A better bottom line for the Southern Baptist Convention?

Annual % change in SBC membership

David Waters poked some Southern Baptists in the eye with his Dec. 12 critique and market-based analysis of denominational decline.

Writing for the Washtington Post/Newsweek, Waters attributed the tanking baptism numbers to:

1. Loss of product appeal: Most Americans no longer agree that Christ is the only way.
2. Loss of brand appeal: Three decades of denominational infighting that was part of the conservative takeover and that has proceeded to a kind of internal inquisition, plus the church's alliance with the Republican Party, have freighted the term "Southern Baptist" with negatives. A lot of them.
3. Market change: "Nearly all predominantly white Christian denominations" are in decline. Southern Baptist churches are likewise in decline. It's a result of demographic change.

Waters drew blood, however, when he closed by criticizing the very use of the numbers with which the Southern Baptist Convention has been preoccupied:

Shouldn't the church find more faithful ways of measuring its success? Mercy instead of membership? Forgiveness instead of financial contributions? Baptisms lived in the world instead of baptisms recorded in a book? Justice instead of just stats?

When it comes to being the church, the bottom line is not 'the bottom line.'

Malcolm B. Yarnell III , director of the Center for Theological Research at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, responded Wednesday with a pointed defense.

Yarnell preaches something of a sermon which answers Waters' concluding remarks, not his entire piece. And I feel it defies summary. But deserves a look.

He concludes that "God does not call a Christian to forsake church activity. And human activity can be measured through statistics, can it not?"

So, an apparent preoccupation with falling baptism, membership and other numbers is ok?

Or might Yarnell have done well to address the issues on which Waters was actually focused? Namely, the causes of the decline, a confrontation with which might reveal a solution, if there is one for the Southern Baptist Convention.