When King George III takes the stage in Hamilton, he sings a lilting ballad which, oddly, has the music moving in opposite directions from some of the phrases. “Oceans rise,” he sings, and the tune goes down; “empires fall” and the tune goes up.
The 2025 summary of Annual Church Profiles sort of feels the same way: Some ups and a few downs that even-out to a mostly steady year, which solidifies recovery from Covid losses after five upward years.
The best news in a sea of numbers? Baptisms are up again, with IBSA churches bringing 222 more to the waters last year than the year before. That’s a 5.63% increase that builds on the 8.81% the year before. At 3,875, the baptism total surpasses the 2019 pre-Covid number of 3,553.
In Illinois, 475 IBSA congregations reported at least one baptism last year. Churches that reported baptisms are doing well, with eight on average per baptizing church.
Baptists baptize. It’s who we are, it’s what we do.
Sunday morning worship, on the other hand, still has not returned to 2019 levels. While up 2.40% from 2024, the 62,131 Illinois Baptists in worship on the average Sunday morning are still 8.4% below 2016. And churches are smaller. Average attendance is 80, but the median is 40—meaning half of all IBSA churches have more than 40 on Sundays, while half have less.
Attendance has grown in many churches in the period after Covid: 21.6% of churches report growth of 10% or more, while 59.2% say attendance declined by 10% or more in that period.
(Do you feel the musical “rise-and-fall” dichotomy? A church’s perception of the state of Christendom likely depends which wave it’s riding.)
Two other attendance figures demonstrate the wave: Sunday School Enrollment is up 3.08% year-over-year, but Sunday School attendance is up only 0.75%.
Membership numbers reveal the same fluctuation: Total membership is down 1.14% for loss of 1,707 people. Resident membership, however, is up 423 people for a 0.40% gain.
There are 149,315 total Illinois Baptists in 845 churches.
What we now call the “normative” church size in Illinois is 40 members (the median). In 2025, 25% of churches had 20 or fewer members; 50% had 40 or below; and 75% had 74 or below in 2025. That last number has dropped from 82 members or below 2019.
The conclusion here is that while most churches have stabilized after Covid, they are mostly a little bit smaller. And with 23 fewer congregations than last year (866), and 96 fewer congregations than 2019 (941), the network is leaner as churches learn to do more with fewer people.
Giving ups and downs
Overall, churches received less in offerings in 2025: $97,784,716 in undesignated giving was a 6.48% drop from 2024’s $104,123,056.
The 2024 number was a terrific peak in the five-year chart. And even with a year-over-year decline of more than $6 million, the 2025 undesignated gifts dropped in the plate (or given online) is still almost $5 million higher than it was in 2019. That’s good news. Whether the drop this year is due to fewer congregations in the ACP report, or givers’ uncertainty about the economy would be speculation. Despite the decline, giving to the local church is still strong.
The impact on Cooperative Program giving is noteworthy.
At $5,226,214, 2025 CP giving in Illinois giving is down 3.17% from the previous year, and far below the budgeted $6 million. With careful spending, several unfilled staff positions, and watchful income over expense, IBSA finished the year in the black, relatively speaking—but CP receipts $773,786 below projection should be reported.
Illinois churches have historically given to CP at least one percentage point higher of their undesignated receipts than the average of all SBC churches. That national average has recently dipped below 5% for the first time since CP was instituted in 1925.
Some Illinois churches report as high as 15% or more of their undesignated offerings contributed to missions through the Cooperative Program. On the other tidal end, the number is low single digits. Thus, enthusiastic support of global SBC missions by many churches appears blunted by the financial struggles of other congregations in trying times.
Still, we are better together. Our churches accomplish so much more as a cohesive body giving regularly than any one church could alone.
What it all means
Here are a few conclusions from the ACP summary.
Covid recovery seems stabilized now, although it is lower in several categories than 2019 levels, with baptisms and total giving being the notable receptions.
Small churches are smaller, but large churches are trending larger—again, fall/rise point/counterpoint. Almost 100 churches grew more than 10% since the pandemic shuttered buildings. “These span every region, population base, and style,” the report states. That growth is happening all over the state in all kinds of churches is evidence it can happen everywhere.
Churches may have lost a couple families after Covid. With 75% of IBSA churches having fewer than 75 in worship, IBSA is a network of smaller “normative” churches. But this report shows the valid conclusion that “other churches are growing, so our church can grow.”
─Eric Reed, with analysis by Ben Jones