There are hundreds of small SBC churches all over the South where the median church member is in her 60s or 70s. Her parents attended that same church and they’re now buried in the church cemetery out back.
She sits in the same pew every Sunday, next to the same people. One day they’ll all rest next to each other in the church cemetery, along with their parents and grandparents.
The church is shrinking because most everyone’s kids left for college (or wherever) and never came back, except sometimes at Christmas.
Also because no one new ever visits. The church prefers it that way: visitors mess up the seating arrangement and they don’t understand the social dynamics—e.g. Mildred picks the paint color in the Fellowship Hall because her mom and daddy gave the money to build it 40 years ago.
There was a young kid three pastors ago, right out of seminary, who tried to bring in some new blood. But they got rid of him.
And so nothing at the church ever really changes. People just move from the pews to the cemetery out back. A couple of decades from now, they’ll all be out back and the building will be a trendy a coffee shop or bookstore or something if it isn’t demolished.
And this will be the fate of the SBC as whole if @BaptistNetwork and @FoundersMin are permitted to hold the SBC hostage to their culture war.
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