A recent study by Faith Communities Today identified seven characteristics of American church life during the first decade of the new century. How much was your church and your experience at church impacted by these trends?
1. Contemporary and innovative worship. Contemporary worship began on the West Coast in the 1990s and spread across the United States. By the end of the decade contemporary worship was the primary worship style for evangelical churches and was used by more than four out of 10 of all churches.
But contemporary worship did not always equate to church growth. During the decade innovation was added as well.
Innovative worship means different things to different people. For some it is praise music backed by electric guitars and rock-style drums. For others it is serving the Lord’s Supper every week or kneeling in prayer or using liturgies as part of worship. Innovative worship seems to refer to styles with which participants were not previously familiar.
The study found that innovation more than doubled the spiritual vitality of the worship experience. For example, among churches using contemporary worship the percentage of churches judged to have high spiritual vitality jumped from 23.2 percent to 46.7 percent when innovation was added. Among churches not using contemporary worship the percentage of high spiritual vitality jumped from 17.4 percent to 38 percent when innovation was added.
Also the number of churches reporting rapid growth in attendance increased by about 50 percent when innovation was added to either traditional or contemporary worship styles.
2. Church is more than worship. Increasingly churches are moving from “supporting missions” to “doing missions.” The survey asked about nine local missions programs to help evaluate local missions involvement. The study found an overall increase in local missions for all churches. The study also reported, “Most importantly, the net gain is the result of a significant increase for evangelical Protestant congregations such that the common wisdom that ‘liberal’ Protestantism was more involved in local social service work than evangelical Protestantism has now been reversed.”
Member-oriented programs also increased as churches concentrated on offering prayer groups, Bible studies, parenting and marriage enrichment classes, youth programs, musical opportunities and, especially, programs for young adults.
The study found that both the missions programs and the member-oriented programs positively impacted spiritual vitality and church attendance.
3. Decline in financial health. At the beginning of the decade 31 percent of churches reported excellent financial health. In 2010 that percentage had dropped to 14 percent. The rate of decline in the second half of the decade was twice as fast as in the first five years. A full 80 percent of American churches reported their finances had been negatively impacted by the recession. Every kind of congregation in every part of the nation seemed to experience financial decline.
A hopeful finding was that by 2010, one in 10 churches reported they were beginning to recover from the financial recession.
4. High levels of conflict. The report bluntly declared, “One of the disturbing surprises was the dramatically high level of conflict found in American congregations. Almost two of every three congregations in 2010 had experienced conflict in at least one of four key areas in the past five years (worship, finances, leadership or priorities).”
The report added that in one-third of the congregations the conflict was serious enough that members left or withheld contributions or a leader left.
Conflict negatively impacts a local church. Churches with some serious conflict were twice as likely to have low spiritual vitality, serious financial difficulty and a 10 percent or greater decline in attendance.
5. Aging membership. The median age of the American population increased from 35.3 in 2000 to 37.2 in 2010, primarily due to the aging of the baby boomer generation. That means the median age of church participants also increased. People age 65 and over make up at least one-third of the total membership of about 53 percent of oldline Protestant congregations and 23 percent of evangelical congregations.
The percentage of young adults age 18–34 declined. Seventy-five percent of oldline Protestant congregations said less than 10 percent of their regular participants fell into this category. For evangelical congregations, 45 percent reported less than 10 percent of participants were young adults.
The survey found, “Congregations with older memberships lag (behind) younger congregations in spiritual vitality, growth in worship attendance, financial health, ability to find volunteers and breadth of programming.” This is due in part to older congregations losing some of their capacity for change, and “congregational vitality is closely connected with innovation and change.”
6. Fewer participants. The median church attendance in the United States is 105. For conservative Protestants it is slightly higher — 120. Broken down even more, 27 percent of all churches average 50 or fewer in worship attendance. Twenty-two percent of churches average between 51–100 worshippers. Only 10 percent of all churches average 500 or more in attendance.
The number of participants impacts leadership. Most churches have one clergy leader and a few part-time support staff members. Of necessity, the clergy leader must be a general practitioner with little opportunity to develop specialized ministries.
7. Majority of minorities. The upsurge in immigration has resulted in an explosion of languages used for Christian worship in the United States. The 2010 report showed the number of languages used in worship more than doubled in the decade. About 10 percent of all congregations reported worshipping in a language other than English, with Spanish being the most common.
Of major importance is the finding that the new minority populations are creating their own congregations rather than participating in historically white congregations. These congregations also attract a higher percentage of young adults than do white congregations. The racial/ethnic congregations are also disproportionately evangelical Protestant and disproportionately urban and Southern, the report found.
The majority of racial/ethnic churches started in the past decade were in big cities and older suburbs while the vast majority of churches started in new suburbs were white evangelical.
Obviously each of the seven trends is broadly described, but each of them may have impacted you or your church. Reflecting on them may bring insight into what you have experienced during the past 10 years and may provide a glimpse of what may lay ahead.
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