A survey of more than 15,000 religious congregations regarding church decline in the United States by Faith Communities Today (FACT), fielded just before the pandemic lockdown, was recently released. It found a median decline in attendance of 7% between 2015 and 2020. It gets worse. It also found that half of the country’s estimated 350,000 religious congregations had 65 or fewer people in attendance on any given weekend. In 2000, when FACT first began surveying data, the median attendance level was 137. That’s a drop of more than half in just two decades.
And before you think this is reflective of only “mainline” Protestant groups, as opposed to more theologically conservative evangelical groups, think again. Yes, mainline churches are worse off (median average 50), but evangelicals reflect the median 65. In other words, this decline is across the board.
So what’s the problem regarding church decline in the United States? Why are congregations of any and every stripe in such steep church decline?
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It would be easy to blame the cultural context, but that would be mistaken. The real reason was revealed in a recent survey of churches conducted in Canada that found 65% of church leaders say that evangelism hasn’t been a priority for their congregations over the last several years. In fact, only 9% said it was a high priority for members of their congregation to share their faith.
And again, before you think the survey was focused on mainline churches, think again.
, fielded just before the pandemic lockdown, was recently released. It found a median church decline in attendance of 7% between 2015 and 2020. Here's why that's the case.){kind=link}