By Lonnie Wilkey
lwilkey@tnbaptist.org
JACKSON — A crisis exists in the Southern Baptist Convention, but there is hope, 15 Southern Baptist evangelists from across the country agree.
In 2017, the Southern Baptist Convention lost more than 200,000 members and baptized fewer than 300,000 converts for the first time in 68 years, according to statistics compiled by LifeWay Christian Resources, according to Tennessee evangelist and bivocational pastor Jerry Drace of Jackson.
Drace convened the Evangelists’ Summit ‘18 in March under the auspices of the Jerry Drace Evangelistic Association. Among the topics discussed was the decline in baptisms, less revival services, and the lack of use of Southern Baptist evangelists. The meeting included the current president and vice president and four former presidents of the Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists (COSBE).
Participants in the Summit drafted a “White Paper Report” of their observations and possible solutions to the SBC crisis, said Drace.
Evangelists agreed in the White Paper that “for over 70 years, vocational evangelists and pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention have shared a common goal of reaching the lost and discipling the saved. Thousands of our churches have experienced the blessings and reaped the rewards of having experienced the preaching of God-called evangelists gifted with ‘drawing the net’ and ‘gathering the harvest.’ The pastor and the evangelist have always been partners in obeying our Lord’s instructions found in Matthew 28:19-20.”
The report noted that total membership of SBC churches now numbers 15,294,764, more than a million fewer than the 16.3 million reported in 2006. It also showed that baptisms, “long regarded as a benchmark for denominational health,” dropped by 10,000 to 295,212 in 2017. It was the eighth decline in the last 10 years and the smallest number of baptisms since the 285,152 registered in 1947, according to the report.
Challenges exist that must be dealt with, the report continued.
“We have moved from face-to-face relationships to Facebook without relationships. We have a Snapchat superficial society, which after a few seconds, makes your relationships unaccessible. … With such rapid changes in the way we communicate, or more accurately do not communicate, the challenge is how to connect the claims of Christ to a culture where information is altered at best and erased at worst.”
The report asked the question, “Is there still a place for public evangelistic gatherings which are commonly referred to as revivals, crusades, and festivals?” The answer is yes, the report indicated.
“Individual personal evangelism, media evangelism, and public proclamation have been present in every spiritual awakening for the past 2,000 years. We may need to rename these events, but the public proclamation of the Good News has endured through the ages. Special evangelistic events are needed perhaps more now than ever,” the report stated.
Southern Baptist evangelists declared they “stand ready and more than willing to serve every pastor in the SBC in a variety of harvest events. While our vocational evangelists are trusted with the proclamation of the gospel, many of them have expertise in areas such as international missions, financial, medical, and family issues as well as other topics which are relevant to the church today.”
The report offered four recommendations to be considered by both pastors and evangelists.
(1) Develop a partnership between pastors, their churches, and evangelists.
(2) Schedule quarterly harvest events.
(3) Develop creative and innovative evangelistic events which involve multiple churches, and/or the entire association on an annual basis.
(4) Use evangelists in witnessing and discipleship training.
(5) Create partnerships between strong churches and financially-challenged churches with low baptisms and sponsor an evangelist who can lead a harvest event.
The report also indicated possible challenges between church planting and evangelism.
“Church planting, the current emphasis in our convention, has been effective in increasing the number of new churches, but has not proven effective in increasing the number of new converts,” the report stated.
“Church planting is not evangelism in place of soul-winning; church planting is the result of evangelistic soul-winning. As recorded in Acts 2:47, the Lord added to the church only after salvation took place. Church planting as the only growth strategy of the SBC also neglects the evangelistic needs of our 47,000 existing churches.”
The report concluded that there is reason for concern about the lack of personal and corporate evangelism in the SBC, but that it is not too late to reverse the downward trends.
In addition to Drace, other Tennessee contributors to the report are: Ron Herrod, Knoxville; Phil Glisson, Memphis; Richard Hamlet, Cordova; and Keith Cook, Nashville. — The “White Paper Report” can be found at www.sbcevangelist.org.


