conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

statistics and good information

So, in yesterday's conversation about church growth and evangelism, Megan asked: "So, got any facts? About whether the people who join churches are coming from existing Christian backgrounds, or not?"

I poked around and found a mishmosh of links and survey results. Since I am not a statistition (I can barely spell the word.), I make no promises about the information here. But enjoy the links if you can. Also, if you have a good link or two, please post a comment.

1. Barna on church attendance
2. Barna on the unchurched
3. Barna on evangelism
4. Outreach North America shares these statistics about church growth.
5. Christianity Today has this article about the unchurched.
6. USAToday has this article on "charting the unchurched."
7. Martin Marty wrote this article about the growth of Christianity.
8. ReligiousTolerance.org has this compilation of facts and figures.
9. Finally, here is the pdf for the American Religious Belief Identification Survey. It is 47 pages, so be ye warned. Some of the previous links refer to it, so I thought I should include it.

What did I learn? I learned that there is not one opinion, not one way to trace the statistical information...Christianity is on the rise. It is not on the rise. The unchurched are lost. The unchurched are the "next Christianity." The US is increasingly secular. The US is a spiritualist country. Urgh.

There are some things I guessed and knew that were confirmed by what popped up after 10 minutes of googling. American churches need to learn how to minister to the unchurched. We have to decide how necessary that they be part of our congregations/denominations. The US was once, to one degree or another, a Christian culture. Some would say it still is. So people know something about Christianity. This is not a blank slate mission field. Sure, there are some that have never been to church...not once. But they know who the Pope is, who Jerry Falwell is. So they have opinions. They have a base knowledge. This is still the information age to one degree or another. To assume a blank slate is foolish.

It is a lot to think about...

Also, if you get a chance, read Steve McNeely's comment on the previous post about evangelism. It stems from a great wisdom.

Posted by tripp at May 17, 2006 07:58 AM