June 18, 2001

Registration for SBC lowest in 28 years
___NEW ORLEANS --Messenger registration at this year's Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting was the second-lowest in 28 years and the lowest for a Southern city in 52 years.
___Immediately prior to the final convention session June 13, messenger registration stood at 9,559. The only other lower messenger registration in recent history was in 1998, when the convention met in Salt Lake City with 8,582 messengers.
___Beyond that, the previous low attendance mark was in Portland, Ore., in 1973, when 8,871 messengers registrered.
___The last meeting in a Southern city, nearer the base of Southern Baptist strength, with attendance as low as this year was in Oklahoma City in 1949. That year, messenger registration 9,393.
___SBC messenger registration crossed the 10,000 mark for the first time in 1952, when the convention met in Miami. Attendance continued to swell from that point, dropping below 10,000 only on the few occasions the convention met in far-western or northern states.
___Attendance hit a peak in 1985, when 45,519 messengers registered in Dallas. That was the height of the recent denominational conflict, when both fundamentalists and moderates sought to get enough votes to win the presidential election.
___The last time the SBC met in New Orleans, 1996, more than 13,000 messengers were registered. Last year's meeting in Orlando, Fla., drew 11,800.







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