There is power in what we believe. Belief affects our actions. If we do not know the reality of the situation in our cities, then we are not going to be moved to action and change.
To begin, I want to be clear. No one really knows the exact estimates on how many people attend church and those who don’t. A lot of factors go into this. So I am going to cover a few ways to go about this. For these numbers, we are going to be looking at church attendance in the traditional church. When I say traditional church, it means what you probably think it means. A church that meets in a church building that has paid staff and clergy. So let’s get going.
David Olsen of The American Church Research Project estimates that around 17% of Americans attend a traditional church on a typical weekend. To put that in perspective, the population of the United States is around 330 million so that’s around 271 million (271,000,590) people who do not attend a traditional church on a typical weekend.
Let’s take another way of looking at it. Many of you might be surprised that the United States is dominated by small churches. According to The Barna Group, the average Protestant church in the United States is 89 adults. The Hartford Institute reports that just 10% of American church-goers attend a mega-church.
The national average of the size of a church is anywhere between 75-184 members. These numbers are of course debated among experts, so let’s just look at both numbers so we can estimate here.
If we go by the average church size multiplied by the number of churches, which is around 400k in the US, that number is anywhere from as low as 30 million to 75 million who attend church; both are startling numbers. So If we take the average number of church members to be 75, then only 30 million attend church. That would mean 300 million don’t attend church out of a population of 330 million. If we take the average number of church members to be 184, then only 75 million people attend church. That would mean around 256 million (256,400,000) don’t attend church out of a population of 330 million. Let that sink in. What is even more startling, is that the church attendance drops even more, the younger the people are. Eighty-eight percent of everyone under the age of 26 do not attend church at all! What will the American Church look like in 20 years!
Now let’s take a look at the Dallas Ft Worth Metroplex where I live. Keep in mind that DFW, According to Pew Research, has the largest Christian population by percentage out of any large metropolitan area in the United States.
The population in DFW is nearly 8 million people. There are an estimated 5000k churches in DFW. Again let’s take the national average of the size of a church (again which is anywhere between 75-184). If you take the lower average of a church to be 75 members, and multiply it by 5000 churches, you get 375,000 people who attend church. So that’s 7,625,000 who don’t attend church out of 8 million. If you take the higher average of 184 members and multiply it by 5000 you get 920,000 people who attend church. So that’s 7 million who don’t don’t attend church out of 8 million. Either way, the number of people who don’t attend church in one of the largest Christian cities is huge. It is safe to say that most people do not attend a traditional church. Can we all agree on that?
Let’s look at church transfer growth. Transfer growth is basically Christians who simply switch churches for various reasons. “96% of church growth is due to transfer growth. That means only around 4% of church growth is due to evangelism or conversion. That is a staggering number that needs to be paid attention to. So let’s say you attend a mega church of 10k attendees. Only 4% of those people are conversions. That means only about 400 people are a result of conversion growth compared to 9,600 people from transfer growth. It needs to be pointed out that the numbers of church members can skew our view of how we measure success. Just because you are a mega church with a large church population, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are being successful.
To complicate matters, because many people from other countries may not ever step inside a church and even if they did, American churches are not set up culturally to even accommodate many other cultures. Sticking with DFW. 1.2 million people in DFW are born outside of the US. 16.7% of the Total Population are Foreign Born. We have almost 100k Muslins, 100k Hindus, and around 200k Buddhists.
America is growing every year in international populations. There are unreached people here from other countries. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and many more. So many of them are unengaged. Unengaged means no one is even attempting to reach them.
There are also unreached subgroups in most of our bigger cites. New Agers, intellects, artists, gay community, single moms, military, gangs, agnostics, atheists, goth, skaters, bikers, hip-hop, punk rock, transsexuals, gamers, hipsters, prostitutes, strippers, clubbers, granolas, pot smokers, the rich, blue collared, etc.…Who will reach these people? Are they coming to our churches? We cannot assume that just because there are many churches in a city, that these people are being reached. In over 20 years of ministry, we have engaged most of these groups and I rarely ever hear from them that a Christian or church has engaged them.
When I studied the church situation in the US, it of course grieved me. I hope and pray that it grieves you too. But my biggest hope is that it changes the way you think about the need to reach people outside of our churches, and spurs you into action. I wish all churches could come together and look at this and come up with another plan, but I know that’s probably a pipe dream. But if this were to happen, the main question would be; “what do we need to do differently as churches to reach all these people?” Sadly, and you are probably thinking the same thing; are people and churches really going to change? Are people and churches really going to do what it takes to reach all people? We know the reality is, most will stay the same because of cultural tradition or simply ignoring the situation, but that does not mean you, your friends, or your church have to stay the same. I would challenge any church leader with this question; are you willing to give up everything you are doing for the sake of reaching all people? Even if it means closing down your church. Even if it means losing your church salary. Even if it means being rejected by your church friends or leaders. Would you do it? Would you give all to reach all people? Would you give up all to follow Him? Sound familiar? Following Christ should mean following Christ at all cost. That is what He called the first disciples to do and they lost their lives for it. Should we not have the same attitude, all for the sake of Christ?
So what do we do with all of these stats?
First of all, study them and pray through them. This is our reality here in the United States and we need to know what we are up against. It is vital that we pay attention to these stats and pray for ways to create alternatives for people to connect with God. There is a major cultural shift taking place in America in regards to Christianity that we cannot ignore. The fact is people are becoming less and less inclined to follow Christianity in the modern traditional sense, meaning joining a traditional church that meets in a building on a Sunday morning.
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