WHEREAS, For years it has been generally recognized that our peculiar and prized Baptist polity has under existing circumstances permitted so many of our Baptist people to be of personal loss to our local churches and denominational bodies through the practice of church membership in absentia, and
WHEREAS, A recent questionnaire sent out to 100 rural, town, and city pastors in every Southern Baptist Convention state shows that of a total membership of 56,453 in 41 of these particular churches, 28 percent of the recorded members are living too far from their churches to function as members while they do not join themselves to the Baptist Christians in the new communities, and
WHEREAS, With only one or two exceptions, every pastor who responded declared that the large percentage of absentee members constitutes a challenging church and denominational problem, which almost all of them state could be solved to some appreciable degree even by Baptists, and that southern Baptists should take steps to attain such ends, therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED, That the Southern Baptist Convention here and now select by due processes a committee or commission, representative of every state in the Convention, whose purpose it will be to give more extensive study to this matter and make a comprehensive report with recommendations at the 1939 session of the Convention . . . provided the committee’s activities in this matter shall be of no expense to the Convention.