October 1, 2026
NASHVILLE (BP) – A recent church music and worship survey indicates that a leadership need is on the horizon for Southern Baptist churches. One might almost call it a potential crisis.
The SBC Worship: Congregations and Leadership Study commissioned by SBC Worship, a subsidiary of the Worship Initiative, revealed that by 2040 more than 20,000 worship leaders will need to be identified, equipped, and trained. By then, that number of current worship leaders will either be retired or be at age 65.
“Southern Baptists have always been thoughtful about evangelism, missions and outreach,” Jonathan Welch, a member of the survey team, told Baptist Press.
“But I think that we’ve not been as thoughtful and as intentional about raising up and training leaders of the church,” he said. Welch serves as the director of the Worship Training Network and an associate professor of Christian worship at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The survey was completed by 4,530 churches. Among those responding, 22 percent said they were in a church with an average weekly worship service attendance of 0-49, 25 percent were in a church of 50-99 people, 42 percent were in churches with 100-499 people, and 11 percent were in a church with 500 or more people.
The survey was emailed to more than 30,000 Southern Baptist churches and 1,200 leaders representing state conventions, associations, and “other networks within the SBC,” the executive summary says.
Nine percent of churches responding said their worship leader was 29 years old or younger. Other categories break down this way:
The survey indicated that 2 percent of worship leaders were 80 years old or older.
The majority of worship leaders who are 50 and older serve in churches that average fewer than 100 people on a given Sunday morning. Two-thirds (67 percent) of responding churches with fewer than 50 people in attendance on a Sunday morning say their worship leader is 50 years old or older.
The data also indicated that 4 percent of Southern Baptist churches that regularly have a worship leader are without one right now. That means there are nearly 1,900 Southern Baptist churches that are currently struggling to find a candidate to fill the role of worship leader.
Andrew Lucius, a survey team member and the director of music and worship leadership at Charleston Southern University, hopes the survey will raise the signal that churches must lean into the equipping process.
“I’m part of the problem,” Lucius told Baptist Press. “… The church has seen our universities and seminaries as the primary equipping and discipling tool of its leaders and ministers.”
In calling himself a part of the problem, he means that he believes churches have delegated the training process to colleges and seminaries, rather than developing young people with skills and abilities to lead and serve in a church’s worship ministry.
Southeastern professor Jonathan Welch wonders the same.
“Are we identifying those gifts and actually giving them opportunities to serve in those meaningful ways in the church?” he asked.
Welch said turning the leadership shortfall tide means “we’ve got to start first looking inside at our own church and assess where we are with these things.”
He believes a healthy step forward is for church leaders to talk about the essence of worship ministry in the church.
“I think we need more conversations for people who are serving in worship ministry to help to recalibrate expectations for what the role really is and what it looks like to be healthy and to faithfully practice worship ministry in the church,” he said.
The survey team included a wide range of ministry leaders from across the SBC:
Survey results are available at sbcworship.com/study-2026.
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This article appeared in Baptist Press.
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