Ghost Megachurches: David Uth FBC Orlando

First Baptist Church Orlando Florida is one of the largest churches in the state and a valued member of the Southern Baptist Convention. David Uth is a Big Eva member. In 2020 he was the president of the canceled Pastors Conference in which he had egalitarian speakers. And though Wikipedia claims FBC Orlando has 16000 members, the current numbers are a fraction of what it was prior to COVID.

FBC Orlando is a Ghost Megachurch. It’s a large church that is well under capacity. McLean Bible Church is one of the most notorious instances currently of a church implosion. However identifying the exact cause, be it David Platt’s corruption, the Social Justice Gospel, or Branch Covidianism, it is impossible to isolate the variable. However, FBC Orlando presents a more controlled subject for data in which Branch Covidianism in the state of Florida evidently suppressed this megachurch’s attendance. Though it is not a complete reach to suggest David Uth is woke, the fact that their livestreams metrics were unfavorable on most weeks suggests that increased wokeness during the the George Floyd incident was not the cause of a sudden drop-off.

Just as Salvador Cordova collected data on McLean Bible Church, Evangelical Dark Web performed a similar investigation on FBC Orlando and found a massive decrease in attendance correlating to lockdowns. The video goes through several screenshots of various services spanning from January of 2020 to October 31st, 2021. The church building is too big for its congregation, and even with some sections closed off the closest seats are sparsely packed compared to what they once were. The estimated weekly attendance is between 2000 and 3000 on a good day when taking into account other locations. To show a few:

It’s also worth noting that Evangelical Dark Web reported last December that FBC Orlando took between $1-2 million in PPP Loans. Turns out a church that embraced lockdowns in Florida of all places was not rewarded by God or by goats for doing so.