With all the gloom and doom talk about church and denominational strength or weakness among Baptists, the recent statistical report that shows Southern Baptist membership dipped for the second straight year is not a surprise. Still, it highlights two ironies developing in the SBC.

One, statistical reporting by Baptist churches is so inconsistent that the numbers are likely not accurate in the first place. Two, loud and emerging voices from within the Convention have been ridiculing the membership numbers for years.

These voices claim half the 16 million members SBC churches claim can’t be found; that membership rolls are never cleaned; that we’ve become so enamored of being big we can’t bear the thought of striking a name that might shrink a roll.

Statistical reporting is important to denominational program leaders for the simple reason that it helps them know what is “working.”

If there was a special emphasis to get people to Sunday School one year and the reports show an increase in Sunday School attendance, then we can know that something worked. If a concentrated effort shows no measureable results, then something different needs to be done.

It’s not so much that churches are careless with these numbers as it is that too few send the numbers in on the annual church profile (ACP). As many as one fourth of churches now ignore the annual statistical profile, justifying their neglect believing it doesn’t really matter and that no one pays any attention.

Keep in mind the accumulated weight of this information has alerted Baptists to the fact we’ve lost momentum, which has led to calls for revival, for a Great Commission resurgence, and for an evaluation of the things we do to make sure we focus on the things that matter.

As Great Commission Resurgence Task Force Chairman Ronnie Floyd quoted Winston Churchill Feb. 22 during his report: “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

The questions we ask determine in large part the direction of an organization because they set expectations.

As Richard Harris, interim president of the North American Mission Board said at the annual editor’s meeting, pastors used to make conversation by asking each other how many they’d baptized.

So, a gospel witness among the lost that resulted in baptisms was an expectation. Later as baptisms dipped and denominational leaders emphasized Sunday School as a way to engage members in gospel training and to engage the lost in your community in small fellowship groups that could lead to salvation experiences and baptisms, the question became, “How many do you run in Sunday School?”

Now culture has changed and the mega church influence has emerged and people are more likely to simply attend worship than they are to join a church. So the question has become, according to Harris, “How many did you have on campus for worship?”

We are statistical animals. We want to know how we are doing. We want to know if the $557 we raised for the food bank this year was more or less than we raised last year. If it was less, we feel bad and vow to do better. If it was more, we feel good and sense we’re moving in the right direction.

There is nothing wrong with numbers or statistics, as long as they are not used to bludgeon people into conformity. It is important that Baptists know some statistics about people they are considering for leadership positions, for example. At the same time, numbers do not tell the whole story and should not be used as such.

As to the second irony of the statistical report, remember that voices are calling for more honesty by cleaning rolls of members who cannot be found. If that were to be done to any great extent, there would naturally be a decline as dust was shaken off old rolls and funerals were taken into account.

Names of those who haven’t been seen in years, not even for Christmas Eve, could be deleted. At the very least, honest examination of your rolls might lead you to contact people whose names you can’t seem to place and you might see a surge of renewed interest in a church that seems interested in them again. If a roll cleaning resulted in smaller numbers that would not mean there were any fewer Southern Baptists.

But it would look bad; it would feel as though we were the wicked witch of the west shrinking under Dorothy’s bucket of water.

The irony is that better statistical record keeping would be cleaner but would saddle the person cleaning up those records with a record of his own that says a church “shrank” under his leadership. That’s a large part of any reluctance to mess with the rolls.

How does a pastor lead his church to identify and locate everyone on the rolls, and to remove anyone they cannot locate when that very exercise might saddle him with being pastor of a church that is smaller now than when he came?  

It may be resolved by the time you read this, but as I write 10 volunteers from a Southern Baptist church in Idaho are in jail in Haiti, accused of illegally trying to spirit 33 Haitian children across the border into Dominican Republic.

The volunteers’ stated intent was to provide these children, many of whom are orphans, with a stable and safe environment in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake that devastated the nation Jan. 12. Estimates now have risen to 200,000 dead and some say as many as a million children are orphaned or homeless.

Haiti was basically a refugee camp as a nation before the earthquake. Two thousand charitable organizations operated in the capital city to provide food, education, job training, small business incubators, education and orphanages to Haitians whose government apparently has been incapable of providing such basic services for its own citizens.

Add to that the chaos following the earthquake and it is little wonder that people with a heart to help feel they can just come and do; that paperwork, permission and process are pushed aside for the sake of expediency. Who wants to wait on a document when children are hungry and exposed to the elements?

Southern Baptist Convention leaders Morris Chapman, president of the Executive Committee; current SBC President Johnny Hunt and immediate past president Frank Page have asked President Obama to intervene on behalf of the jailed volunteers. In some quarters, there is a feeling – or just hope – that their fate and freedom has already been assured and “we” are simply allowing the drama to play out to affirm Haiti’s sovereignty.

But the scary truth is that these Baptist volunteers, if convicted of the crimes for which they are charged, could face 15 years in Haitian jail.

Baptist and government leaders are reluctant to express full support for the volunteers – please don’t call them missionaries – because their true intent is unknown. And because the volunteers, no matter their intent, operated with a western brashness that implies we are the cavalry and everyone else is a horse thief.

In their letter to President Obama, Chapman, Hunt and Page said that although this group did not coordinate their effort with any Southern Baptist relief organization, "It is possible that the Baptist mission volunteers currently detained in Haiti have acted with the noblest of intentions in a desperate situation to meet an immediate need. We pray that is the case."

They called for diplomatic negotiations toward "a solution that respects the rule of law, honors international agreements and ensures the best possible care and full legal representation for these Baptist mission volunteers."

This dreadful case illustrates the need for awareness among volunteers that good intentions are not a passport to swoop into other cultures, scoop up children and carry them to another nation for care – temporary or otherwise. There already are rumors of homeless Haitian children being gathered under false pretenses and sold internationally as household servants or sex slaves.

That is the context that colors perceptions of the Idaho group’s actions.

Their sad circumstance demonstrates the importance of coordinating volunteer efforts with people and organizations that have credibility, experience and efficiency operating in disasters – especially disasters in countries other than your own.

North Carolina Baptist Men coordinates disaster response for North Carolina Baptists. Gaylon Moss has directed this effort for 12 years and a network of professionals and volunteers orbit around his office. He and N.C. Baptist Men Director Richard Brunson are wise enough to know that, even with their extensive experience, they would not drop kick volunteers into a disaster scene without an onsite connection familiar with the field.

That is why before N.C. Baptist Men sent its first volunteer into the Haitian mess, it found and connected with Global Outreach Haiti, a part of an international Global Outreach ministry in Mississippi that has been in Haiti since 1983. Global Outreach Haiti has provided a connecting point, a beachhead for our assessment teams and medical volunteers to land.

Had there been Southern Baptist missionaries in Haiti, we likely would have connected with them. Mark Rutledge, an IMB missionary in Haiti for 26 years before the IMB team changed locations to Dominican Republic and Rutledge came stateside for a year, has been back in the area helping SBC and Florida Baptist Convention volunteers get a foothold. Florida Baptists have a long-term presence in Haiti.

While gladly acknowledging that hundreds of organizations small and large were present, selflessly serving Haitians before the earthquake, these are the conditions that spawn crooks, thieves and liars who make their living by taking advantage of the soft spots in Christian hearts for those who are hurting.

As you are prompted to give and support efforts of all kinds in Haiti, resist sending a dollar to any organization created to respond to the need there. Just as after Hurricane Katrina anybody with a pickup and a magnetic sign on the door was suddenly a contractor, unscrupulous people create organizations to siphon donated dollars during such times of generous outpouring.

As North Carolina Baptists marshal resources to respond as quickly, effectively and appropriately as we can, it is vital that we do it in a way that will empower Haitians long-term. How can your group embrace, include, educate and train Haitians to rebuild their nation while you are there helping them do it?

Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert wrote “When Helping Hurts” which shows how good intentions sometimes leave bad results. They want to “help churches help the poor to help themselves.”

 “When it comes to helping the poor, the natural reaction is to do for them rather than empowering them to do it for themselves,” Corbett and Fikkert say. “In the past, relief beneficiaries were often seen as passive patients and victims who are totally dependent on external experts for help. The best relief programs engage and build upon the local knowledge, labor, networks, and all types of productive resources from the first day. Furthermore, the Haiti work will quickly shift to rehabilitation and development work, which demands even less ‘doing for’ the Haitian people.”

Fifty Baptist associations are drop-off points for “Buckets of Hope” in which you can spend $30 and fill a plastic bucket of food, tape a $5 bill to it and ask Baptist Men to send it Haiti. That is a good thing.

But as a church project can you instead raise $2,300 to buy the materials for a house that N.C. Baptist volunteers will come alongside a Haitian family to build? Or for larger churches, maybe you can raise $12,000 for materials to rebuild a church in Haiti.

We are in Haiti for the long term. When we do it right our gospel seeds will find fertile soil.