Earlier this week Episcopal priest Tom Ferguson wrote a piece titled "The Collapse is Here," exploring The Episcopal Church's recently published statistics on Sunday worship attendance from 2008 to 2018. Ferguson offers several high level observations about what has happened and what the Episcopal Church looks like today: Average attendance dropped 25% (24.7%) between 2008 and 2018. Average attendance in 2018 was 562,529.There are now more parishes with an average attendance of less than 10 Read More …
Trends
Are 10,000 Churches Closing Every Year? (#1822)
For years, I've heard people claim that 10,000 churches are closing every year in America. A quick web search shows that this big, bold, round number can be found on its own or, more often, as the high end of a range on dozens of websites. These sites include pieces by largely unknown bloggers alongside articles by those many consider to be authorities in field. For example, last year Thom Rainer - a leading Evaneglical voice and the former president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources - Read More …
Mainline: The 5 Percent? (#1819)
Over the years I've written dozens of blog posts about Mainline decline. This morning, I happened upon a tweet that highlights the significance in decline by comparing current Mainline Protestant affiliation rates for those over age 65 with those under age 35. Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University, tweeted "4.5% of those under 35 are mainline Prot. vs. 20.6% of those 65+." So What? Put differently: For every 20 Americans over age Read More …
What Americans Don’t Know About Religion (#1817)
Over the last decade I taught an undergraduate introduction to world religions course more than two dozen times. From that experience, I learned the importance of having students self-assess their religious literacy during the first week of the semester in order to help them recognize just how much they did not know. Reflecting on these ungraded assignments, students often remarked that the exercise revealed that while they performed okay on questions about their own religion or the religion Read More …
240 Months of Ministry (#1812)
A lot has changed in the 20 years since I started my first role in parish ministry. I've grown through my experiences. The church I know best - the Mainline Protestant variety - has endured significant decline. Time and Place During this time, I've served congregations in Texas and Florida affiliated with four denominations. In order to better understand just how much time I spent in each place I've lived and each congregation I served, I created the graph below showing the Read More …
Top 5 Posts of 2019 (January – June) (#1809)
I've written more blog posts during the first half of the year this year than any year since 2015. My readers have selected the following posts as the top posts so far this year based on the number of page views each has received year to date. I’m Back: My Return to the Mansfield Mission Center (March)Our Search for a Church 2.0 is Over! (May)Book Recommendations – March 2019 (March)Visiting 50+ Churches in Dallas – Fort Worth (February)Top 12 Authors: 2009-2019 Read More …
Church Membership Down 20% in 2 Decades (#1800)
Gallup recently reported that church membership in the United States has experienced a significant decline over the last two decades dropping from 70% in 1999 to 50% in 2018. This shift is attributed to both an overall decline in religious affiliation and a decline in membership among those who identify with a specific religion. So What? The May 22, 2019 edition of the Christian Century included the following visual that clearly communicates the Gallup data illustrating that the Read More …
1 in 10 Christians (#1795)
Worldwide slightly more than 1 in 10 Christians live in the United States. As of 2015, there were 2,276,250,000 Christians with 248,148,00 (or 10.9%) residing in the United States. Perspective While a higher percentage of people in some other large nations are Christian (e.g., 88.5% in Brazil), the United States is home to more Christians than any other nation. More than 3 out of 4 Americans (76.9%) are Christian. So What? Yesterday much of the focus on American Read More …
Current Issues & Church (#1780)
According to a recent Public Religion Research Institute survey of adults who attend religious services at least once or twice a month, most people never hear clergy speak about current issues from the pulpit. More specifically, the percentage who have heard clergy speak about a given current issue is Immigration: 32%Homosexuality: 42%Abortion: 45% So What? Something is wrong when the church is silent about current issues. People should not be able to regularly attend worship Read More …
Majority of UCC Congregations Worship 50 or Fewer (#1778)
The percentage of all congregations in the United Church of Christ with average worship attendance of 50 people or less has been increasing since 2000. During that time the percentage nearly doubled from a little more than 1 in 4 congregations (27.8%) to 1 in 2 (50.9%). During the same time period, the largest congregations in the United Church of Christ (average worship attendance of 400+) declined from 1 in 50 (1.9%) to 1 in 200 (0.6%). So What? The dual trends within the Read More …