The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a fellowship of autonomous churches. The SBC does not keep a global registry of all churches that might identify as "Southern Baptist." However, the SBC does keep data on churches affiliated with the SBC in the United States.
Within the United States, the SBC reported 47,530 churches as of 2023.
It is difficult to provide an exact number of Southern Baptist churches worldwide because:
* Autonomy: Each Southern Baptist church is self-governing.
* Affiliation: Many churches share similar beliefs but might not be formally affiliated with the SBC.
* Data Collection: The SBC's data collection is primarily focused on churches within the United States.
* International Mission Work: The SBC does support international missions, which have helped to establish churches in other countries, but these are not necessarily tracked as "Southern Baptist" churches in the same way as those in the U.S.
Therefore, there is no definitive answer to the exact number of Southern Baptist churches worldwide. The number would undoubtedly be larger than the number of affiliated churches in the United States, but by how much is hard to assess.