Today’s goes post comes to us from Stephanie Martin for ChurchLeaders.com.
In America, the fields are ripe for harvest but there aren’t enough churches to meet people’s needs. That’s the key finding of a report titled “The Great Opportunity,” commissioned by the Pinetops Foundation.
During the next three decades, it predicts, America’s church planting rate must double to maintain current levels of churchgoing. Reasons include the high rate of church closures, continued population growth, an increase in unaffiliated worshipers, and a wave of young people leaving Christianity.
“The next 30 years will represent the largest missions opportunity in the history of America,” the report states. “If we return to retention and evangelism like we saw just 20 years ago, more people will be saved than during both Great Awakenings, the African-American church growth after the Civil War, the Azusa revivals, and Billy Graham outreaches—combined. The numbers are just that big.”
Beginning as a countrywide listening tour, “The Great Opportunity” gleaned insights from a wide variety of pastors, theologians and other leaders from a variety of denominations. People’s responses focused mainly on current needs rather than on how to grow the church during the next 30 years. Sensing that the church’s “fruitfulness in America was not what it once was or could be,” researchers started conversations about “how we might do better in that mission.” In the process, they countered arguments that the American church could benefit from some pruning, noting that “a contracting church is very unlikely to be a fruitful church.”
Church Planting in a Shifting Religious Landscape
Although 4,000 new churches are launched in America annually, a staggering 3,700 churches close each year. Meanwhile, the U.S. population is expected to top 400 million by 2050. By the same year, the number of unaffiliated believers in America could nearly double, from 17 percent to 30 percent. And an estimated 35 million young people raised in Christian homes will walk away from the faith. The return to church that typically occurs when people begin their own families will be “more than offset by departures” from Christianity, the report warns.
The projections aren’t all bleak, however. “If we can return the church’s retention back to Gen X rates, we will see over 16 million more youth begin or continue a life with Jesus,” the report says. For that to happen—and for the religious needs of an increased population to be met—America must “at least double the annual rate of church planting from 4,000 new congregations to over 8,000 per year over the next 30 years.” That requires church planting rates that were common in this country until the 1930s.
Diverse and efficient strategies for beginning congregations are required, too. “The church will need to find new models for lowering the cost of planting while increasing the number of leaders who reflect the increasing diversity of urban populations, all without sacrificing historic orthodoxy,” the report says. “We must engage in a culture that has a substantial portion of its people who no longer think the church is relevant to them, or increasingly, are ignorant of Christian context and language.”
Your partner in ministry,
Nelson
Share This Post