Florida Baptist leaders evaluate Pew Forum report

JACKSONVILLE (FBC)—A widespread study of the American religious landscape conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life should serve as a wake up call for Florida Baptist congregations, said three Florida Baptist Convention church growth specialists.

“It is an awakening call for us to consider how we can adjust our strategy to reach the spiritually disconnected as well as the spiritually confused,” said John Boone, director of the Convention’s Sunday School Department.

The massive survey, based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans, age 18 years and older, show Protestant denominations are losing ground and an increasing number of people are leaving the faith of their fathers and mothers.

The findings are consistent with his experience in Florida Baptist churches, said Bob Bumgarner, director of the Convention’s Church Development Division. The report reveals “an emerging reality that denominational loyalty is not the value it once was to an increasing segment of the population,” he said.

“Like it or not, we live in a culture of tolerance driven by the need of experience. In head-to-head competitions, if loyalty to a denominational system is perceived to hinder the experience of connecting with God, the place a person can experience their God connection will win,” Bumgarner continued.

Denominations are becoming known as the “bureaucracy that clearly defines what a particular group of people are against,” said Bumgarner. “Consistency or the purity of a belief system is secondary to experiencing connection with God.”

The Pew findings “clearly show that people are increasingly willing to leave the denominational affiliation of their childhood,” added Rick Wheeler, director of the Convention’s Office of Leadership Development. “While this is a troubling statistic, it should generate conversations among church leaders about how to produce an authentic Gospel impression upon younger people which remains with them as they mature.”

Wheeler said the study offers church leaders “missional” opportunities. “Thinking and acting as missionaries within our communities are essential disciplines for evangelistic effectiveness. Just as missionaries adapt to their context, Florida church leaders will need to consider how to adapt models and resources to meet the particular needs of their community.”

Florida Baptist church leaders have recently reported an increase in a consumer mindset among their church members, switching churches like they change their shopping preferences from Wal-Mart to Target, said Wheeler.

“This should challenge our thinking and models for making disciples,” Wheeler continued. “We must be careful that in our efforts to impact the mission field in a culturally relevant way, we maintain the Biblical model of servanthood as an integral part of true discipleship.”

Wheeler warned: “Churches should be careful not to be the ‘low-cost’ leader when it comes to their intended outcomes of disciple-making. Anything less than the biblical definition of a God-centered life, focused on the needs of others, fuels this consumer mindset.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Bumgarner said the American church is in an “Acts 17 moment” when Paul—as a foreign missionary— “masterfully preserves the unchanging truth of the Gospel while speaking a language that the people group he is trying to reach can hear and comprehend. How the Athenians need to hear the Gospel drives how Paul speaks the Gospel.”

Southern Baptists understand this, Bumgarner said, especially in international missions ventures which are dedicated to increasing knowledge, skills and attitudes about various people groups around the world. “The Pew research shows that we leave those missionary skills and sensitivities in other countries and fail to see their necessity at home. The growing awareness is that we need to bring those knowledge, skills and attitudes to bear on the work of the local church in America. We need to re-engage our ministry fields through the lens of the foreign missionary, or better yet, Acts 17.”

Bumgarner suggested pastors often need courage to shift the thinking of their church from the club mentality to the foreign mission style engagement required in their own back yard.”

The Pew findings must be customized to Florida’s uniqueness, which is found in the cultural diversity and “syntheses of these cultures in the urban areas,” contends Boone.

“We have six large multicultural urban centers that demand contextualization of the data. Probably the demographics of age, cultural context, and education contribute to a significant difference,” Boone said. “Florida is a state of geographical differences. The rural areas of the Panhandle are different from the urban sprawl of south Florida. And the entertainment/tourist orientation of central Florida is quite different from the complexion of north Florida.” Boone proposed that churches in each area will have to develop “distinctive ways of linking to the spiritually disconnected.”

Florida Baptists must put in place a customized strategy to challenge the decline in ministry impact, added Boone, which could contribute to community transformation.

“Part of the solution for the declining numbers (of church members),” said Boone, “is to equip pastors with principles and practices that would improve skills in strategic planning to connect the spiritually confused. The solution involves not only teaching, but also must include execution of such a proactive plan. These skills could help pastors transition to a new dimension of ministry vitality moving from a maintenance mentality to acting and thinking more strategically.”

Concluding his assessment, Bumgarner said, the report is “disturbing on many levels but not without hope.

“For some a beloved institution is in trouble,” Bumgarner said. “Many hot-hearted Christ followers owe their very salvation to the missionaries sent, the churches planted and the schools funded by denominations.

“Disturbing on a more basic level is how we handle the information,” he continued. “If we see it as a lowering coffin lid we miss the point and the opportunity. If we see the information as ‘intelligence from the field’ of a radically changing battle field there is much reason for hope and much work to do.

Finally, Bumgarner said: “God is still calling brave pastors and church planters to create churches of people to ‘live sent.’ The real question for denominations is how they will come alongside these leaders and help facilitate that journey.”