The death of denominations in America
Published: Mon, 11/06/23
|
One of the primary lenses through which demographers can track religious decline is through denominational records. Almost every large religious tradition has been tracking their total membership for decades as a means of understanding where churches are growing and where they are declining. Anyone who has been in church administration for a while knows that membership records are far from accurate. Churches don’t want to cull people from the rolls because there’s always the possibility that they will return to church one day and express offense when seeing that their name has been purged from the official records. However, despite their drawbacks, denominational records are still one of the best data sources that exist when it comes to tracking the growth or decline of American religion. The portrait they paint is not a rosy one. For instance, in 1990 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America reported 5.25 million members. In 2020 the total membership was just over 3 million—a decline of 41 percent. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has seen its membership drop 58 percent during the same time period. The United Church of Christ is down 52 percent, and the United Methodist Church has seen a decline of 31 percent. The Episcopal Church, which used to be one of the most influential denominations in the United States, has just half a million people in the pews on an average Sunday and just 1.5 million members total. This trend is not relegated to mainline traditions alone. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which is the largest evangelical denomination in the United States, has also seen a serious decline in membership in recent years. In 2006, 16.2 million people aligned with the SBC; now that number is 13.7 million. Between 2020 and 2021, the SBC lost nearly 410,000 members. That’s the largest single-year loss in the 170 years of the Southern Baptist Convention. There are two bright spots when it comes to membership. The Assemblies of God, an evangelical denomination with ties to the Pentecostal tradition, has seen their membership numbers rise 50 percent over the last three decades. They also enjoy a high level of racial diversity, while many other Protestant traditions are still overwhelmingly white. The other area seeing positive growth is nondenominational Protestant Christianity. While it’s impossible to collect membership statistics on these types of churches, on surveys the portion of Americans who identify as nondenominational rose over the last decade while other traditions like Baptist, Methodist, and Lutheran have all declined. Davis, Jim, Michael Graham, Ryan P. Burge, and Collin Hansen. 2023. The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. What will it take to bring them back?I suggest a long-term perspective. We didn’t get here in a day and it will take more than a day to get out. I’d suggest a three-year approach. It took roughly three years for Jesus to make his followers into fishers of men. It may take us at least that.
The planSimple as this is, I think it will take a while to get there. Here is what I suggest. Every year, starting in January or August, do a church-wide study of evangelism. (You might consider a sermon series to go along with the study.)
Each of these studies is about six weeks and are available on Amazon or as part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking subscription system. www.MyBibleStudyLessons.com During the rest of the year, I recommend you spend five or ten minutes each week in each group talking about such questions as:
In addition, I'd encourage each group to host a fellowship every month and invite every member and every prospect. For more on this, see https://www.YouCanDouble.com/ I close with a quote from the last book above:
|