid it.
Or maybe—to borrow from 1 Kings 18:27—it, like Jesus himself apparently, is deep in thought, or busy, or on a long journey.
NEXT UP: The grand culmination of our SBC analyses! We plunge into reflections on the common element in all of these recent stories: Long-lost authenticity. See you soon! <3
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