Church Planting in the United States

As I was driving through Tennessee a few weeks ago, on my way to a mission agency board meeting, I passed a Baptist church that had a bus stop for another Baptist church in their parking lot. (Picture above) At first, I was a little frustrated as my mind wandered to all the places/countries in the world I have visited with no churches at all. A few weeks later, as I was going through my pictures, I was almost humored by the picture.

But a picture doesn’t always tell the whole story. In reality, the United States needs thousands of new churches.

One might reason that we already have an adequate amount of churches in the United States and that we need to focus our efforts elsewhere. However, America is rapidly becoming a mission field. Aubrey Malphurs said, “Essentially, what was a churched, supposedly Christian culture has become an unchurched, post-Christian culture. People in our culture are not antichurch; they simply view the church as irrelevant to their lives.” Consider the following “stunning” statistics:

1. Recent research states that there are now 195 million non-churched people in America, making America one of the top four largest “unchurched” nations in the world. (Behind China, India, and Indonesia…) Justice Anderson

2. In spite of the rise of mega-churches, no county in America has a greater church population than it did ten years ago. Ron Sylvia

3. During the last ten years, combined communicant membership of all Protestant denominations declined by 9.5 percent (4,498,242), while the national population increased by 11.4 percent (24,153,000). Tom Clegg

4. Each year 3,500 to 4,000 churches close their doors forever; yet only 1,100 to 1,500 new churches are started. Win Arn

5. Even though America has more people, it has fewer churches per capita than at any time in her history. Although the number of churches in America has increased by 50 percent in the last century, the population has increased 300 percent. There are now nearly 60 percent fewer churches per 10,000 persons than in 1920.- Bill Easum

1920 27 churches existed for every 10,000 Americans.
1950 17 churches existed for every 10,000 Americans.
1996 11 churches existed for every 10,00 Americans.

6. Today, out of the approximately 350,000 churches in America, four out of five are either plateaued or declining . . . . Many churches begin a plateau or slow decline about their fifteenth to eighteenth year. 80-85 [percent] of the churches in America are on the down-side of this cycle. Of the 15 percent that are growing, 14 percent are growing from transfer, rather than conversion growth.” Win Arn

7. In the average year, half of all existing churches will not add one new member through conversion growth. Ron Sylvia

8. One American denomination recently found that 80 percent of its converts came to Christ in churches less than 2 years old. Ralph Moore

9. Churches over fifteen years of age win an average of only three people to Christ per year for every one hundred church members. Churches three years to fifteen years old win an average of five people to Christ per year for every one hundred church members, but churches under three years of age win an average of ten people to Christ per year for every one hundred church members. Brian McNichol

Planting new churches is the single most effective evangelistic methodology! America is in desperate of new churches.