HOUSTON – Attendance at the 2013 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting June 11-12 saw 5,103 messengers from the nation’s 45,000 Southern Baptist churches. Official numbers will not be released until later in June. The unofficial total is a 35 percent drop from last year’s annual meeting in New Orleans, which drew 7,868.
There were 181 Missourians in attendance, a drop from 210 last year.
In 1993, the last time Southern Baptists gathered in Houston, 17,768 messengers attended.
SBC Registration Secretary Jim Wells – who also serves as the Missouri Baptist Convention’s Cooperative Program missionary for strategic partnerships – said he foresaw a slightly lower attendance this year, and blamed the flailing economy for the turnout.
This year’s 5,103 was just 151 more than 2011’s annual meeting in Phoenix, when 4,852 messengers gathered for the lowest-attended annual meeting in six decades.
“Church budgets are tight,” Wells said. “People evaluate everything that’s going to go on at the convention and make their decisions. Some have said there’s just disinterest, but I really attribute it to the economy.”
The fact that it was not an “election year” and there were few “controversial issues” also contributed to the dip. Messengers June 11 re-elected Fred Luter Jr., pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, to a second term as president of the SBC. He was elected without opposition.
Next year, with the convention headed to Baltimore, Wells said he is reluctant to guess on 2014’s attendance.
“It’s going to be a presidential year,” he said, “but we don’t have a lot of churches in New England.”