On an unrelated note, my respect for pastors who are able to blog daily (especially, my old professor at Fuller, Mark Roberts) continues to rise with every day that I have not blogged!
I believe there are a number of great reasons to church plant. In the coming days, I will try to go through some of them.
The first reason is a demographic one. Quite simply, there are a lot of people out there who don't go to a church at all. Here are some statistics from Gallup:
Percentage of Americans who are protestant: 56%1
Percentage of Protestants who go to church: 45%2
Population of the United States: 307 million (source: Google Public Data)
So if my math is right: there are 227 million people who do not attend a protestant church (we're not even talking about a gospel centered evangelical church here) on a regular basis. That is a lot of people!
But you may say, well, how does adding a church help with that? Aren't there a lot of churches already? Doesn't this just mean that churches need to do a better job? Well, yes. They could do a better job, my church included. But here's the thing: There aren't enough churches. Let me say that again. There are not enough churches.
Why do I say that? Every year, approximately 3500 to 4000 churches close their doors forever. This decade has seen a surge in church planting, as churches have become aware of the vast need, but prior to this decade, only 1500 or so new churches were planted each year. Along with population growth, this means that there are 60% fewer churches per 10,000 people in America than there were in 1920.
1920 - 27 churches existed for every 10,000 Americans.
1950 - 17 churches existed for every 10,000 Americans.
1996 - 11 churches existed for every 10,000 Americans.3
If there are 10-11 churches per 10,000 Americans, that means that we need many more existing churches to become mega churches. Is that realistic? Or perhaps we just need many more churches.
As compelling as this demographic data is for me, there's an even better reason to plant new churches. I'll address that with my next post.
(to be continued)
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3 - Tom Clegg and Tim Bird, Lost in America (Loveland CA: Group Publishing, 2001), 30
