Americans are fascinated with megachurches, and that is leading some of the nation’s largest churches to keep getting larger, according to religion researcher Ryan Burge.
Burge, a professor of practice at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University, has become one of the most prolific interpreters of religion data with almost daily posts to his Substack, “Graphs About Religion.”
Ryan Burge
He devoted a recent post to examining data on America’s 100 largest churches. He titled the post, “Megachurches rise, fall, and evolve — but the biggest keep getting bigger.”
“For most of us, church is a place where 100 folks gather on a Sunday. For people who attend megachurches, it’s something else entirely,” he begins.
There are two major sources of data on megachurches. One is the constantly updated list maintained by Hartford Institute on Religion Research.
Hartford sociologist Scott Thumma defines a megachurch as a congregation with at least 2,000 people attending each weekend. “These churches tend to have a charismatic senior minister and an active array of social and outreach ministries seven days a week,” the institute’s website explains. “As of 2020, there were roughly 1,850 Protestant churches in the United States with a weekly attendance of 2,000 people or more. … The average megachurch had a Sunday attendance of 4,092. But not all megachurches are mega. Our surveys found that just 20% of megachurches had 5,000 people in attendance on a given Sunday.”
The second major source of data about U.S. megachurches is Outreach magazine and its annual list of the 100 largest churches in the U.S.
In consultation with Lifeway Research, Outreach compiles its list based on a self-reported survey that is verified by cross-checking with Hartford Institute and making direct inquiries with churches. The Outreach 100 list also looks at weekend church attendance, not membership.
That distinction matters because the older a church is, the more “dead weight” it carries on its rolls, which can vastly inflate the appearance of size.
Burge created a computer tool to analyze the Outreach data and reported on his findings in the June 25 Substack, which is available to subscribers. That post includes many graphs and more details than are summarized here.
“20 churches show up every single year and another 18 show up in 10 of the 11 years. Big churches stay big.”
Among 1,110 entries on his megachurch list (the top 100 churches over 11 years of data), there are only 209 unique churches found, he discovered.
“A whole lot of these congregations are frequent flyers in that they appear every time. In fact, 20 churches show up every single year and another 18 show up in 10 of the 11 years. Big churches stay big.”
He demonstrates, however, that there is some variation over time in churches that appear on the list.
His next observation is that “the biggest churches in the United States have gotten a whole lot bigger in the last decade. In 2015, the 10 largest churches combined for a total membership of just over 260,000. In 2025, that attendance number rose to over 427,000.”
Burge also created an interactive map where users may pan and zoom and look at where these churches are located.
One surprise he found is that many of the churches that appear on the largest list every year haven’t reported any real growth over the past decade. They’ve just stayed large without becoming larger. “From this list of 20, six of them have either seen a decline in attendance or grown by less than 1,000 people during this time period.”
The typical megachurch in this dataset has grown at about 2.1% annually, which may sound small but is significant when compounded year over year, he notes.
“The vast majority of churches in America would be pleased as punch to have any growth at all. But I think this helps calibrate our thinking quite a bit: The consistently large churches in the United States are not experiencing explosive growth rates. Instead, it’s incremental increases.”
Burge also explores how COVID affected attendance at American megachurches. Looking at churches that appeared on the Outreach 100 list in both 2020 and 2022, he found only eight congregations that marked large increases in attendance across that two-year span. “In contrast, there were 25 churches who reported a double-digit decline in their attendance after COVID.”
Another common denominator Burges sees in megachurches is nondenominationalism.
“Nondenominationals are experiencing all kinds of growth,” he writes. “In the full sample, almost half of all churches that made the Outreach list had no denominational affiliation. Then another 12% identified as ‘independent Christian.’”
Only one denomination is represented on the list in double digits, he adds: About 14% of the churches are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Another common denominator among megachurches is that “almost every single church on this list was a multi-site congregation,” he adds.
Related:
US megachurches report strong rebound from pandemic
Megachurches aren’t forever | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
When a former megachurch becomes a satellite congregation | Analysis by Mark Wingfield