Remember “average Sunday attendance”? If you are the lucky one in your church who completes forms to send to your denomination, you recognize this metric. During the modern era (up to around the year 2000), this metric was a fairly…
The church is called to die
The church my wife and I have served since 2000 was founded 70 years ago as a Southern Baptist mission, a church plant in a neighborhood that had just been converted from a dairy farm. The founding pastor understood his…
Pandemic is putting the nail in the decline of church construction
Decades-long declines in faith affiliation coupled with the pandemic-inspired evolution of online church services are contributing to a huge downturn in religious facility construction in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, total spending on the construction of…
Who moved the front door to the church?
A funny thing happened while we were socially distanced, worshiping online. When we returned to the church building, the front door was not where we left it, nor was it the same size. Instead, we found multiple doors resembling the…
Six church invitations young people reject
Right there in the want ads for pastors. Right there in their strategic plans. Right there in their requests for services from our organization or calls to their denominational offices. No subtlety, no nuance, no hesitation; putting it right out…
America 2021: Got church and steeple but where are the people?
Growing up in Texas during the Southern Baptist Iron Age, I learned this bit of gospel doggerel somewhere between Sunday School, Vacation Bible School or Romper Room (Google it) and the hand-signals that accompanied it: Here is the church, Here…
Contrary to what you’ve heard, study finds churches thrive with racial diversity
Having a racially diverse congregation offers a path toward church growth, according to comprehensive study of The United Methodist Church. The national study found that racially diverse congregations are more likely to have better attendance and membership growth, especially if…
Tell the Jesus story and stop worrying about numerical growth, historian advises
As if churches didn’t have enough challenges in the 21st century, COVID-19 has added insult to injury, Bill Leonard told participants in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly June 26.
Are our churches and their leaders ready for the 2020s?
Rather than thinking of turnaround as simply a reversal of numerical decline, the real turnaround for congregations that thrive in the next decade will be a move from irrelevance to relevance in the lives of their constituents and their communities.