Imagine you lived back in July 1881. A fire in a toy factory almost burned Cincinnati to the ground. Factories that were fire traps quickly burned right along with tenement houses threatening the 255,000 people living in Cincinnati. Brave firefighters worked for five hours. Half of the town was saved. Half was lost.
Imagine a spiritual fire raging in the nine counties that make up the Cincinnati Area Baptist Association. Half of our population would be considered saved and half lost.
The 2020 U.S. Census reported that there are 1.86 million people living in our midst. The Association of Religion Data Archives studies more than 300 religious organizations and releases updates each decade. If you want to look up the stats on your county, go to theARDA.com.
One of the things that I have grown to like is that theARDA uses “Unclaimed” for those who are in our population, but are not on the rolls at our churches, synagogues, wards, mosques, and temples. The Unclaimed category ignores what people say that they are and uses information from denominational groups to report what churches say is their reality. I think it’s better than the “Nones” who consider themselves part of an organization, but have never attended. Using “Unclaimed is not perfect, but it’s the best data that we’ve got.
There are Unclaimed folks all around us. While getting my car’s oil changed, I invited the service rep to the church that I attend. “I used to go there until they had a split,” he said. “I never went back.” I asked him where he was attending and he just sighed and let me know he never got involved with another church. Maybe you know people who just aren’t part of any church. They’re Unclaimed.
Let’s go back to the 1881 fire that burned half the city. In CABA, Adherents outnumber the Unclaimed, but not by much. Think of it as half and half. Adherents comprise half; some 52.5% of the people in our nine counties. Unclaimed people total the other half – more than 47.5% totaling some 883,000 people. Hamilton County is our biggest mission field with about 300,000 unclaimed, but Butler County is not that far behind at 224,000 Unclaimed by any religious organization.
Let me chase one rabbit: Churches do well to track their membership and clean up their rolls. These do get reported. For one, the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio elects members to the Mission Council each year based on how many church members that our association’s churches report in the Annual Church Profile – the ACP. Mission Council members are elected from the SCBO’s 15 Baptist associations.
That Cincinnati fire back on a hot July day in 1881 rallied firefighters. They raced to the factories burning near the river. Who is fighting the hellfires in your community? May we all have that sense of urgency today!
--Mark Snowden directs the Cincinnati Area Baptist Association
#CincinnatiHistory, #SpiritualAwakening, #CABAmission, #UnclaimedSouls, #FaithInCincinnati, #CommunityMission, #ReligiousOutreach, #SavingSouls, #FaithFirefighters, #SpiritualRevival
Comments