Why Counting Baptisms May Be the Least Honest Metric We Have

Somewhere along the way, we replaced spiritual health with a spreadsheet. In parts of the world, enormous pressure exists to produce big numbers. When totals define success, incentives follow: rushed decisions, unnecessary rebaptisms, and occasionally numbers that are… generously interpreted. Even when every baptism is legitimate, a harder question remains:

Who’s still here?

If a system is designed to maximize baptisms, retention becomes optional. Discipleship becomes secondary. Nurture happens—if it happens at all—after the photo is taken.

A few years ago, roughly 300,000 people were baptized in Papua New Guinea. That’s astonishing. Worth celebrating? Absolutely. Worth questioning? Also yes. How many are still in church today? Still connected? Still finding faith meaningful once the adrenaline of the campaign faded?

And before we point fingers, ask closer to home: does your local conference know how many people it baptized in the last few years who are still attending church now?

No, they don’t.

Which tells us something important: we don’t measure what we don’t really want to know.

Counting members is easy. Discipleship is slow. Listening is uncomfortable. Building churches people want to stay in—without constant fear of beasts, without manufactured urgency—takes courage.

Maybe it’s time for better metrics: investment in discipleship, nurture, retention, listening, and safety. Imagine measuring success not by how fast people enter the water, but by how long they stay connected—to Christ, to community, to hope.

This isn’t an argument against baptism.
It’s an argument for honesty.
And for a healthier Adventism that takes discipleship as seriously as decisions.