New England Reportedly Is the “Only Region Where Southern Baptist Churches Are Growing Numerically”—BCNE Counts 33,664 Baptisms This Century
Brad Price celebrates after his baptism at First Baptist Church in Marlborough, MA
The “only region where Southern Baptist churches are growing numerically is in New England,” reported Lifeway Research in September 2023. The Baptist Churches of New England Annual Church Profile data for 2001-23 confirm that bold statement.
“If you want to find a growing Southern Baptist church . . . you might want to try the Northeast,” added Lifeway Research, a division of Lifeway Christian Resources, Nashville, the media publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.
|
2001 |
2010 |
2020 |
2023 |
Growth |
|
|
Churches |
193 |
292 |
358 |
367 |
47.4% |
|
Baptisms |
1,290 |
1,507 |
1,063 |
2,075 |
37.8% |
|
Members |
21,713 |
23,966 |
32,249 |
32,182 |
32.5% |
The data speaks for itself. The total number of BCNE churches in the six New England states grew by nearly fifty percent, from 193 in 2001 to 367 in 2023, and the number of baptisms grew from 1,290 a year at the start of the century to 2,075 in the most recent year (2023) for which data are available.
In all, 174 churches and 10,469 members have been added to the New England Baptist ranks since 2001. Most significantly, as BCNE Executive Director Terry W. Dorsett announced, a total of 33,664 baptisms have been counted since the turn of the century. Following the biblical pattern of John (Mark 1:4-5), New England Baptists immerse only those who have professed faith in Jesus Christ.
Analysis of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Annual Church Profile by Lifeway Research “paints a complicated picture for the Southern Baptist Convention but contains some positive news. In 2022, baptisms increased by more than 16%.”
Nationally, Lifeway Research reported 47,198 churches and 180,177 baptisms in 2022. “With far fewer churches gathering in person, Southern Baptist congregations didn’t do much baptizing during the pandemic. Those numbers have increased in recent years, but the overall decline within the Convention continues,” according to “Baptisms Rebound, but Negative Trend Continues in Southern Baptist Churches,” a news report published in January 2024, also by Lifeway Research.
By comparison, during the two years that history will remember for COVID-19, the BCNE churches baptized 1,238 people in 2021 and 1,805 in 2022, an increase of 31.4%. Comparing 2021 and 2023 shows a two-year increase of 837 people baptized, a 40.3% increase.
“All of us at the BCNE thank God for graciously drawing a record number of new believers to himself in the last year. It is exciting to hear reports of baptisms on a regular basis around New England,” Dorsett said.
“While we know that God is the one who draws people, he most often chooses to use people as the means of that spiritual harvest, and we have seen many of our BCNE churches really step up their evangelism efforts in the last two years,” he added.
Much of the growth in baptisms, Dorsett noted, is because of “the focused efforts of our BCNE missionary staff who are working evangelism into everything they do.” For example, Sandy Coelho, the Leadership Development Coordinator, led numerous in-person and online events in the last year, “each of which highlighted how evangelism plays a role in everything we do.” Coelho also gathered the BCNE’s Annual Church Profile data from each church.
The executive director also said Joe Souza, the Ethnic Ministry and Boston Area Regional Coordinator, and Edson Messor, the Latino Training Coordinator, have “worked tirelessly to train our ethnic churches, especially the Brazilians and Hispanics. Many of them are seeing incredible spiritual fruit as a result.”
The other BCNE staff members including the regional coordinators (formerly directors of missions) are also “working hard to make evangelism a major emphasis.”
Even some of the older BCNE churches “are seeing incredible response to the gospel,” Dorsett continued. He cited Logan Loveday, lead pastor of the historic First Baptist Church of Marlborough, MA, which started April 14, 1868. The church reported ten baptisms in 2023, “a church that had not used their baptistry at all in the ten years prior!” Dorsett knows that inner-city congregation well; he is a member and the pastor is his son-in-law.
“The BCNE is thankful for our ongoing partnership with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) which is helping us fund part of the evangelism training and providing some small grants to help churches put the training into practice,” Dorsett said.
“There is nothing more frustrating to a pastor than to have people trained to do evangelism and then lack the resources to make it happen. The combination of training funds and evangelism grants we received from NAMB combined with funds from our own BCNE budget are moving the evangelism ball down the court for a slam dunk this year,” he concluded.
A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor