What's Happening to the American Church?

Doug Nichols the Director of Action International posted an insightful blog What's Happening in the American Church?



American Reality
Christianity Today magazine reprinted a story from Outreach magazine last year titled “Special Report: The American Church in Crisis.” New research reveals sobering statistics on church attendance; but which statistics? Gallup and Barna’s report that church attendance grew from 37% in 1996 to 47% in 2006. This is great news if it were true.

But in reality the churches and denominations report a trend of significant decline.

· Between 2000 and 2004 the mainline denominational churches dropped 10%,while Evangelicals experienced an overall 1% drop in worship attendance.

· But during this same time, 2000 – 2004 the population of the U.S. grew by 18.1% -- more than 48 million people. So even though attendance in evangelical churches is nearly the same they are not keeping up with population growth.

· At present trends, by 2050, the percentage of U.S. population attending church will be almost half of what it was in 1990 a drop from 20.4% to 11.7% (an estimate drop to 16.6% by 2010, and 15.4% in 2020).

What We Can Do?

Click here to read Doug Nichols entire post from his blogsite