Southern Baptists have a love/hate relationship with statistics. On one hand, this is one imperfect way we have of evaluating ourselves. How are we doing as churches, individually and in cooperation? Part of that story is expressed in the measure of people and money. On the other hand, it is an imperfect measure. There is also the real danger that we’ll consider numerical success more thorough than it is. And then there is the real struggle with reporting and interpreting our numbers honestly. We need our numbers even as they vex us.

I think the guy who considers good numbers the whole story is a bit like Bigfoot?he’s probably out there but most of us will hear more of him than we see. A contrary, and also mostly legendary, beast is the sophisticate who “doesn’t do numbers” in order to give the illusion that he cares about people instead. Everyone “does numbers” in at least some informal way. Yet those two legends are invoked quite often when we begin to talk about the need to measure our resources. Each side cites the extreme view to justify their own convictions for or against the reporting of our stats.

God seems to be a pretty committed counter. He tells us the days of creation and assigned special meaning to one of them. He told Noah the how many clean and unclean animals to save from the great worldwide flood. He even gave Noah the dimensions for the ship he was to build. Even the number of days for the flood were specified, as was the span of time before they left the ark.

On we go through genealogies, the counting of tribes, the years of bondage, the number of great kingdoms on the earth (with their horns, heads and wings all counted), the portion we should return to the storehouse, the Lord’s knowledge of the hairs of our head, the number of the disciples, the days Jesus spent in the grave, the thousands saved on Pentecost, the number of the first deacons, the churches in John’s revelation, and hundreds of other examples. There is also a “fullness” of numbers after which God will again send Jesus?a number known only to God but a number nonetheless.

Some of the numbers were given to provide specificity to instructions and to nail down that these things actually occurred (or were/are to occur) in space and time. Other numbers were made up of individual souls, genealogies and tribal censuses. Don’t do numbers? God does.

At the same time, the Bible tells of individual heroes and heroines who were notable for their faith. The Father, the prophets, Jesus, and the disciples paid attention to individuals who needed a personal touch. Jesus seemed to be engaged in mass evangelism and yet took time for specific people who were changed by his touch or attention. The apostles preached in the synagogues and streets and yet also to beggars, centurions, kings, sellers of purple, jailers, and demon-possessed girls. Ministry to the numbered masses is not contrary to the idea of touching lives.

And why this foray into number-ology? Simply this: our customary counting of SBTC (the whole SBC does it, actually) statistics will begin next month. Consider for a minute why a church might not want to tell us the numbers of its members, baptisms, income, missions giving, and so on. Each year, we mail out the material with a letter. Later, we call and remind those who don’t respond. Some information we fill out while on the phone. A few we actually go visit and fill out the statistics face to face with the pastor or clerk. All that effort adds up to about 75 percent of churches reporting, on average.

Here’s why we, as a fellowship of churches working together, need to hear from your church on this. I have numbered points, for your convenience.

1) We strive to be strategic in our cooperative work. We don’t know how that’s working unless we hear from our partners in the field. It’s harder to see the holes in our strategy unless we have detailed reports to examine.

2) It allows us to evaluate how individual churches are doing. SBTC tries to do those things affiliated churches find helpful or needful. We can’t know that if we only have word-of-mouth information.

3) Part of knowing the raw truth about a joint effort is seeing which way the graph is tracking. We might not know that our evangelistic efforts are less effective if we never count up the numbers. We’re baptizing people regularly in my church, but I don’t know how this compares with other years unless we add it up. That process often suggests a need for change or redoubling of effort.

4) An Annual Church Profile report gives churches an occasion to see their own numbers. It encourages them to accurately evaluate their own effectiveness. Usually, some of the report comes as a surprise to most church leaders.

5) Churches are individuals so we can’t know a church until we spend time within it. On the other hand, we can know some things about the church from looking at its trends, changes in direction, times of apparent growth, and participation in various ministries.

The point is this; please fill out your ACP this year. I’ve tried to show that it is useful for your sister churches, even if you have no need for the information. Demonstrably, there is nothing ignoble about looking at our numbers. If things seem to be great, statistically, it needn’t lead you to pride since it is the Lord who brings the increase. Declining or plateaued numbers should be no reason for shame; many churches are in that same state. The first step to looking at answers is to acknowledge the reality of the situation.

It’s worth a few hours of your time. The hardest part is pulling together the numbers to put in the report. Compiling that information is a good idea in the first place. We just ask that you share it with us.

Special thanks to Troy Brooks for the idea for this column. I think he may have preached part of it in a sermon. Talk to me about the column, though. It’s all mine.

During an interview in the halls of the SBC, two of our seminary professors agreed that one reason for the aggressive stance of atheists in a couple of recent books has to do with the failure of one of their key doctrines. Both men pointed out that as many as half of our country’s citizens still don’t buy the basic tenets of Darwinism. In response, atheism gets increasingly shrill in pointing out the stupidity of religious people?hoping that volume and vitriol will accomplish what complete ownership of the academic establishment has not.

In demeanor, the Darwinist mafia is related to the global warming cult. Look at a couple of examples. When a state climatologist in the state of Washington disputed sloppy reporting of the thinning of the Cascade Mountains snow pack he was fired for embarrassing his boss, and for breaking with climate change dogma. So much for scientific precision. NASA administrator Michael Griffin angered some scientists when he said in an interview that global warming might not be “a problem we should wrestle with.” Just that. He didn’t deny climate change, just expressed doubt that we could do much about it. He was driven to apologize for stating this opinion, for getting involved in the whole debate really. Does anyone think he would have had to apologize for saying that climate change is the most important issue of our day?

The SBC, meeting in San Antonio, expressed a high degree of agnosticism toward the contemporary doctrine of global climate change. Our explanation of the resolution noted divergence in the scientific evidence and the predictable negative impact on the world’s poor if the world was to devote billions of dollars to maybe lowering the average temperature of the earth by a degree or two over the next hundred years.

True believers consider our viewpoint quaint, the ignorant say that we are abandoning our stewardship of creation as well as the commands of Jesus to be kind to the poor. What we said was very careful, though?perhaps too subtle for our knee-jerk detractors.

The resolution says, for example, that Southern Baptists should “proceed cautiously in the human-induced global warming debate in light of conflicting scientific research.” The apparent reason for this caution is in the next “resolved,” that actions taken based on maximum temperature goals “could lead to major economic hardships on a worldwide scale.”

All this is surrounded by acknowledgement that global temperature averages are changing and that some communities could be vulnerable to the negative effects of this. The resolution calls for action to help such communities. The resolution notes more than once our responsibility to be good stewards of the earth’s resources.

What’s so strange about that? I think it’s this; we’re exercising measured skepticism related to environmentalist dogma and they’re afraid that some will hear us. Foundations, university chairs, government jobs, and even industries have been built on the certainty that selected scientists know what will happen next, what causes it, and what people other than themselves should do in response. You’d best believe that these folks have a lot to lose if millions of Americans don’t sufficiently agree with them.

Southern Baptists don’t necessarily need to weigh in on every issue that makes the front page of Newsweek. This issue is one on which many religious people and organizations have felt compelled by peer pressure to take sides, though. The Bible says that we should care for God’s earth (not worship it) and this means that we should take seriously the impact of our actions on our environment. It is appropriate that we speak on this subject, however cautiously. The stance of our Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, echoed by this year’s resolution, has hit the right note of concern without overreaction.

There is a high degree of probability that many Americans will have to back peddle, re-spin really, their statements on global climate change in a decade or two. That’s what happened when the 1970s prediction of a new ice age became obviously absurd. If Southern Baptists keep the primary things in sight amidst the increasing noise and clutter, as we are currently doing, we will have less to recant than will our neighbors.