Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this conversation, Ian and I talk through some of the statistics that stood out to us the most this year, and you need to know about them. Let's do this.
You're listening to the Reachwrite podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow.
Hey, guys, I'm Thomas.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: And I'm Ian.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: And today we are talking about church statistics for 2024. Each year we do an episode just like this where we kind of take a look at a few church statistics. Ian and I come up not knowing what the other one is thinking about, and we do some of our own research and have three church statistics each that really shocked or surprised or we found really profound. And we're going to try and. Interesting, profound, interesting. I think it's in the same vein. Yeah. But we're going to try and share those with each other, and maybe we found the same ones. That could be possible, I suppose. But we're going to dig in and share the three stats each that we felt most moved by and wanted to share with you, our reachwright family here. So it should be a good conversation. We've done this, I think, five years in a row now. So you want to take a look at.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: It's always fun.
And honestly, I love statistics. We were joking on one of our other podcasts about how you love doing podcasts and posts on email lists and everything, but church stats kind of do it for me. And I think one of the reasons why is because I consult with churches on a daily basis and part of how we help churches with growth and everything, statistics play a big role in that. And I think where it'll be helpful to the churches that follow us and listeners that tune in is to kind of help them have a good, healthy perspective of where the church is as a whole, in general, and kind of helps you make decisions and do those types of things in ministry.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't come in armed with the statistic on this, but I think there probably are some statistics about how many people like statistics because I think that everybody is in that same boat. I feel the same way. I'm always intrigued and I think that it's, again, I don't have a stat for you on this, but I think it's always a good thing to work into sermons. If you have statistics, that's always something that will grab someone's attention. It's a great thing to work into blog posts or any kind of social content you're putting out there. We know we do this because this is one of our most viewed podcast episodes of the year, typically because you like us, you probably like church statistics.
So we won't hold back on the statistics anymore. We'll get right into them. Now, we've talked about talking about statistics, so let's get into it. Do you want to go first, Ian?
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Sure, I'll go first. And I chose this one. Fast growth for multicampus churches. So multi campus churches are growing fast. Now, I kind of wasn't surprised by this statistic, but a little bit. It was interesting to me because, first of all, I'm a part of a multicampus church. My church does the one church, many locations model. And what this statistic says here is churches with more identical campuses have experienced attendance growth of 25% compared to attendance one year ago. That's a big deal. 25% in a year that these types of churches with identical campuses compared to churches with autonomous campuses have only grown by 13%. So in other words, churches with identical campuses are growing twice as fast as churches with autonomous ones. And we run into churches that have both of these approaches. We work with multi campus churches that have the one church, several locations model and then some, that they have a church with different autonomous locations.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: And I think one thing that maybe makes sense to me, Thomas, and you can weigh in on this, is that I think that churches with identical campuses, the one church, several locations, they just kind of have more of an organized structure.
It's one pastor doing the majority of the preaching.
It's the same kids program at that other campus. It's the same brand, it's the same message being communicated, whereas I think autonomous one is nothing wrong with that as well, if that's what God has led you to do with your multicampus approach. But there's a little more variance there as far as not only just speakers, but how it's led and different, maybe visions and missions of those autonomous churches that vary a bit. So that kind of made sense to me, I guess.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it makes sense to me too.
I think that it's probably easier for people in some ways to wrap their head around autonomous campuses. I think that the whole one church, many locations model, this is stuff we dive into with churches when we're doing digital marketing or website projects with them. We kind of have to ask a lot of questions around this because there's so many different multi site models that are out there. But it makes sense to me because I think that with the identical campuses, what that usually means is that they have a central office of some kind and each campus isn't having to use resources and time and people's work to be able to create a lot of the stuff that you can have one person do for all of the campuses. So what that means, I think, is it just gives you more time to focus on the work of ministry and what actually has to happen and actually boots on the ground and doing that work and not administrative type thing. So it doesn't surprise me. That's a surprising amount. Like, I would have thought it might have been a few points indifference, but to be growing twice as fast, I think is what that means. Between 13 and 25%, pretty surprising in.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: That way, I'd say that's the surprising part for me. Yes.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Good one. Your church, multi site, where are they on that spectrum? At your church?
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Other than our. Well, we have a campus in Italy, so they obviously have. They are a little more. They're under us, our brand and everything, but they're a little more autonomous, just obviously being in a different country. But the other ones that are in our south, I'm north of Austin, as you know, in Austin, Texas, we have a South Austin, we have a Leander, which is another town outside of Austin. Those are all very.
We are very one church. Many locations type.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm part of a church that was part of an autonomous campus and is no longer. I think that's another thing about autonomous campuses is they're more likely to probably, like, the word is not split, but maybe multiply out from that. And that's usually the goal a lot of times, is that these are churches that want to plant new churches and start new works in different places. And it's easier, usually, to do that when it's more of an autonomous model, as opposed to the one church, multiple locations model that way. Anyway, good stuff, Ian. That's a good one. Here's mine. It's from Pew research. They found that the average church giving by adults who attend us protestant churches is. Drumroll.
$17 a week is how much the average person gives.
So I did some other research on top of that, and I'll kind of break this down for you. $59,000 is the average adult salary. That's not household income, but salary is $59,000 a year. So you break all that down. Here's what that means, is that the average person who is a regular attender, this isn't just the average in society. The average regular attender at a protestant church gives 1.5% of their total income to the things that they make from their job towards the church.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: You chose a sad one?
[00:07:53] Speaker A: Yes, I did. I suppose so. That's sad to me.
It's no secret that tithing is something that I believe in. I teach, I practice. It's been transformational in my life.
I don't necessarily think that people that don't believe in tithing aren't going to heaven or something like that, but I read in scripture and I see it. Something that is clearly taught in scripture as I read it. But regardless, even those that argue against like, a biblical mandate towards tithing, all of them would point to a New Testament model where people are pretty clearly giving more than 10% of their income. They're trying to give everything they had and laid it at the apostles feet it talks about. So, yeah, to hear that the number of, if you took the whole population like this is what the average american gives towards churches, I would have believed something like 1.5%. That sounds about right. But to hear that average of us protestant attending people like to see that number, it's disappointing. I mean, I get it. We have our work cut out for us, right? And it's not even for us necessarily for us at retry. We don't play a part in that at all. But I know just for us as churches. Yeah, it's sad to hear it, but I just think for individuals, when you don't have this basis in your life of generosity and giving and tithing, I think it just really costs you. You're missing out on a huge benefit that God has for us if we don't practice those things. And that's not, again. So let me just say as a disclaimer, I'm sure there are people that, that is extravagant giving for them because they're so destitute. That, again, there's many people. Maybe $17 is a tithe. Maybe you make $170 a week. I don't know what your circumstance is. Maybe you're listening to this overseas, and that seems like that's a very generous gift. I just know that for averages here in the US, that is well under what I would expect. And I want the best for people. So that's my thinking on it.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: No, that's good.
I'm not surprised, but it is disappointing. You're right. But I'm kind of not surprised by that number just based on the stigma of giving in churches. And the list goes on and on there that we don't have time to get into. But, yeah, hopefully something that most certainly improves. I'd like to see next year that change, if possible.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Well, good.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: I did not choose that one. Thomas. But the next one that I chose is also kind of a sad one, that Americans who claim Christianity is probably going to decline, this says may decline, but it seems like it will. So looking past 2024, Pew research predicts the number of Americans identifying as Christian could fall below 50% over the next few decades. Over the next few decades, currently, 64% of Americans identify as christian. The most recent religious census also showed the number of independent, nondenominational christian churches growing from 2010 to 2020. So I'm not surprised about that last piece of that stat about the independent or nondenominational churches seeing growth, but just the fact that it could fall based on this below 50%.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it's kind of alarming. Yeah, I think it is, too. I think that it makes sense. I think things are trending. We're becoming a post christian country here.
I think if you culture look at our trajectory, we are a lot like we're kind of a few years behind or maybe a few decades behind where Europe is in those areas. Although I do think that this is more in what people identify themselves as.
My wife and I just came back from Italy. We did, like, a 20 year anniversary trip. And while I didn't see, like, a thriving evangelical presence there, I'm sure that there are some great evangelical churches, but it's certainly not the majority.
You ask a typical italian, very few would tell you, I'm not a Christian.
The evidence of that is everywhere. It's part of their identity. And almost like it's like saying, I'm italian and I am Christian. It goes hand in hand. So I think that that's a distinction, though lots of Europe is that way. While they maybe don't have anything that resembles what it would look like to walk in Christ in their lives, they still would identify that as kind of their heritage and who they are. And if they were to choose a faith, it would be Christianity and not something else. In the US, I think that we have much more openness towards just kind of pushing back on that. I just don't believe in anything or.
We've always had this sense of, like, rebellion. That's kind of what we are as Americans, is that we are able to go our own way. We don't mind standing out, and we're more likely than most to go a different way from our parents when it comes to our faith.
I think it's interesting. Sad again, but you want some more sadness? I got another one.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Okay. The next one is about clergy.
So listen to this. This is the percentages of people. Two different stats here. These are both from the Hartford Institute for Religious Research.
The percentage of pastors that considered leaving their congregation that they're at. So in 2021, 79% of pastors said they never considered it. They have never considered it in that year. In 2021, in 2023, 62% said that they never considered it. So a 17% increase. I guess you're going to give it that way in the number of pastors that are considering leaving their churches. Even worse, here's what they said about pastors who seriously considered leaving the ministry altogether in 2021. And mind you, 2021, that's like peak pandemic. All the things that were like, things were really tough, all the politics that went with it, all that stuff. It was a really hard time to be in ministry in 2021. In 2021, 63% of pastors said they never considered leaving ministry altogether, versus in 2023, only 49% of pastors said in 2023, they never considered leaving ministry. So that means that over half of all pastors put some consideration, and there's different levels of consideration of it, but they put at least some serious consideration into leaving the ministry altogether.
Here's what was surprising to me is that I'm not surprised that the number is high, but I'm surprised that it has gotten so much higher, really, in a post pandemic world where at the toughest time it was actually lower than it is right now, which is really something that is just scary. Scary to think about. Thoughts.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: It is. No, I mean, yeah, it is scary to think about. I think that we need our pastors. We want pastors. We need leadership within the body of Christ. And so we would encourage pastors to, well, of course, you do what the Lord calls you to do, and there are seasons, I think, maybe to step away or to change. I mean, we always should be active in our calling. But yeah, I think that one of the things, just like how church attendance declined through the pandemic and how churches are, I guess, still only back at 60%. I think one of the things the pandemic did, since we're talking around these years, was it did this kind of sifting, you kind of found where people's faith was really at, if they returned or not, or how engaged they were after the pandemic. I think the same is kind of being identified for pastors, like through that, through all of the stuff we've gone through in the last few years, yeah, there's been more challenge. And so I'm kind of, in a way, not surprised. It's still alarming, but that pastors are considering that.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Here's the other thing.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: I would say one more thing. I talk to pastors on a daily basis. I consult with them and thankfully just with what we do, and we consider what we do ministry as well. Even though we are a company in building rapport and trust with other pastors, they do open up on some of these challenges and frustrations.
I don't know. Most of them have never directly told me they're considering leaving. But matter of fact, yesterday I did have a church saying, a pastor saying, if this church gives me the boot because of all of the changes I'm trying to make here, I'm going to still continue in ministry, but it just won't be at the church level. So I do hear some of these things, but yeah, so if I had.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: To posit a guess, and again, we don't have any data to say why this is exactly.
I just know that it'd be hard to be a pastor. And I think in 2021 that there was still a hope of a bounce back. And I think there's a lot, especially on the smaller end of churches, there's a lot of churches that just never really recovered. So you have these pastors in the 2010 to 2020, they were just working hard and fighting for every little bit of growth, every soul that's coming to Christ, they're fighting for that. And then to see in an instant, there's no meeting for a few weeks for a lot of churches. And then for a year or two, there's half the people were coming to church. And now that they're still back down at that level, and then that leads to different all kinds of challenges and things like we don't have as many people coming, so we don't have as much in our finances and we have to let people go on staff, we have to take pay cuts. There's all kinds of challenges that come with it. So that'd be my guess. It's kind of the reality is setting in, not that, I guess the reality that this is now what is normal and it's not going to go back to what it was before. I think that might be disheartening for a lot of people. And anecdotally, I know so many pastors as friends and as customers and people that are in my life that I do hear this all the time. I know that when people are being candid with me and we have a relationship, I do hear this from so many ministers, and that's just something that breaks my heart. Anyway, do you have more bad news or is it good news now?
[00:18:41] Speaker B: I just realized I feel bad because I have more bad news.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: I'll end with good news. I have good news. Okay, good.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: That means we probably have not. You know what? This is cool that we didn't choose the same stats. We have chosen the same ones in years past. So this one is that reasons people don't attend church. So it's a good segue from the one you just shared, Thomas. But 9% of people attributed their declining health as a reason that they're not attending church.
Okay. And then while 18% claim that sermons weren't engaging enough and then 23% simply couldn't find a church that was right for them. So these are the reasons.
I guess this isn't as sad as some of the others, but it's interesting just what people are saying as far as the reasons. And I don't know, I think what people say, saying these reasons may, there might be some part of them telling the truth, but I think it's probably something a little bit deeper than just, oh, I couldn't find the right church. The sermons weren't engaging.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: Yeah. So the three reasons they gave are declining health, bad sermons, and just couldn't find one that I fit in at. Is that right? Those are the three that they studied.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: You got it. Now the first one I can kind of understand if it's someone who's homebound, an older senior, someone who really can't get around, they might be more inclined to just watch online or whatever. But the other two were, unless your.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Sermons aren't engaging in which they'd be less likely to watch online. Probably. And I'm not sure if these stats include online watching or what it is. It probably not, but probably.
It's interesting to hear some of those reasons. I mean, the last one I don't know what to do with. I can't find a church that fits me.
You know what?
That's actually something that is not surprising because I think that there's not any more consumerist statement than that. Right.
That we're so used to in our world, everything being tailored for exactly my preferences. I think that that's probably a political statement for a lot of people, is that I tend to be more one way politically, and the church I've been part of and my family's been a part of is the other way politically, it seems like.
Or I know for me, there were people within our church on both sides of me that were looking for our church to make statements on their political hobby horse, and we just weren't going to do that unless we really felt called by the Lord to make specific statements. So I see that, but it's sad in that it kind of highlights the consumer nature. So does the sermon one. Right.
I don't like it enough to hear it. You can't imagine a time when there's one church in each city, like Paul writes to individual churches in Ephesus or in Corinth.
I'm not going to be a part of this church. The sermons just aren't engaging, and I can't find the one that fits me.
The church in Corinth didn't fit anybody. It was a terrible church. There were all kinds of problems.
Yeah. So it's just interesting to see that.
All right. Last one, I kind of did a two for one. I chose two different stats, but I think they explain each other.
This isn't bad, but I just want to sip it out here. The average pastor age in 2023, according to Zippia, is 51 years old. I don't have the number in front of me, but I know that it was much younger historically. So 20 years ago, 30 years ago, the average age of a pastor was much younger than 51 years old. 51 years old is very old for any profession that's out there to be the average. So I'm not saying 51 is necessarily. It's not like you shouldn't be. Obviously, you're still able to be in ministry and be working at 51. I'm just saying if the average age is 51 years old, that means there's probably twice, there's equal amount of people older than 51 and under 51 that are in pastoral ministry. So that is something that is not necessarily bad, but it's just something that we need to know for the future, that there will be an impending mass. I mean, there'll be lots of openings in ministry over the next 20 years because half of all pastors will probably look to or would like to retire in the next 20 years or so. So with that being said, here's the good news part of it. Christian universities, they're experiencing all time their highest growth in enrollment in history. And this is from Christianity today. They found that eleven of the largest evangelical colleges and universities have announced record enrollment for this fall. So this fall that we're in right now, in 2020.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: Surprising to me. Yeah.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: So the semester that kind of just ended or is ending now, they have the highest enrollment. Yeah, it was surprising to me, too, because.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: You feel like there's less younger.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: You feel like it's waning, right?
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: I don't know. I was really encouraged to hear this.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: It's so funny.
I just spoke to a younger pastor. Well, he was coming on staff at a church, but he was finishing up seminary still, and he was younger. He was probably, what, early twenty s? And I commended him because I said, it seems like there are less people going into the ministry. And he acknowledged that. And so I kind of commended him for doing that. That's why I'm surprised, too. It was funny.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Right? And there's all kinds of issues with this. I mean, I know that, sadly, so many pastors are graduating college now with student debt, and I can't imagine that's life changing to have. I was just looking at my alma mater that I went to. It was life Pacific College is the name of it now. It was $10,000 a year to go when I went, and I got scholarships for almost all of that. And now it's over $26,000 a year is what it costs to go to that same school. So if someone's going primarily on loans, they're graduating with $100,000 in student debt. And, oh, my goodness, it's just something that is crazy to think about some of those kinds of numbers. But I think, all in all, I think that our opportunity out there, there is going to have to be a mass retirement that's coming up here. And this is not uncommon. All of our statistics seem to show this. I think pastoral ministry is the kind of job that people can hang on to for longer in their life. If you're a drywaller, it's hard to do that in your 70s. But there's plenty of people that are great pastors in their 70s or maybe even into their 80s that can still happen.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: We have to stand for about 2030 minutes on a Sunday.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: That's it. That's the whole job. Just 20 or 30 minutes. But I think that there will be just. It's inevitable that baby boomers, who are most of a lot of this age group, some Gen Xers are in that, but they are looking now to move into that retirement season of their life, or at least stepping back from doing ministry as aggressively as they were doing it. So to hear that we have a crop of young people rising to the call, I think is really awesome. So if you're in the young clan that is listening to this, our average age on this podcast, I just looked at these stats the other day. The average age is 28 years old. The people that are listening to this and watching this retrieve podcast. So you probably are maybe a recent graduate, or if you're in that camp, that's learning to be better in these things. Hopefully this is an encouragement to you. Thank you for what you're doing. You're going to answer the call and lead the next generation into the kingdom.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Good stuff, Ian.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: That's a good one to end on a positive note. Stats can sometimes be depressing, but they're very telling. And I think that they also, even the sad ones, they help us make adjustments, right? And they help us to plan and do things maybe differently. And it's just good to have that kind of wisdom to run your church. So we hope that this has provided that for some pastors and ministry leaders.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Yeah, don't be one of those people that doesn't get on your bathroom scale because you don't like to have to deal with whatever it says. You look at these kinds of things and say, hey, this is where we're at.
Let's act accordingly. Let's move on. Hopefully this has been helpful to you. If it has, it would mean a lot to us if you would hit that subscribe button. Leave us a comment down below. We're actually releasing at the same time as this episode. We usually release a blog post that has the 30 most important stats you need to know for the year. So take a look at that. We'll put a link to that down in the description. So drop us a comment if you've seen any new stats recently that really stood out to you. Thanks for being part of the Reach ride family and we'll catch you next time. See you.
