The Urgent Need for North American Church Planting

Statistics compiled by Randy Chestnut

• The United States is the third largest lost country in the world

• Seven out of ten people in the United States do not know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior

• Overall church attendance in the United States is 17.5% of the population on any given Sunday, with 9.1% attending an Evangelical church.

• Half of all churches did not add one member last year through conversion growth.

• In 2007 the American population climbed to over 300 million. However the attendance averages within most American churches has remained unchanged for well over a decade. In 1990, approximately 52 million Americans attended worship each week. Fifteen years later, in 2005, the number remained relatively unchanged. While the United States population continued to explode from 1990 to 2005, the average worship attendance, as a percentage of the population, declined almost 3 percent.

• Between 2000-2005, no single state’s church attendance growth kept up with the population growth.

• Between 2005-2006 over 57 percent of churches, over 40 years of age, were in a state of decline.

• In 1900, there were 27 churches for every 10,000 Americans.
In 1950, there were 17 churches for every 10,000 Americans.
In 2000, there were 12 churches for every 10,000 Americans.
In 2004, there were 11 churches for every 10,000 Americans.

• Ken Walker reported that the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the largest church families in the world, is set to close 50 percent of its churches by the year 2030, if all things remain the same.

• Between 2000 and 2005, 3,707 churches closed each year and 4009 started each year, for a net gain of 302 churches. There needs to be a net gain of 3,205 churches started each year (ten times the current amount), just to keep up with the population growth. We need to start an additional 2,900 churches per year.
• Tracking generational patterns from the World War II generation (born prior to 1945) to the Milliennials, (born between 1985-2002) the estimated number of Christians has fallen from 65% to 15%.

• Since 1991, the adult population in the United States has grown by 15%. During that same period, the number of adults who do not attend church has nearly doubled, rising from 39 million to 75 million—a 92% increase!

• After a church is three-years old it is half as effective in reaching people for Christ as it was in the early years of its existence. Once a church is fifteen-years old, it becomes one third as effective.

• One American denomination recently found that 80% of its converts came to Christ in churches less than 2 years old.

• 80% to 85% of American churches are on the downside of their life cycle. Aubrey Malphurs writes in Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century, “Of the 15% that are growing, 14% are growing as the result of transfer rather than conversion growth.”

• Studies show that if a denomination wishes to reach more people, the number of new churches it begins each year must equal at least 3% of the denomination’s existing churches. Based on this formula, mainline denominations are failing to plant enough churches to offset their decline.


Sources:
Books:
The American Church in Crisis, David T. Olson
UnChristian, David Kinnaman
Great Commission Resurgence: Fulfilling God’s Mandate in Our Time, Chuck Lawless and Adam Greenway

Websites:
The Barna Research Group, www.barna.org

Do We Really Need More Churches?, Ron Sylvia
http://www.churchplantingvillage.net/atf/cf/%7B087EF6B4-D6E5-4BBF-BED1-7983D360F394%7D/RonSylviaChapter.pdf

State of the Church, by Stephen Gray
http://www.churchcentral.com/blog/The-State-of-The-Church