Mainline Protestant Church Membership Declines: What about your church/denomination?

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New Member
Big Churches Posting Small Membership Losses
Daniel Burke
Religion News Service


Membership has waned in the nation's largest Christian bodies -- the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention -- while mainline Protestant churches continue to shrink, according to the "Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches."

The 10 largest Christian bodies reported in the 2009 yearbook are:
  1. Roman Catholic Church, 67 million members
  2. Southern Baptist Convention, 16.3 million members
  3. United Methodist Church, 7.9 million members
  4. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5.9 million members
  5. Church of God in Christ, 5.5 million members
  6. National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., 5 million members
  7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 4.7 million members
  8. National Baptist Convention of America, Inc., 3.5 million members
  9. Presbyterian Church (USA), 2.9 million members
  10. Assemblies of God, 2.9 million members
c. 2009 Religion News Service. Used with permission.
Original publication date: March 3, 2009

Entire article at link: http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/11600252/
 
Re: Mainline Protestant Church Membership Declines: What about your church/denominati

Mine is the Assemblies of God, 2.9 million members and yes at my church we are seeing more and more people joining and our church is packed out. That is why we are building a new church as we speak.

Interesting article.
 
Re: Mainline Protestant Church Membership Declines: What about your church/denominati

I'm non-denominational....currently transitioning from my church (Baptist) home.

I visited a church last Sunday. There was a severe weather report in my area but when I woke up that morning it was just raining. I decided to go to church anyway and figured the attendance would be low due to the weather forecast. Surprisingly, when I arrived the main campus parking lot was full. I had to take a shuttle bus from the parking lot across the street to the sanctuary. The church was packed out and the pastor was a little surprised as well. Overall, I'm glad that I was there. It was an awesome word and the spirit of God was heavy in that place. I'm still on a spiritual high!
 
Re: Mainline Protestant Church Membership Declines: What about your church/denominati

Foxy, that's membership. What's even worse is ACTUAL church attendance. I do find more people are gravitating towards non denominational churches. My church and many others have left their denominations also. We're non denominational, used to be A.M.E. Zion (Methodists) Theses churches will be next to feel the crunch of the economy and most will have to close.

ETA: Our churches are growing all over the world.
 
Re: Mainline Protestant Church Membership Declines: What about your church/denominati

Bumping....

NPR "Tell Me More" Interview

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101859925
Faith Matters: Study: Religion Losing Ground In U.S.
Tell Me More,March 13, 2009 · Almost all religious denominations have lost numbers and a growing number of Americans say they have no religion at all, according to a recent survey commissioned by Trinity College.
Trinity College professor Mark Silk, leader of the study, explains the findings.
American Religious Identification Survey 2008
Principal Investigators: Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar


Excerpt Here. Link to full article here: http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/

The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 percent to 76.7 percent, has now edged down to 76 percent. Ninety percent of the decline comes from the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population, largely from the mainline denominations, including Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans, and the United Church of Christ. These groups, whose proportion of the American population shrank from 18.7 percent in 1990 to 17.2 percent in 2001, all experienced sharp numerical declines this decade and now constitute just 12.9 percent.


Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as "Christian," "Evangelical/Born Again," or "non-denominational Christian." The last of these, associated with the growth of megachurches, has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to over 8 million today. These groups grew from 5 percent of the population in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2001 to 11.8 percent in 2008. Significantly, 38.6 percent of mainline Protestants now also identify themselves as evangelical or born again.


"It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism--mainline versus evangelical--is collapsing," said Mark Silk, director of the Public Values Program. "A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United State s."


Other key findings:

• Baptists, who constitute the largest non-Catholic Christian tradition, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population.

• Mormons have increased in numbers enough to hold their own proportionally, at 1.4 percent of the population.

• The Muslim proportion of the population continues to grow, from .3 percent in 1990 to .5 percent in 2001 to .6 percent in 2008.

• The number of adherents of Eastern Religions, which more than doubled in the 1990s, has declined slightly, from just over two million to just under. Asian Americans are substantially more likely to indicate no religious identity than other racial or ethnic groups.

• Those who identify religiously as Jews continue to decline numerically, from 3.1 million in 1990 to 2.8 million in 2001 to 2.7 million in 2008--1.2 percent of the population. Defined to include those who identify as Jews by ethnicity alone, the American Jewish population has remained stable over the past two decades.

• Only1.6 percent of Americans call themselves atheist or agnostic. But based on stated beliefs, 12 percent are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unsure), while 12 percent more are deistic (believe in a higher power but not a personal God). The number of outright atheists has nearly doubled since 2001, from 900 thousand to 1.6 million. Twenty-seven percent of Americans do not expect a religious funeral at their death.

• Adherents of New Religious movements, inc luding Wiccans and self-described pagans, have grown faster this decade than in the 1990s.
 
Re: Mainline Protestant Church Membership Declines: What about your church/denominati

I believe that this could be part of the " falling away" or " apostacy" that the Bible has spoken about. Many are fainting. That is why Jesus taught us to worship in spirit and in truth. There are many false spirits in the church and many lies but nevertheless we must keep the faith ( in our spirits ).
 
Re: Mainline Protestant Church Membership Declines: What about your church/denominati

I believe that this could be part of the " falling away" or " apostacy" that the Bible has spoken about. Many are fainting. That is why Jesus taught us to worship in spirit and in truth. There are many false spirits in the church and many lies but nevertheless we must keep the faith ( in our spirits ).

Question: might this falling away be double-edged? Meaning that the people could be falling away out of their own doing and/or the church (in its present state of the overindulgence w/t prosperity movement) is DRIVING people away from the church?

Because I'm about RIGHTTHERE with not going to church anymore....
 
Re: Mainline Protestant Church Membership Declines: What about your church/denominati

I decided to leave all of that behind as well. I am moving towards the SDA only because I have found after much research and just my life experiences to many pastors cuddle and don't tell the truth. I want to know the truth, I don't understand why they dont' teach it and right now we are suppose to be getting prepared but the many churches I been to nothing is happening. I am done. I had enough. I found a website, I heard a message that woke me up. The bible actually came alive for me and I am moving in that direction. There is nothing holding me back anymore. I don't want it sugarcoated I want the flat out truth.
 
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