In an opinion column in the Christian Post, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources Thom Rainer expressed his observation that people are migrating toward larger churches in this country. Calling it “one of the most significant trends in American churches in the past 25 years,” Rainer said statistics for his own denomination show the few large churches are hosting a large percentage of church attenders.
“We expect to see continued migration of people from smaller to larger churches, and that the concentration of these members in larger churches will be even more pronounced with each progressive year,” said Rainer.
The reason for this migration isn’t clear, but Rainer suspects it may be occurring as people are moving to large cities (only 16 percent of the U. S. population lives in rural areas), multi-site churches are becoming more and more prevalent, and church attendees are “demanding quality that many small churches can’t afford.”
What reason(s) would you give for this trend? What are the implications of it? Leave your comments in the section below.
