Rethinking the Value of the Smaller Church Part 1
by Certified Church Consultant, David W. Smith
(Part 1 of 3)
In the early 1990s, I spent some time managing fast food restaurants. We served three sizes: small, medium, and large drinks and fries. Soon, that changed to small, medium, large, and extra-large. Then what was the amount that was the small became the medium, the medium became the large, the large became the extra-large and everyone’s belts loosened by a couple notches. What my restaurant sized a large became the guy across the street’s medium making his large a better value for the money and forcing me to reinvent my portions and marketing. If you think fast food sizing is confusing, try getting your head around church sizing in America. What constitutes a small, medium, large, or mega church keeps changing, as do the statistics we use to track them.
Much of my pastoral career was spent leading small to medium sized churches. Often, smaller churches are thought of as less impactful than their larger sisters in this country. This 3-part series seeks to provide some perspective regarding the value and impact smaller churches play in the American protestant and evangelical landscape. Before we can draw guiding conclusions, we need to have a fuller understanding of some important truths about church size, attendance, and impact.
Average Church Size in America
The average size of churches in America has changed over the past 23-years. According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, Pew Research, and Lifeway Research, median worship size for US congregations has declined by 56%. The median church attendance breaks out as follows:
- 2000 – median attendance was 137 with 45% of protestant and evangelical churches having an average weekly attendance of fewer than 100 people.
- 2020 – median attendance was 65 with nearly 70% of churches having fewer than 100 weekly worshipers.
- 2023 – median attendance was 60 with the percentage of churches averaging less than 100 weekly worshipers at 69%. 31% of churches now report weekly attendance levels of less than 50.
Furthermore, Lifeway Research reports that on average churches are reporting they’ve only returned to 85% of their pre-pandemic attendance levels. Interestingly, 23% of small church pastors (those with 50 or fewer average attendees) reported attendance rates of 90-100% of pre-pandemic levels.
Number of Churches in America
While we have good trackability for church size over the last few decades, tracking the number of churches in America proves more challenging. Statistics tell us that in 2000 there were about 214,000 protestant and evangelical churches in America as compared to more recent research of about 332,000 in 2020. If these numbers hold true, that’s a growth in the number of protestant and evangelical churches of 64%.
When the attendance patterns are overlayed against the number of churches we find that general church attendance is in rapid decline while the number of small to medium size churches is on the rise. While nearly 53% of churches in 2000 were experiencing an average 5-year growth rate of 5% or more, only 34% of churches in 2020 experienced that same growth, meaning 66% of churches were experiencing a growth rate of less than 1% annually with most being in decline. In fact, between 2015 and 2020 half of all churches declined in attendance by at least 7%.
Conclusion:
What are we to make of the data? Several conclusions can be made from what we see here.
- Given the declining trends, we need to reevaluate the church size paradigm. What is a small church vs what is a large church?
- American church attendance has been in drastic decline over the past two decades, but smaller churches are recovering more quickly than larger churches coming out of the pandemic.
- Smaller to medium sized churches aren’t going anywhere. They continue to be planted, largely in rural and suburban communities.
Smaller churches often struggle in many ways, but they’re also resilient. They have a lot to offer that their larger counterparts don’t and vice versa. They remain the backbone of protestant and evangelical churches in America. We should neither marginalize or discount the impact smaller churches can play for the sake of the gospel and expanse of Christ’s kingdom.
Part Two will analyze the attendance interplay between church sizes and present a fresh look at how we classify church sizes.
…to be continued in parts 2 & 3
Sources to consider:
The State of Church Attendance: Trends and Statistics 2024
Small Churches Continue Growing – but in Number, Not Size
The 2020 Faith Communities Today Overview
Hartford Institute for Religion Research
30 Church Trends You Need to Know for 2024
