The Surprising Crisis Inside The Church.

Christine Wicker is the author of the bestselling book,”The fall of the evangelical Nation.”The sub -title is,The Surprising Crisis Inside The Church.(Harper Collins).

She writes on pages 23,24.Every year the Southern Baptists ask for money for a special fund,the Annie Armstrong offering for North American missions.This donation is one of the two most important offerings of the Southern Baptist year.It is relentlessly promoted and tremendously important to Baptists.This one came from the 2007 annual report,which shows that Southern Baptists gave only $57 million to that offering,and officials were delighted with that amount.It was $2 million more than their goal.

But measure it out.If Southern Baptists have 16 million members,then each one of them gave a bit over $3.50 to the most important North American missions offering of the year.

If they have 8 million members,each of them gave a little over $7 .

Only if the have 4 million people contributing do they begin to approach a reasonable amount of money,a little over $14 a piece,for Southern Baptists who are and always have been aggressively mission minded people.

Under 4 million is in fact the correct number of true,devoted,church loving Southern Baptissts in this country according to the Baptists’own account.Some of those are being double,tripled,or even quadrupled counted because they go to several Sunday schools or their equivalent adult Bible fellowships.

Around 4 million people are in Sunday school,and about a million more are in attendance at church services on Sunday according to the Southern Baptists themselves.

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