Respect the bow-tie, Brister. Respect the bow-tie.

NAF

Church B – a megachurch which somewhere along way adopted church discipline policies (kinda reminds me of FBC Muscle Shoals, AL).

Church C – a church plant with good membership discipline policies from the get-go.

First of all, thanks for reading my blog. Second, I appreciate your sense of humor. I am not sure what I will do with the research I have compiled. I think if I develop it a little more that something could be presentable in the future, but I think that would depend upon the options. I suppose the least I could do is provide a PDF document which you could download.

If I do that, it will have to be postponed for a little while as I am currently in a moving process and everything is packed up. In the meantime, I will continue to talk about how churches can recover regenerate church membership, including stuff like church covenants, church discipline, and gospel-centered community.

Long-time reader, first-time poster.

I like your analysis of the church data. Will I be able to purchase the rest of it (the other 97 churches) later this year at a local Lifeway store?

Adam

Thanks for commenting brother. I will miss you guys in Louisville. I don’t know if there is a Qdoba in south Florida, but if there is, you, James, Brad, and Barry will have to be the first to hit it up with me.

Chris,

Thanks for directing me to that resource. I think I remember something of that nature coming out of LifeWay where Dr. Waggoner was mentioning the report.

Charlie,

I am encouraged to hear how “ecumenical” you are when it comes to ties. I have many a friend who wear bow ties, and I do not feel violated having my picture taken with them. I will check out that site and see what I can come up with. I am decent with reading instructions–when I read them, that is. Thanks for the link!

Mark,

Yeah, I sometimes feel like I should list all the caveats to these numbers, but in spite of all that, I still think there is something to be said about considering a durative approach to analyzing church health rather than a punctiliar or extract approach. The ACP is a SBC database that all churches are asked to report their numbers each year which is used for many purposes (some good and some not so good). These numbers are from that database.

1. Membership growth and attendance growth are not direct correlations within any given time frame (for SBs that would be 1 year since we fill out ACPs). I have observed this when counting membership growth vs. attendance growth at our church…We have people who will attend church consistently for long periods of time before joining, thus they are counted in attendance long before they are counted in membership. The result of this makes it appear that we are adding members who never show up b/c our membership goes up but there is not a corresponding attendance increase b/c they’ve been at the church for a long period of time. The same is true for our children who grow up in church (are counted in attendance at worship) and then are saved, baptized, and confirm our membership covenant and doctrines in order to become a member. Thus we add members, but attendance does not increase when they join b/c they have been attending for years.

2. How do you find the data for individual churches in the ACP? Personal contacts at these churches or is the info available at the association/state level to anybody who asks for individual church stats?

Actually, I frequently do wear bow ties and have now for about 10 years. However, I refuse to be known as just a bow-tie wearer. I like to mix things up – hence the unbuttoned neck tie avatar. If you are intimidated by bow ties here is a great site that teaches you how to tie one.

http://www.bensilver.com/style06/knots_bow.htm

In my research of those churches with the Graham school, we found some pretty amazing churches using this formula.

Chris

I tend to agree with your assessment. If I were to pick a church for established churches, church B seems the way to go. Interestingly enough, this church is the least known of the three in the SBC.

seang213,

Well, I think there are two sides to that equation. Ideally, you want to have more attenders than members. I would rather have someone attend the church who is not a member and understands the covenant nature of the church and how seriously the church takes that than to accept the standard we have adopted today where you become a member with little to no accountability or church discipline. In other words, I would rather them understand the nature of a covenant community and be outside of it than be within a covenant community and continually be breaking that covenant.

But you are right, we do need to encourage those who are regularly attending to commit themselves to a local church, investing themselves for the building of the kingdom with their lives. It is like the problem today where couples are cohabitating but not marrying–they want the benefits without the personal commitment and covenant requirement of faithfulness.