{"id":791074,"date":"2022-11-28T05:00:51","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/?p=791074"},"modified":"2022-11-24T14:14:46","modified_gmt":"2022-11-24T20:14:46","slug":"the-new-very-large-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/the-new-very-large-church\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Very Large Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s time to rethink church size. For the purpose of this article, I define church size as average weekly worship attendance, including children and youth who may not be in the primary worship service. In other words, we count every person attending a worship weekend (or other days for a few churches).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks to Lifeway Research, we have a clearer understanding of the sizes of churches. I don\u2019t know if you will be surprised.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What is a Large Church?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s look at the breakdown of churches by average worship attendance:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Under 50 in attendance: 31% of all churches<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">51 \u2013 99: 37%<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">100 \u2013 249: 24%<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">250 and above: 8%<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of the numbers are fascinating, but the largest category should cause us to pause. Only 8 percent of churches have an attendance of 250 or more. These churches now define the category, \u201cvery large churches.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course, there are still megachurches of 2,000 or more in worship attendance and mid-megachurches of 1,000 to 1,999, but those churches are outliers. If a church has an attendance of 250, its size is in the largest category.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>New Names for New Categories<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There will be some readers who cringe at the numerical emphases of this article. I get it. Numbers are neither ultimate nor penultimate. But these numbers represent a sea change in how we look at or define church size.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For now, we at Church Answers will speak of churches in the following categories so we can be on the same page:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Under 50 in attendance: smaller churches<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">51 \u2013 99: mid-size churches<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">100 \u2013 249: large churches<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">250 and above: larger churches<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Implications of These Paradigmatic Changes<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We will discuss the implications of these changes in depth at our podcast, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/podcasts\/rainer-on-leadership\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rainer on Leadership<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. But it does not take much thought to understand the world of American congregations is dramatically different than just ten years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More pastors and staff will be co-vocational and bi-vocational.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Equipping church members to do the work of ministry is as vital as always.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ministry and theological training must adapt to this reality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Search committees will be looking for a different type of pastor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Church budgets will be smaller.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Denominations must refocus their ministry and support of this new paradigm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More churches will need to be adopted or they will die.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The list could go on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The New Reality<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over two-thirds of American churches have a worship attendance under 100. As noted earlier, the new very large church has an attendance of 250 or higher.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is indeed a new reality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I would love to hear your thoughts on it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time to rethink church size. For the purpose of this article, I define church size as average weekly worship attendance, including children and youth who may not be in the primary worship service. In other words, we count every person attending a worship weekend (or other days for a few churches). Thanks to Lifeway&#8230;","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"1","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":[1,182,175,186,192,177,178,14796,180,176,187,196,185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-791074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-answers","category-facilities","category-grow","category-health-and-metrics","category-how-to","category-lead","category-membership-and-assimilation","category-monday-wednesday-featured","category-outreach-and-evangelism","category-revitalize","category-smaller-churches-and-communities","category-staff-and-organizational-issues","category-worship"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The New Very Large Church | Church Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It\u2019s time to rethink church size. 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