{"id":692021,"date":"2017-06-28T04:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T09:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thomrainer.com\/?p=692021"},"modified":"2020-02-07T15:11:42","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T21:11:42","slug":"dispelling-80-percent-myth-declining-churches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/dispelling-80-percent-myth-declining-churches\/","title":{"rendered":"Dispelling the 80 Percent Myth of Declining Churches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Buckle your seat belts.<\/p>\n<p>Over the next several posts, I will be sharing with you the results of an incredible research project on 1,000 churches. At the risk of overstatement, I think this data may point us to some exciting and positive opportunities. Indeed, I hope to share a plan for the evangelistic renewal and growth of our churches in the weeks ahead.<\/p>\n<p>But I am getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n<p>Allow me to share, at the risk of boredom, the basis of this research:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Our program randomly selected 1,000 churches with available data for 2013 and 2016.<\/li>\n<li>The strength of the study is its accuracy. The margin of error at the 95% percent confidence level is +\/- 3.1%. If you\u2019re not a numbers nerd, that means this data is incredibly accurate.<\/li>\n<li>The possible weakness of this study is that it only includes churches of my denomination. We took this path because we have a gold mine of data. I do believe, however, this data can be a good approximation of evangelical churches, and a rough approximation of all Protestant churches in North America.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>The Research Says 80 Percent Is Not Correct<\/h3>\n<p>Have you ever heard, \u201c80 percent of churches are either plateaued or declining\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>I have. It\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the results of our research. We used average worship attendance as our metric rather than church membership. Unfortunately, church membership is fast becoming a meaningless metric.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>56 percent of churches are declining.<\/li>\n<li>9 percent of churches are plateaued.<\/li>\n<li>35 percent of churches are growing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So here is the new and correct statement of reality: <em>65 percent of churches are declining or plateaued. <\/em>There is a huge statistical difference between 80 percent, the myth, and 65 percent, the reality.<\/p>\n<h3>So What?<\/h3>\n<p>I loathe research projects that ultimately offer only statistics and not solutions. Over the next several weeks, I will be sharing with you some incredible and eye-opening research. But, ultimately, I will offer some solutions based on what God is doing in these growing and evangelistic churches compared to the declining churches.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some areas I will cover in upcoming posts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The danger line in worship attendance that becomes a predictor for church death.<\/li>\n<li>The relationship between the growth of the community and the growth of a church.<\/li>\n<li>How some smaller churches are thriving in the shadow of megachurches.<\/li>\n<li>What the most effective evangelistic churches are doing differently.<\/li>\n<li>The relationship between small groups\/Sunday school and the growth of a church.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My goal is ultimately to provide a clear path for evangelistic growth and renewal in our churches. We are learning so much from these churches and their leaders. I can\u2019t wait to share more of our findings in future posts.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, remember this basic fact: 65 percent of churches are plateaued or declining, not 80 percent.<\/p>\n<p>And 35 percent of churches are growing.<\/p>\n<p>It is my prayer that we will help you understand how your church can be in that latter group of churches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have you ever heard, \u201c80 percent of churches are either plateaued or declining\u201d? I have. It\u2019s wrong. Here are the results of our research.","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"","publish_post_category":"","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,175,180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-answers","category-grow","category-outreach-and-evangelism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dispelling the 80 Percent Myth of Declining Churches | Church Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/dispelling-80-percent-myth-declining-churches\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dispelling the 80 Percent Myth of Declining Churches | Church Answers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Have you ever heard, \u201c80 percent of churches are either plateaued or declining\u201d? 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