With Sunday morning attendance at an all-time low in Southern Baptist churches, two Texas pastors are responding to the dilemma of unregenerate members on the front end of church membership. Lyn Holly of Boyd Baptist Church in Bonham and Jeremy Green of Second Baptist Church in Waco are cleaning up their church rosters by reclaiming inactive members and creating new ministries to assimilate new members in the life of their churches.

Boyd Baptist Church in Bonham is considered a healthy, evangelistic church, averaging more than 300 in Sunday morning attendance; yet, the church lists 1,100 members on its roll. Lending credence to the pastoral joke “the FBI couldn’t find some of our members,” Pastor Lyn Holly said he has noticed an increasing trend of new church members falling through the cracks.

“If [new members] don’t form a relationship with five or six people in the first six months of joining, then you’ll probably lose them to the backdoor,” he said, citing a statistic from evangelist Ronnie Hill. “We’ve talked about how we’ve seen people come in and get involved for a while and then filter out. And in recent days we’ve been talking about closing that back door.”

To involve a higher number of new members into the life of the church, Holly said Boyd Baptist plans to debut an assimilation ministry in 2007. The ministry will shepherd new members into Sunday School classes, small groups, or other areas of ministry and “close the backdoor for the future.”

“The goal is to create effective disciples. And as they come in, if they get plugged in and get in some healthy relationships and get into ministry, it will help us mature,” he said.

Upon joining the church, new members will receive a listing of all ministry areas. With the motto “Every Member a Minister, Every Member a Missionary,” the assimilation ministry will connect new members to key areas of service in the life of the church.

To reclaim existing members who have stopped attending church, Boyd Baptist offers a fellowship program called Koinonia. Operating as a Fifth Sunday activity, members are divided into fellowship circles of three families each.

“They meet together over the next quarter until the next Fifth Sunday fellowship to deepen their relationships as members,” he said.

Noting that the church has not been “intentional” in the past about seeking out unregenerate church members, Holly hopes the new assimilation ministry planned for next year and the Koinonia program will bring more believers into the body of Christ as well as mature Boyd Baptist Church.

While serving at a church in Kentucky, Jeremy Green also noticed an alarming dip in worship service attendance. “The church roll there was over 400, but we had less than 100 in attendance,” he said.

Currently the pastor of Second Baptist Church, a new church start in Waco, Green decided to tackle the issue of the missing members from the congregation’s inception. To “get off on a good start,” Green led Second Baptist to address membership responsibilities and rights in its constitution and bylaws. Members are designated into three categories: resident, non-resident, and inactive. If a member has been inactive for more than three months, he or she is transferred to an inactive roll by the membership committee which meets three or four times a year.

“That was something I wanted to make sure that we incorporated in our constitution and bylaws,” Green said. “During the first few months of our meetings we formed a constitution committee, and this was something we hashed out and discussed and built up support for. [After]