48,000 Churches

In 1990, the percentage of Americans who were in church on any given Sunday averaged 20.4%. That means of the roughly 300 million people in the country around 60 million of them would have been in church. Because of population growth and the impact of a secularized culture, in 2005 the percentage of Americans in church on any given Sunday had dropped to 17.5%. That doesn’t mean that there were necessarily less people in church, but that the percentage of the population in church had declined. As our population continues to grow, this will become an even bigger problem. In fact, it is estimated that if current trends continue, the percentage of people attending church on any given Sunday will drop to 14.7%. If this trend is not reversed, it’s not too hard to see where we are heading. Even in this country which was undoubtedly founded upon Christian principles, we are no longer a Christian nation. Here’s the most amazing statistic. If we are to succeed in simply keeping up with the population growth. That is, if we are going to stem the tide and simply keep things at the same level they are now, that is continue to have at least 17.5% of the people in church (a paltry statistic by any measure!) the churches in America will need to start 48,000 churches in the next 10 years.