President and Founder of Replicate, Robby Gallaty, chaired the Disciplemaking Task Force for Southern Baptists. Their findings revealed the effects of a lack of discipleship and challenged churches to embrace Bible engagement. Watch this short video where Robby discusses their findings:
https://vimeo.com/275065938
Baptist Press reported on the announcement:
If you’d like to download the entire report (including recommendations), you can do that at 80by20.org In the most recent episode of the Making Disciples podcast, Robby and Chris Swain discuss how to get started with Disciplemaking. If you are a pastor or church leader, be sure to listen to it for your next steps in making disciples who make disciples.Gallaty recounted that the task force analyzed the last 20 years of Annual Church Profile (ACP) data. They discovered that despite the impressive number of baptisms over that span — 7.1 million — average church attendance remained virtually flat. Even after factoring in for mortality, Gallaty said 6.5 million people had dropped out of church attendance over those 20 years.
“Our convention could be twice as large as it is today if we would have simply engaged the people we just baptized,” Gallaty said. Gallaty summarized the task force’s recommendations: Increase Bible engagement for church members; examine the connection between salvation decisions and group involvement; and examine the number of groups that multiply on a regular basis.
