You may have heard people say that the “average” sized church in the U.S. or Canada is about 75 people. You also may have heard someone say that the “average” sized church in North America is about 185 people. Who is right? It all depends how you define “average”.

Statisticians use three terms when describing populations. “Mean”, “Median”, and a third term that won’t really enter our discussion today called “Mode”.

I have borrowed, and expanded upon, an analogy from the The National Congregations Study that was released last month, to help us understand the differences in these terms and why they are important to our understanding of churches in North America. What you will read here is U.S. data, but the numbers are very similar for the Canadian situation as well.

Imagine you are looking down a very, very long street, and all the churches of U.S. are lined up along the left side of the street from smallest to largest. In behind each church are all their Sunday morning attenders.

If you counted the grand total of everyone standing behind each church and then divided this number by the total number of churches that you see on this very long street, you would come up with a “mean” or “average” size of 184. “Mean” is usually what we mean of when we think of “average”. But this number of 184 is a very misleading number.

Lets say you start walking down the street, passing the churches with 5 people on a Sunday morning, 10 people, 15 people, 20 people. You continue walking until you have passed half of all the churches in America. Half of the churches in the U.S. are now behind you, half are still in front. The “average” church that you are standing in front of is called the “median” church. You look to see how many people are lined up behind it, and you see 75 people. That is right, half the churches in the United States have less than 75 people.

The average or “mean” church at 184 is 2.45 times the size of the average median church at 75. Why is this so? If you continue walking, you will get a better understanding of how skewed church numbers are within the United States.

So, you continue walking, past the churches of 80, 90, 100, 110. You walk until you have passed 90% of all the churches. You look to your left and you see 350 people lined up behind this church. Much to your surprise, although you have passed 90% of all the churches, over half of the churchgoers are still in front of you! This is why the “mean” is so much higher than the “median”. While most of the churches in the United States are small, most of the attenders go to large churches.

You keep walking, past the churches of 360, 370, 380. It isn’t until you reach a church of size 400 that you will have the same number of people behind you as in front of you. This means that half of church attenders in the U.S. go to churches larger than 400. If we were to use the word “average” again, we would see that the “average” or “median” churchgoer was in a church of 400. Not only that, but this means that half of all those who attend church are in less that 10% of the churches!

So know we know the “median” and “mean” of the average church, along with the “median” of the average churchgoer. What about the “mean” of the average attender? Let me mess with your mind a little bit more now. Imagine that you can interview everyone, standing behind each church, and ask them what size church they go to. You then “average” their responses. The “average” or “mean” response from the perspective of an attender is… drum roll please… 1169! Just to help us understand this number, let me give you an example. If you have 1000 people attending churches of 75 in size, then you would also have 1000 people attending churches whose sizes averaged out to 2263 people each. If you average out their responses you get the average or “mean” number of 1169. ((2263+75)/2=1169)

To see what this looks like graphically I created a graph of 100 representative churches. If you took a cross section of 100 churches from all the churches across America, the graph of those churches would look something like this. The churches are along the bottom of the graph. Their attendance ranges from 10 for the smallest church to 4000 for the largest. In reality, we do have churches much larger that than 4000, but out of every 100 churches, you might have 1 megachurch of about 4000 in size. As you can see, most church attenders in America (and the same holds true for Canada), attend big churches. Half of them attend churches larger than 400 and many of these are experiencing church many times that size. In fact, out of every 100 churches, the one largest church (in my example 4000 attenders) would have as many attenders as the lowest 70 churches combined!

This has huge implications for denomination structures and for Pastors.

Lets take an extreme example, the case of the Brethren in Christ in Canada (not to be confused with the Christian and Plymouth Brethren). For those not familiar with the Brethren in Christ, their theological heritage and influences are Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan. Right now, as I understand it, they are part of a North American Conference for decision making. What would happen if the Canadian churches, for whatever reasons, needed to go their own way? In Canada, half of the attenders of Brethren in Christ churches are in associated with a single church, The Meeting House, which has experienced significant numerical growth over the past 10 years. Currently it has over 50 staff, spread over 9 locations, with most meeting in movie theaters. If half your denomination goes to one church, what do you do when it comes to denominational decision making? One church, one vote? You are then saying that half your people don’t really have any say. One person, one vote, or one pastor, one vote? Then one church wields an inordinate amount of influence within the denomination. And what happens if that one church doesn’t like the direction that the denomination is headed? If it leaves, you lose half of your denomination, half your support for you national office, half of your support for your missionaries, half your support for your educational institutions. (Note that I am using the B.I.C. as a hypothetical example of a separate Canadian entity which does not currently exist.) Such a disproportionate split between numbers of churches and numbers of attenders that are seen throughout the U.S. and Canada, cannot be healthy for denominations. But what should we do about it, if anything? I am interested in hearing your responses.

There is a potentially a greater problem when it comes to bible college and seminary graduates, most of whom will eventually aspire to become solo or senior pastors. As previously shown, if these students come from churches in the same proportions as church attenders, then 50% of seminary students, come from roughly 8% to 9% of the churches. Their life experience in church is with larger churches. If they are initially placed as an associate, they will be building on their experience in other large churches. Yet, 90 percent of senior pastoral positions are in churches less than 350 people, and 50 percent of senior pastoral positions are in churches less than 75 people.

So they get placed in inappropriate situations: In places where people enjoy their church of 50 and don’t really want it to change. In places where power-point is a dirty word. In places where words like “missional” and “emerging” don’t really compute. In places where three piece suits still rule the day on Sunday morning. In places where you still can hear, “If the King James was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it’s good enough for me.” So the church gets frustrated, and the Pastor gets frustrated, and unless there is some give and take, it is a relationship that doesn’t last long. Some Pastor’s will get so frustrated that they will be out of ministry within a relatively short time frame.

Has this been your experience, either from the perspective of the church or the Pastor? What are the solutions? What can we do to prepare our Pastors and our churches better? I would love to hear some of your ideas?

I have just touched upon one aspect of the The National Congregations Study. I would also encourage you to follow the link to the original report and read some of the other interesting information that they have gathered about American congregations. Compared to most statistical studies that I read, this one is particularly well written.

I have received a lot of interest and feedback on my last two posts on Internet Monk, concerning how and when people switch between their childhood religion and their current faith. For those who have not had the opportunity to read them, you can read them here and here.

The question that I have been asked the most is about historical trends in the data. For example, from the graph that I provided you can see that about 50% of adults who were raised non-religious, subsequently joined a faith group. How has this changed over time? (For the purposes of this posting I am using the word “religious” in the way it has been used historically, that is, someone is religious if they are an adherent to a particular faith tradition.)

Bradley Wright, who teaches Sociology of Religion at the University of Connecticut, was kind enough to pass on a source of data where this was analyzed:

Fischer and Hout, in their recent book “Century of Difference” (2006) used General Social Survey data to analyze historical data about religion and childhood. For the most part, the graphs that they provide match up quite nicely with the chart that I provided. Historically, the outflows from Evangelical and Mainline Protestant church have been pretty constant over the last 100 years. Evangelicals have done a better job at retaining member than Mainline Protestants, and so over time have fared better. Typically about 75% of Evangelical 16 year olds will continue their Evangelical affiliation into adulthood. 25% will switch out, a number that is quite similar to what is seen in my chart. Catholics retention is not as strong as it used to be, but according to the Fischer and Hout data is now similar to that of Evangelicals.

The most striking change was for the non-religious. If you were raised non-religious between 1920 and about 1950 then you were more than 70% likely to join a faith group after the age of 16. This started changing rapidly in the 1960s, and by the time Fischer and Hout collected their data and published their book in 2002, the rate that at which non-religious became religious was down to 25%.

My chart, by nature of it looking at all adults regardless of age, had an averaging effect of younger adults and older adults, so my percentage of outflows from the non-religious was quite a bit higher than the 25% currently being reported by Fischer and Hout. What this means that if we were to somehow update my chart, and look at flows that were happening today, Protestant and Catholic outflows would be very similar to what you see on the chart, but outflows from the non-religious would only be about half as wide as are drawn on the chart.

These numbers should not surprise us. As my wife said to me last night, there is so much more support for the non-religious in school, media, and society in general than there was 50 years ago. It is not surprising that they are now retaining 75% of their adherents. I should also point out the trend in the non-religious retaining their adherents has not slowed. It may already be significantly higher than the 75%.

I hate being a bearer of bad news. I really do. People who know me, know that I am a pretty optimistic kind of guy. I don’t like to see that the non-religious are gaining ground. I have a lot of neighbors and co-workers who are not religious. Most of them do not see any need whatsoever for religion, or faith, or whatever you might want to call it. This is certainly a wake up call that tells me how important it is for me to live a Christ like life, to at least show them, if not tell them, that Jesus Christ is something worth considering.

As usual your thoughts and comments are welcome.

I recently published this post at InternetMonk.com

In my previous post at Internet Monk, I looked at two surveys conducted by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S. that was released a few weeks ago, and which was a followup to their U.S. Religious Landscape Survey that they released last year.

By working with the numbers of the surveys I was able to come up with a chart that showed how Americans have been changing from their childhood faith to their current faith. One of the key findings was that Christian denominations are losing adherents though the back door so to speak than they are gaining new believers through the front door. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, please check out the original post, as it will help you understand some of the ideas behind this post, as well us understand the magnitude of the changes.

Today I wanted to focus on the “when” and the “why” this hemorrhaging was occurring, but as I have been pondering the data, the “when” seemed to really stand out as being important. I was reminded of my preaching classes back in seminary, when our professor, Dr. Peter Ralph, would constantly remind us to find the “big idea” that needed to be communicated from the biblical text. I think the same holds true when looking at survey data. Here is the “big idea” that jumped out at me when going through the Flux survey data and reports:

Most religious life decisions, even among those who have been open to change, has been set by age 23.

Of those who were raised Protestant (Evangelical, Mainline, and Historical Black), and are now “unaffiliated with any religious group”, 85% left their childhood faith before the age of 24. Of those who were raised Catholic and were now unaffiliated, 79% left before the age of 24. The same holds true for those coming back the other way. Of those raised unaffiliated, but who are now affiliated with a religious group, 72% left the ranks of the unaffiliated before the age of 24.

I can’t emphasize enough how huge this is. I will state this again: Most religious life decisions, even among those who have been open to change, has been set by age 23. There is another much smaller group that will leave their Christian faith group between the ages of 24 and 35, but only 3-4% who will make the change after they turn 36.

Before I look at the implications of this, I would like us to consider some related statistics that also come from the Flux survey. Of those who were raised Protestant but are now unaffiliated, 64% attended weekly worship as a child, but only 29% attended as a teen. This too is huge. When we relate this back to our first set of numbers we can see that of those who left the faith before age 24, a large percentage had already made that decision by their teenage years. For Catholics, the decision to leave is somewhat delayed. Of those from Catholic backgrounds who become unaffiliated, 44% are still attending regularly as teens (down from 74% as children). As noted earlier, before the age of 24, most of those who will leave have already left, whether they be Catholic or Protestant.

So what does all this mean for us?

These numbers have significant implications for both discipleship and evangelism. While I have focused primarily on those leaving, it works both way. Those coming to faith make the decision when they are young as well. Let us look at the discipleship aspect first.

A friend of mine, Mitch, became a Youth Pastor of an Evangelical Presbyterian church a number of years ago. While the Church was of quite a decent size (about 300 attendance), they had no youth group, and almost no youth attending. I believe Mitch was hired as the church’s first ever Youth Pastor because the church knew that they had potentially lost one complement of youth, and were afraid of losing those who were approaching that age as well. As hard as Mitch tried, he could not get those youth who had left to come back, even though their parents will still attending the church. So instead he focused his energies on the kids in Sunday School and Junior High. By building into those kids lives, they had gone through significant discipleship well before they hit high school, and Mitch had the joy of working with them all the way through high school. Even after Mitch moved on to another church in a distant community as a senior pastor, he was invited back to participate in their weddings. It was wonderful to see those teens move into adulthood, still actively engaged in the church.

My point is that if we are not serious and intentional about engaging our young people before they hit their teens, then we may have left it too late.

After the teenage years comes young adulthood, and College and/or University have often been fingered as being culprits in the move away from the faith in young adults. Steven James Henderson in his 2003 study entitled “The Impact of Student Religion and College Affiliation on Student Religiosity” writes:

Railsback’s 1994 study of “born-again” Christian students… found that the vast majority of Christian students attend non-Christian colleges. As previously mentioned, of the group that attended public universities, approximately 52% either no longer called themselves “born again” or had not attended any religious services or meetings in over a year by the end of their college experience.

However it has been shown that those who do not attend College fall away from the faith in ever greater percentages than those who do attend. Regnerus and Uecker write:

The assumption that the religious involvement of young people diminishes when they attend college is of course true: 64 percent of those currently enrolled in a traditional four-year institution have curbed their attendance habits. Yet, 76 percent of those who never enrolled in college report a decline in religious service attendance.

So what do we do?

In Henderson’s more readable summary article, he points out that:

Students who attend institutions that are members of the Council for Christian College and Universities (CCCU) showed significant positive differences on almost all individual measures of religious commitment as well as an overall increase in that commitment compared to those who attended non-member institutions.

These numbers may be misleading because if I want to become and Engineer, I am going to go to a school that specializing in producing Engineers. If I want to become a Pastor, I am going to go to a school that specializes in producing Pastors. So it may be that those who enter CCCU schools are more intentional about their future Christian involvement, and as such score much higher in the surveys.

Even if the numbers are not misleading, this still gives me a bit of a problem, primarily I believe that Christians cocoon themselves far too much, and secondly, because as pointed out by George Wood, a leader in the Assemblies of God, only 15% of their students choose schools affiliated with the CCCU. His figures, based on the 2005 Church Ministries Report for the Assemblies of God show that there are:

315,000 young people between the ages of 13 and 17 in the 12,301 Assemblies of God churches in the U.S.

210,000 (two-thirds) will enter one of the 4,000 colleges or universities in America.

178,500 will enter a non-Christian college or university, while

31,500 (15 percent) will enter one of the 102 CCCU schools, including those affiliated with the Assemblies of God.

In nine years, after these 13- to 17-year-olds have been in college for four years (and if the same percentages hold true for those who don’t go to college) up to 189,000 of Assemblies of God youth – out of 315,000 – may no longer be following Christ.

So, while giving additional consideration to a Christian College may be of benefit to our students, we need to consider the large majority who are not going to go that route.

This is why I am such a large supporter of Christian Campus ministries like Navigators, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and what was formerly know and Campus Crusade. Church “College & Career” ministries are very important too. My wife and I were involved in three different Campus ministries while at University, and one significant Church College ministries. All four had a huge impact on our spiritual growth, as well as in establishing life long relationships with like minded Christians. I look at those I was involved with and so many of them went on to become Pastors, Missionaries, and leaders in their respective churches. It is for that reason that my wife and I give 25% of our tithe to Campus ministries, spreading it out over four campuses. Being able to contribute to the spiritual well being of University students is something I believe will have a lasting impact on both their lives and the future health of the church.

Henderson has a number of excellent suggestions for students, parents, and Pastors, for ways that students can remain strong in their faith during their college years. It is well worth reading.

I would like to add a couple of other thoughts to his list as well as tie back to some of my original comments about teens.

I realize that I am about to pick on Pastors here, but I see Pastors as the key implementer of change withing churches. Pastors, how intentional are you at engaging youth and young adults in your sermons? Go over your last 10 sermons. How many of the sermon illustrations were ones that young people could really relate too? Have you ever alluded to a group like “Cold Play”? Do you have a visitation schedule? If so, have you ever included a teen or a young adult in that schedule? Have you ever taken a teen in your church out for a baseball game or even a cheese burger? When was the last time someone under the age of 18 did a Bible reading in the service? Ushered? Ran the sound board, or video system? Joined the worship team? Let a Bible Study? My son who is 14, does all kinds of complex presentations at school on all kinds of subjects that he has researched. Why doesn’t he get the same kind of opportunity at church?

My point is that many of our people have become disengaged from their faith at a very young age. It isn’t enough to tread water, but we need to become intentional at engaging them. You should note that I am not advocating that we become youth focused in our churches, but that we should at least become much more youth aware and youth inclusive. We need to engage them beyond the time spent in their Sunday School class or youth group, and make sure that they are an integral part in this bigger thing we call “church”

My final note has to do with Evangelism. As noted earlier in the post, of those raised unaffiliated, but who are now affiliated with a religious group, 72% left the ranks of the unaffiliated before the age of 24. My friend Tim immediately came to mind when I read this. When I was at University, he amazed all of us in our Christian campus group by leading his entire residence floor to Christ. One of the guys who became a Christian went on to become the President of our group three years later. Yet this is something that should not surprise us, because this is a stage of life when people are seeking, learning, and discovering so many new and amazing things about the world around them. We need to take the opportunity to introduce them to the most amazing person of all: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.<i

The following post was originally published at InternetMonk.com.

Michael Spencer recently republished an article which looked at the problems that wealth creates for discipleship. He writes:

Have you ever thought about this? We are living in the most fabulously wealthy, excessively entertained and unimaginably prosperous nation in the history of the world. We have a standard of living, and a level of comfort, that much of the rest of the world cannot imagine…

The Jesus of the Gospel proclaims the promises of prosperity, real estate and parking places to be empty. If we will listen. He’s just as discomforting now as ever, unless we render him the harmless servant of our desires.

Rather than telling us about your best life now, Jesus talks over and over about persecution, sacrifice, voluntary poverty and laying down the images and symbols of success for the lasting worth and influence of the Kingdom of Jesus.

In the story of the rich young ruler, Matthew 19:21-24, Jesus makes it clear that it is very difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is so very true. When people are content in their present circumstances it is very difficult for them to hear the challenges of the gospel, and the demands of the Kingdom of God. This goes for both people with and without faith in God. For those with faith, it is a question of discipleship. For those without faith it is a question of evangelism.

Recession changes all that.

Recession turns peoples lives upside down. It helps them realize that they don’t have a sufficiency unto themselves. Not having a job, not being able to pay the monthly bills, wondering where the grocery money will come from, these are all things that cause even those that are furthest from God to question their own self-sufficiency. They come to a point where they realize that they can’t do it by themselves. And here-in lies the message of the gospel: We can’t do it by ourselves. Jesus had to die for our sins, because in and of ourselves we are unable to meet God’s holy standard. In times of prosperity it is a very hard message to communicate. In recession, your audience has a new appreciation of what that means.

Therefore, recession provides new opportunities for evangelism.

A number of years ago I watched a film about Jim Jones and his People’s Temple cult. One of the things that struck me when watching the film was how they presented themselves as a caring community. When someone came to the church without a job, at the end of the service they were introduced to their new employer. When someone came to church without a place to stay, they were assisted with that. Every week church members wrote hundreds of letters to visitors thanking them for being a part of their service, and what a wonderful church it was.

I can remember people around me shaking their heads and saying how terrible these techniques were. All the time I was thinking to myself, “Are you kidding me? If we did things like this our churches would be bursting at the seams!”

Recession and unemployment do impact our churches, and so one question to be considered is what sort of impact does unemployment have?

The leader in analyzing this has been David Beckworth, Assistant Professor of Economics at Texas State University. His study, published in late 2007, was entitled “Praying for a Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Church Growth.” Unfortunately the study is quite difficult to read for those who do not have a statistics or economics background. However, it was picked up by the New York Times in December of 2008, and subsequently by bloggers like Ed Stetzer. David updated his study in January of 2009, adding additional information and analysis. I wanted to take a further look at it, and pull apart the study a bit more than the Times and others did, hopefully, to explain in fairly simple terms what implications the study has for the church today.

David analyzed three sets of data. The first set was from a survey done by the Pew Charitable Trust in 2001 that looked at weekly attendance. According to the study, the probability of person attending church on any given Sunday was about 42%. It should be noted that surveys where people self report church attendance always trend higher than actual counts of people in church. That being said, it gave a baseline that David could use to look at four groups of people: Employed Evangelical Protestants, Unemployed Evangelical Protestants, Employed Non-Evangelical Protestants, and Unemployed Non-Evangelical Protestants.

According to the survey, an employed evangelical was roughly 20% more likely to attend church than the general population, a number that we should not find that surprising. The interesting number is that unemployed evangelicals were roughly 27 to 29% more likely to attend church than the general population. In other words, evangelicals that were unemployed were 7 to 9% more likely to attend church than their employed fellow church members.

For other Protestants we saw similar results. Those employed Protestants who were not Evangelical were less likely to attend church. Their attendance was roughly 12 to 13% lower than the national average. However, unemployed non-Evangelical Protestants were 12 to 13% more likely to attend church than their employed fellow church members.

So unemployment definitely has a significant positive effect on church attendance, no matter what flavor of Protestant you might happen to be. We might want to ask ourselves, if the unemployed are coming to our churches in greater numbers, what are we doing to help the obvious needs of the unemployed in our midst.

Recession also brings opportunities and by examining historical data we can see what impact recession has had on church growth.

David Beckworth’s data for church membership comes from an annual publication, “The State of Church Giving”. He found that this publication had consistent data on 14 Evangelical denominations and 11 mainline Protestant denominations between the years 1968 and 2004. The graph of the membership in these 25 denominations is reproduced below.

As can be seen from the graph, the trend in memberships in Evangelical denominations is up, and the trend in memberships in mainline Protestant denominations is down. This is true for the entire time span. Close observation will note that growth in the Evangelical denominations is much steeper/faster in the earlier years than it is in the later years. This is a concern for the Evangelical Church that both Michael Spencer and I have noted in previous essays as other data has shown that the Evangelical trend is likely to reverse itself and we will start to see declines. Over the entire time span however, the Evangelical denominations averaged a growth of 1.1% per year, while the mainline denominations averaged a decline of .94% per year. These are the base numbers that David Beckworth uses for his analysis.

When we divide the growth in Evangelical denomination between years in which there was no recession and years in which a recession occurred, we have another interesting observation. Growth for Evangelicals in non recession years was .98%, where as the growth rate for Evangelicals during years of recession was 1.52%. In other words Evangelicals grew 55% faster (1.52 / .98) during years of recession than in years of non-recession.

What is interesting is that mainline denominations did not see this same effect. There was statistically no real difference between recession and non-recession years. Why they did not see the same “bump” as the evangelicals is hard to ascertain. Perhaps it is easier to build on growth, as in the Evangelical case, than it is to reverse decline.

What about other economic shocks?

Beckworth found that for Evangelical Protestants, other economic factors like the unemployment rate, oil prices, real stock prices, and the difference between short and long term bond rates (an economic predictor) all impacted in a significant way on Church growth.

For mainline churches, most other economic factors did not have that much of an impact. The exception to this was stock prices. With stock prices, the effect was the opposite of what you might expect. As stock prices rose, membership rose (or actually declined less), with the converse also being true. This was the opposite effect that stock prices have on Evangelical congregations. Beckworth surmises that this is the case because mainline Christians on average are in a higher socio-economic class and as such are able to benefit more (in terms of available time) from the income and wealth effects that a rising stock market brings.

How long do these impacts last?

From the previous set of data along with 57 years of quarterly data that Beckworth had for the Seventh Day Adventists, he was able to show that the impact of the economic shocks were significant and generally lasted one and a half years beyond the date when the shock had ended. In the case of an increase in the unemployment rate for example, the greatest effect on membership/converts occurs one year after the initial shock and last another six months beyond that. So with the rise that we are now seeing in unemployment rates, our Evangelical churches may see a positive benefit from it until at least the end of 2010 or the beginning of 2011 (depending of course when we hit bottom.) From both the data from the Evangelical denominations along with the further data from the Seventh Day Adventists, it can be shown that one third of all church growth can be directly attributable to economic shocks.

So what does it matter?

As we are know in the midst of a full blown recession, there are great opportunities for both Evangelicals and mainline Christians to reach out to those who are hurting. As Michael Spencer said in his original post, “Jesus talks over and over about persecution, sacrifice, voluntary poverty and laying down the images and symbols of success for the lasting worth and influence of the Kingdom of Jesus.” I have heard the expression before that “people want a hand up, not a handout.” A recession is our opportunity to come alongside those in difficulty and show them that not only does Jesus care, but we care too. It is also our opportunity to tell them about about the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus was willing to make for a world that could not help itself.

As I was time limited when taking my first statistical look at “The Coming Evangelical Collapse“, I wanted to follow up with a few more observations about some of Michael Spencer’s statements:

1. Denominations will shrink, even vanish.

Much to my surprise, the decline in evangelicals in the U.S. has already begun. The Association of Religious Data Archives (ARDA) lets you generate maps to visibly see the changes. The maps shown here show the difference in Evangelicals between 1990 and 2000.  Note how the colors have lightened over 10 years, particularly in the south-east.

You can visit the ARDA site to create your own maps on a national, regional, and/or denominational level.

When we look at the age composition of churches in the data from the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS), it is clear that those who will be impacted the most will be those denominations who call themselves Baptist. The most significant growth is coming from those Christians who say they have no denominational affiliation. Two thirds of these are under the age of fifty. It is clear from the data that there is and will be a move away from denominational identification.

2. Fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

According to the National Congregations Study 50% of churches in the U.S. now (2006-2007) have a congregation fewer than 75 on a Sunday morning. This is down from a median of 80 in 1998. While these figures are for all churches, and not just evangelical ones, the data from Canada shows that Evangelical Churches have similar attendance ratios to all Protestant churches. The issue is that as Evangelical churches go through the generational horizon that we see is about to happen from the ARIS Data, those churches will become less and less viable.

I read a study a number of years ago that showed that when a church hired a second (associate) pastor, that the related increase in attendance and its accompanying tithing paid for the second pastor on average within 18 months. (I was graduating from seminary at the time, and tried to use the study to get churches to hire me. ) The converse is also true. Once a church starts a slide and is forced to lay off pastoral staff, or go to part-time or lay pastors, it is an extremely hard trend to reverse. Churches are going to have to make some difficult decisions, and for some it is going to mean closing their doors.

3. Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions

According to the ARIS report, Catholics have grown by 24% between 1990 and the present day. This growth was very regionalized and fueled by immigration as the following quotation shows:

Catholic numbers and percentages rose in many states in the South and West mainly due to immigration from Latin America. Catholics increased their share in California and Texas to about one-third of the adult population and in Florida to over one-fourth. In terms of numbers they gained about 8 million adherents in these three states in the past two decades. At the same time the proportion of Catholics was eroded in other parts of the country, mainly in the Northeast Region, where Catholic adherents fell from 43 percent to 36 percent of the adult population. New England had a net loss of one million Catholics. Big losses in both the number of Catholic adherents and their proportion occurred also in Massachusetts, and in Rhode Island, the nation’s most heavily Catholic state where the proportion of Catholics dropped from 62 percent to 46 percent. New York state lost 800,000 Catholics and they dropped from 44% to 37% of the adult population.

The age composition of the Catholic church is virtually identical to the general population meaning that they are not facing a generational horizon. So the Catholics will benefit from the Evangelical collapse in that they should have stable numbers over the next decade and will become a larger proportion of the Christian community, and thus will have a larger voice from within that community. (Please do not get into arguments over the definition of Christian here, as it is really tangential to the purpose of the post.)

The question of whether they will be beneficiaries of the evangelical collapse numerically would still be open to debate. The previous ARIS study of 2001 as reported at ReligiousTolerance.org showed that in the dynamic movement of individuals in and out and between denominations, Catholics lost twice as many adherents as they gained. Unfortunately the question that generated this data was not asked during the current ARIS study, so we do not know if this number has changed.

Orthodox Christians still represent a tiny percentage of overall Christians in the U.S., but the data that has been supplied by ARDA shows some significant growth.

4. Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism

According to ARIS, Pentecostals / Charismatics have grown from 5,647,000 to 7,948,000 over the last 18 years, an increase of 41%. Their growth however has slowed somewhat over the last 7 years and they too are facing a generational horizon. Their horizon however, is not as bad as the Baptists. Numerically they will be hard pressed to be the most significant group in the Evangelical American world in forty years, but they will certainly be much stronger in relation to groups like the Baptists than they are today.

In one sense however, they are already the majority report, and that is in the area of worship. While I do not have the numbers for this, I am sure that most readers have seen that the vast majority of churches in the U.S. have adopted a more “charismatic/contemporary” style of worship. These days you would be hard pressed to differentiate the worship style between many Baptist and Pentecostal churches.

5. Evangelicalism needs a “rescue mission” from the world Christian community.

Michael is not alone in this thought. Consider some of these thoughts and statistics as compiled by the Navigators organization.

According to George Barna: “With its 195 million unchurched people, America has become the new mission field. America has more unchurched people than the entire populations of all but 11 of the world’s 194 nations.”*

According to Lost in America, by Tom Clegg and Warren Bird, 2001: “The unchurched population in the United States is so extensive that, were it a nation, it would be the fifth-largest on the planet. . . . Researchers and analysts describe North America as the world’s third-largest mission field.”

According to Os Guiness, in World Evangelization, Vol. 18, No 65, 1993: “The three strongest national challenges to the Gospel in the modern world are Japan, Western Europe, and the United States.”

According to George Gallup in 1997, only ten years ago: “More than 44% of American adults 18 and over are unchurched; 120 million Americans have no substantial Christian memory.”

Barna affirms Gallup. Consider: “America’s secularization has gone from only 15% in the 1950s up to 40% in 2001; and headed for 60% percent by 2010!” (Secularization means basing the decisions of one’s life on a secular humanist, relativist moral world view. Judeo-Christian values and the Bible are no longer the moral foundation of decision making in life for the vast majority of Americans.)

According to America: An Emerging Mission Field in World Christian Encyclopedia, Second Edition p.27: “In 2000, the United States sent out 118,200 missionaries, but it also received 33,200. Ironically, the world’s largest missionary-sending country has now become the world’s largest missionary-receiving country.” Not to mention:

o The world’s largest Buddhist temple is located in Boulder, CO, USA!
o The world’s largest Muslim training center is in New York City, USA!
o The world’s largest training center for transcendental meditation is in Fairfield, Iowa, USA!

According to Leighthon Ford, evangelist and Christian leader, “North America is now the largest mission field in the English-speaking world” (Cities’ and surrounding areas’ concentrated populations make them obvious targets for sharing the Gospel).

The number of churches in Chicago has decreased by 900 in the last 10 years! In many cases what were once churches are now condominiums.

Conclusion

I wrote these two posts in support of Michael, not because I, nor he for that matter, take any joy in what is going on. I hope that these can help serve as a wake up call to the Evangelical community that the status quo position is not a viable one. Many have asked where is the role of God and the Holy Spirit in all of this? Well I for one see this as a wake up call to pray, and to seek God’s direction and guidance in all of this. We believe in the good news of Jesus Christ and we want to see his name continued to be honored and lifted up.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

One church was made up of seniors, a group of people who some time ago had resisted change, and so had lost their subsequent generations to other churches.  The other church had a cross section of families, but was struggling to make a go of it in rented facilities in a relatively small town.

In hindsight, both were uniquely and appropriately gifted, to lead their churches into significant growth.

In the case of the seniors’ church.  The church had come to recognize that in order to not be closing the doors in ten years that there had to be some change.  Change however would come at a snail’s pace.  And the pastor had to have the patience of Job in order to keep persevering with small incremental changes that the seniors could tolerate.  He had a true “Pastor’s heart” and spent much time visiting with people and caring for them.  The church came to love their Pastor, and the church grew, largely from other churches whose seniors had become disenfranchised and were looking for a place to belong.  The Pastor told me that his church had done a very good job of welcoming the new people, going so far as to change the language that was spoken in the seniors group, so that the newcomers would feel more welcome.  The church is now twice as large as it was, still mainly seniors, but with more of a hope of a future.

In the other church, the new Pastor was quite a different sort.  He was a visionary guy, with all kinds of ideas of how they could present and grow the church.   His route was to go very contemporary, while not neglecting the importance of things like baptism and communion.  Being contemporary, to him did not mean watering down the word, but presenting it in ways that were understandable and communicated to their target audience.  They also put a strong emphasis on small groups, which they called “small church”, knowing that this was one of the best ways to see people discipled and grow.  The thing that impressed me the most when visiting, was that they scheduled baptisms for every month, trusting that God would be moving in such a way, that people would want to follow Christ in Baptism.  This church has now doubled three times in the seven years that he has been there.  Half of the growth has been new convert growth.

What strikes me about both situations is this.  Both models work.  What is needed is the right Pastor for the right church.    I would venture to say that if each of these Pastors had been called to the opposite church, that both of the churches would still be struggling along, if not closed.

One thing that the denomination of my previous church does, is require any church that is calling a new senior Pastor to do a extensive church and community analysis.  This is done to help clarify and set their mission, vision, and values.  Each potential Pastor undergoes corresponding testing.  The church then is presented with a list of Pastors who are appropriate for their situation.  The church can recommend that certain names be added, but these potential candidates also have to go through a vetting at the district level.   The reason for this of course is to get the right Pastor for the right church, and avoid the sort of church blowups and meltdowns that we here about all too frequently.

I have received permission from the denomination to link to their free resources for those who would like to find out more about the process.

Here is the Intro, Part 1, and Part 2.

Distractions from the Gospel – Part 3: Church Contentment

A few years ago I helped administer a survey of the members and adherents of the church that we were attending. One thing that we were able to determine from the survey was that by and large people were quite happy with ministries of the church, and weren’t looking to make and significant changes. When we shared these results with the District Superintendent (think Bishop), he cautioned us. “Let me be prophetic here”, he said, “Churches which are largely content with the way things are, and are not open to change, tend to stagnate, plateau, and even die.” Indeed he was rather prophetic, and within three years the church had closed its doors.

I am experiencing a similar situation in the church that I currently attend. Surveys conducted of the members and adherents also show a high level of satisfaction with the way things are going. On the positive side of things is that the Pastors are fully cognizant of this and are hoping to counter some of the complacency. The issue showed itself recently when the elders recruited in the congregation to form an evangelism committee of sorts. It was an open invitation, with certain people specifically asked. When push came to shove, although over half of the church is over the age of 50, only one person over the age of 35 came to the meetings. I believe it was because the older people have had as much change as they would like, are happy in the relationships they have in the church, and don’t see a huge need to be building new relationships in the community.

Another friend of mine is the Pastor of a church that resisted change for decades. As a result of this they have very few people in their church under the age of 60. When he came in as Pastor he warned them that he did not come just to lock the doors in 10 years time and that this would be the result if they continued on their present course. To their credit, they are starting to accept change. Time will tell whether or not it is too late for the church to start growing again.

The fact is, contentment and complacency destroys churches. We are warned of this in Revelation 2:5b.

Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

Almost all churches start with an excitement, a desire to share the gospel, a desire to reach out to others. My church started with a heart and a desire to reach German immigrants, and it was very effective at that. A loving community was built. That generation, however, is all in its retirement years. Contentment and complacency has set in. What we need a new vision and a new direction for the younger generation.

Proverbs 29:18 states: “Where there is no vision the people perish.” And where there is no vision, churches perish. It may not be immediately noticeable, but if a church fails to live by the great commission, it will slowly die. Its dying members will not be replaced by new converts.

What is your church’s vision for the future? Where does God want you to go? Are you content with where things are at, or do you want to see God do much more in and through your church. How you answer these question will ultimately determine the future of your church.

Introduction

Part 1: Busyness

Part 2: Politics and the Culture War

Over the last several weeks I have been thinking about things that distract us from the Gospel. The issue of Politics and the Culture War has to be one of the most significant. To state the issue briefly, Evangelical Christians in the United States have been very concerned with trying to determine who is going to be the political party in power. This is as result of two things, the Republican Party co-opting the religious right by preying on their fears of a homosexual focused, or pro-choice agenda coming from the Democratic Party, along with Evangelical Christians having general concerns about these things and so looking to support a party that shares their concerns.

As a result, Christians have put a lot of effort into pro-life agendas. What Christians may fail to realize is that other than education, there are at least three things that will lower the abortion rate:

1. Legislation – When abortions became legal the rate went way up. Reintroducing legislation is part of the Republican/Evangelical agenda.
2. Improving economic conditions – A one percent drop in the unemployment rate roughly translates into an six percent drop in the number of abortions. (I determined this by charting US Abortion ratios against Unemployment statistics from the period of 1982 to 2004 and then displaying as a scatter graph with a best fit line.) This is the Democratic way forward as proposed by Obama and Tony Campolo.
3. Transforming lives through the power of the Gospel. What I find interesting is that I don’t find Christians talking a lot about this item. If we believe in the power of God to transform lives then wouldn’t we expect the abortion rate to go down as people made genuine commitments to follow Christ?

Now I realize that we could have a discussion about abortion rates between Christians and non-Christians and reasons for the similarities or differences, but I don’t want to go here with this post. All I want to point out is that we have been so concerned with Politics and the Culture War that we have lost our focus on Christ. Jesus did not come to elect political parties, Jesus came to transform lives.

Up in Canada, the political scene is quite different. Politicians are extremely private about their faith. Up until 2004 Evangelical Christians were pretty much split between two Political parties, the Conservations (48%) and the Liberals (42%). In the 2006 election, their was a swing by Canadians in general towards the Conservative party, reinforced by a strong move in the Evangelical community. However, as our Evangelical community is much smaller percentage wise than in the United States, and because Canadian Evangelicals tend to be on the left of American Evangelicals, we have not seen the culture war up here near to the extent that you have in the United States. Instead Canadian Churches have been able to focus on other things, among them church planting and evangelism.

What has been the result? As I have pointed out in previous posts, while the American Evangelical church has been declining, the Canadian Evangelical Church has shown significant growth over the past twenty years. There are certainly other factors, but I would propose that not being distracted as much by Politics and the Culture War has been a major reason leading to the relative growth of Evangelicals in Canada.

Postscript: If you would like to read more about the political differences between Canada and the United States and how that impacts on matters of faith, I have found that the blog “Pulpit and Politics” by Dennis Gruending, is very good at exploring these differences in depth.

I must admit I am quite embarrassed. I had done a couple of studies looking at the growth or decline in Evangelicals in North America. In one, I had great numbers showing the growth of Evangelicals in Canada from 1980-2000. In another I showed the growth of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in the U.S and talked about a great tool for measuring numerical denominational growth.

I think it was the strong performance of the Evangelicals in Canada that made me discount many of the recent anecdotal stories of people leaving the church. So I blogged on that assumption, trying to put a positive spin on situation saying that people were replacing the leavers just as fast as they were leaving, and that the situation was not as bad as people were making out. To reinforce my thinking in the subject, no one was challenging me with any real statistical data. So I continued on repeating my views all over the blogosphere.

U.S. Evangelicals Legend

U.S. Evangelicals 1990

U.S. Evangelicals 2000

In my next blog post I will try to look a little bit more at what this means, and how this trend might be able to be reversed. A question for our readers: What do you think has been causing this decline? I will respond to your comments on the weekend.