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Last year, Southern Baptists set a goal of baptizing 1 million people. Not only did the churches fall way short of the goal, baptisms in Southern Baptist churches actually declined last year.

The Baptist Press reports:

A decline in baptisms "is never good news for Southern Baptists. However, for the 364,826 people who did receive Christ as Savior and follow Him in believer's baptism, it was the best news of their lives.

"Every Southern Baptist should be both informed and alarmed that our declining baptism trend means we are not coming close to keeping up with population trends," [Harry] Lewis, [executive vice president of missions with the North American Mission Board] said, noting that many SBC churches are plateaued or declining.

Last year, USA Today reported on the long and continuing slide of baptisms among Catholics:

The Catholic Church has more than doubled in size in the past half-century, but its rate of infant baptism steadily has fallen, [Rev. Paul] Sullins, [a sociologist at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.] says.

Methodists and Lutherans have seen both baptisms and their membership numbers slide for years.

USA Today added that the Assemblies of God had a membership boom from 1980 to 1997, when its annual baptism numbers peaked and then declined.

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Baby-Teeth Cavities

USA Today reports:

Preschoolers today are more likely to have cavities than children did in the early 1990s, possibly because they are drinking more soda and juice drinks and less milk and water with fluoride, according to the most comprehensive government report on oral health in 25 years.

The percentage of children ages 2 to 5 who have had at least one cavity in their baby teeth was 28 percent in 1999-2004, up from 24 percent in 1988-1994.

The latest data are from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is considered the gold standard because thousands of participants were interviewed and examined by dentists.

Tooth decay in adults and children had been decreasing since the 1960s, says the report's lead author, Bruce Dye, a dentist and epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. "This is the first time we're seeing a rise, and it's in the baby teeth of young children.

"Baby teeth are just as important as adult teeth," Dye says. "We know from population studies that kids who have cavities in their baby teeth are more likely to have cavities in their adult teeth. And premature loss of baby teeth will more likely create crowding problems for adult teeth."

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Al's Morning Multimedia

Make sure you take a look at the page the San Francisco Chronicle posted about the bridge collapse.

It contains graphics, multimedia, tons of stories and video. You know this story is going to unfold for months to come -- so it is smart to build a big splash page that will become a collection for all related stories, graphics and photos.

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Instead of "How Do You Feel?"

It has been such a treat this week to lead a Poynter seminar for public-radio reporters. One of our guest faculty members is National Public Radio's Audie Cornish, who often covers big disasters like the aftermath of Katrina, Alabama tornadoes and such. One of her goals is to get close to people in time of trauma. She offered our group some alternatives to the "how does it feel" question. On her list was:

• What happened?

• What happens next?

• What did you do?
  

• What do you make of this?

• How do you explain what has happened to other people?

• When it first happened, what did you think -- and what do you think now?

• What surprised you about how others reacted?

• What are you worried about?

• What are you telling your children/family?

• What does this make you think about your own community?

• Why do you still live here?

Audie also handed out a useful tip sheet on how to write with "active sound." I think the tips are so useful not just for radio folks but for anybody attempting multimedia storytelling. Click here for a PDF copy of the handout we used in our seminar.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.

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