October 1, 2026
NASHVILLE (BP) – After more than 4,500 Southern Baptist churches provided a clearer picture of worship across the Convention, those behind the SBC Worship survey are turning their attention to another question.
What comes next?
The SBC Worship Congregations and Leadership Study identified strengths among Southern Baptist churches but also brought several needs into clearer focus, including a significant worship leadership shortage and challenges facing smaller, under-resourced churches.
Research team members say the study was intended as a baseline, not an endpoint.
“We need more awareness,” said survey team chair Jonathan Welch. “Our congregations know what we experience locally, but one of the benefits of this study is that we can see the issues facing our denomination on the whole.”
Welch, director of the Worship Training Network and associate professor of Christian worship at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, said responding to those findings will require cooperation.
“The best solutions will come from churches, church leaders, and denominational entities working together,” he said. “So, we need more conversation about these topics to discern the best next steps.”
Different churches, shared challenges
Among the 4,530 churches participating in the survey, 22 percent reported average weekly worship attendance of fewer than 50 people, 25 percent between 50 and 99, 42 percent between 100 and 499, and 11 percent of 500 or more.
“I was talking with one of the committee members about this … that the opening sentence of every part of the written report starts with SBC congregations differ, or SBC congregations vary, because there’s just so much diversity here,” Welch said.
Charleston Southern University professor and survey team member Andrew Lucius agreed.
“With Southern Baptist [churches], every church is unique. Every church is different than every other,” he said.
That diversity makes a single program or solution unlikely, but the survey team believes the findings point toward a need for greater cooperation around the health of worship in local churches.
A leadership pipeline is one piece of that conversation. Fifty-one percent of responding churches said they do not have a plan for recognizing and training leaders.
But those involved with SBC Worship believe developing future leaders begins further upstream.
They believe churches must recover worship as an act of spiritual formation rather than consumption or production.
Then they must focus on strengthening local worship ministries with biblical frameworks and practical tools, particularly for volunteer and bi-vocational leaders serving churches with fewer resources.
The third addresses the leadership pipeline by investing both in those currently serving and in the next generation of worship leaders.
The challenges must ultimately be addressed in local churches, Welch and Lucius say, but they believe churches don’t have to address them in isolation. Churches, associations, state conventions, universities, seminaries and ministry organizations can each play a role in strengthening worship ministry across the convention.
The study is already helping identify areas that deserve further attention.
“I think we’re starting to identify both strengths and weaknesses that we didn’t know we had,” Lucius said. “There’s an opportunity there for us to celebrate what the Lord’s doing but we need to get that conversation into local churches because that’s how things are going to ultimately change.”
More research ahead
Welch cautioned that more research is needed before moving too quickly toward solutions.
“This study is a baseline diagnostic,” he said. “We need additional studies to better pinpoint some of the causes for these trends. A better understanding of the problem(s) is a prerequisite to any further action steps or resourcing.”
SBC Worship plans a follow-up survey in spring 2027 and hopes to share the results during the 2027 SBC Annual Meeting.
Welch said the response also needs to include prayer.
“A study like this should help us realize that this is much larger than any individual or any one church,” he said. “And we need to seek the Lord together in prayer about where we are and how we move forward together.”
The first study provided a clearer picture of where Southern Baptist worship ministries are today. The next phase will involve continuing to understand those challenges while bringing churches and ministry partners together around what comes next.
The survey results are available at sbcworship.com/study-2026.
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This article appeared in Baptist Press.
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