The New Very Large Church

It’s time to rethink church size. For the purpose of this article, I define church size as average weekly worship attendance, including children and youth who may not be in the primary worship service. In other words, we count every person attending a worship weekend (or other days for a few churches).

Thanks to Lifeway Research, we have a clearer understanding of the sizes of churches. I don’t know if you will be surprised.

I was.

What is a Large Church?

Let’s look at the breakdown of churches by average worship attendance:

  • Under 50 in attendance: 31% of all churches
  • 51 – 99: 37%
  • 100 – 249: 24%
  • 250 and above: 8%

All of the numbers are fascinating, but the largest category should cause us to pause. Only 8 percent of churches have an attendance of 250 or more. These churches now define the category, “very large churches.”

Of course, there are still megachurches of 2,000 or more in worship attendance and mid-megachurches of 1,000 to 1,999, but those churches are outliers. If a church has an attendance of 250, its size is in the largest category.

New Names for New Categories

There will be some readers who cringe at the numerical emphases of this article. I get it. Numbers are neither ultimate nor penultimate. But these numbers represent a sea change in how we look at or define church size.

For now, we at Church Answers will speak of churches in the following categories so we can be on the same page:

  • Under 50 in attendance: smaller churches
  • 51 – 99: mid-size churches
  • 100 – 249: large churches
  • 250 and above: larger churches

Implications of These Paradigmatic Changes

We will discuss the implications of these changes in depth at our podcast, Rainer on Leadership. But it does not take much thought to understand the world of American congregations is dramatically different than just ten years ago.

More pastors and staff will be co-vocational and bi-vocational.

Equipping church members to do the work of ministry is as vital as always.

Ministry and theological training must adapt to this reality.

Search committees will be looking for a different type of pastor.

Church budgets will be smaller.

Denominations must refocus their ministry and support of this new paradigm.

More churches will need to be adopted or they will die.

The list could go on.

The New Reality

Over two-thirds of American churches have a worship attendance under 100. As noted earlier, the new very large church has an attendance of 250 or higher.

It is indeed a new reality.

I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Posted on November 28, 2022


With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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69 Comments

  • Thank you, Thom, for sharing this information. These numbers are interesting, and it would be valuable to have the same breakdown from 5, 10, or 20 years ago so we could track the changing trends in sizes of churches based on attendees. More valuable still would be an accounting of the age distribution in each of the designated sizes. What is the percentage of attendees who are Greatest Generation, Boomers, Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z in each size category right now? I frequently read that only about 4% of Gen Z are attending a church, and that they prefer smaller gatherings, so it would be useful from a strategic standpoint to have the distributions by age for each size.

    If for example we found that only 1% of attendees at large churches (above 250) were Gen Z but 10% of attendees at small churches (up to 50) were Gen Z., our strategy to reach Gen Z would likely include prioritizing smaller gatherings, even if those were somehow part of an overall larger church.

    Perhaps you can suggest such a study to Lifeway Research. And of course any of us reading your blog can do the same!

    Grace and peace,
    Greg

  • Thom,

    Is the research that Lifeway Research conducted in a predominate denomination or across the landscape of the American church throughout the country? I must say the numbers listed in the article certainly confirm what we’ve been seeing at 95Network as we have been serving pastors over the years. These seem especially true as we have served churches during the pandemic.

    We recently began scheduling a new conference that we are calling the Soul Care Essentials Conference. One of the points that we’re addressing is our belief that there will be more pastors serving in a bi-vocational role in the coming years that are serving in a full-time role. (This isn’t necessarily bad mind you.)

    Thanks so much for sharing this information. I personally believe that we are in the midst of a reformation. How we’ve “done” church in the past will no longer work as we move forward. At 95Network, we stand with you in the desire to serve, support and equip our pastors and ministry leaders as we all experience “the new normal” together.

    Dale Sellers

  • Wendell Arends says on

    With all the negativity surrounding the church and worship these days the need to return to one nation under God is imperative…there are benefits to regular worship. Being in the presence of God and receiving all His benefits such as the FORGIVENESS OF SINS, the strengthening of our faith, growth in grace and mercy, the gift of peace and patience to endure everyday living… to name a few. So, in thanksgiving , Sunday Bible study in the Word and daily devotions are acceptable to Him….All these things help us to come to the knowledge that life is not about us…it’s about Him !

  • Kim Bailey-Manzella says on

    It is a sad commentary as to where our society has gone. At the mainline Presbyterian Church where I am an Elder, one of my many jobs is to take attendance from high in the choir loft where I can see most of the congregation. In the 1990’s that number was generally 420-450 depending upon the week. Now I am happy if it reaches 100! We (Session) kept running the church as we “always did!” We kept using money from our endowment as if it did not matter. Luckily, we had a great finance committee who brought the truth. Budgets were cut, positions dropped and we woke up! Now we live within our means, really hard for the “rich” church in town. We have a fairly strong streaming attendance since Covid. I do see signs of change, as we have a had a number of families join the church this year. My heart remains ever hopeful.

  • Karl Koeppen says on

    Tom,
    I appreciate the list.
    I’m wondering if there shouldn’t be a fifth category at least.
    there is a vast difference of what a church can do with the shared resources of 250 people versus 2000 people in worship.

  • Dr. Rainer,
    Thanks for this article. Is the Lifeway research focused only on evangelical churches? Baptist churches only? Even thought mid and mega churches are only 8% don’t they still represent where the largest number of believers are attending local churches?

    • Thom Rainer says on

      All Protestant churches. Here is the link: https://research.lifeway.com/2022/11/08/churches-are-open-but-still-recovering-from-pandemic-attendance-losses/

      According to the 2020 Faith Communities Today survey (Hartford Institute for Religion Research), 70% of all attendees go to a church of 250 or more in attendance.

      • That creates an interesting juxtaposition . It seems to suggest that (a) most churches are small, but (b) most Christians attend larger churches. If so, should our attention be focused on the maximizing the small churches as local entities or on maximizing the larger churches as the majority experience of Christian community?

      • Thom Rainer says on

        There is a third factor at work. Church attendees are migrating to smaller churches, though some of those churches are campuses of larger churches. Regardless, the move to large churches and the move to large worship services are not necessarily one and the same.

  • Could your New Members Material be turned into a multi-media study?

  • John Nixdorf says on

    Please give us the survey parameters (or link to lookbthem up). For example: how many churches/regions they surveyed to come up with those stats.

  • Josh Sorrow says on

    Dr. Ranier, I was wondering if you could expound upon the “Search committees will be looking for a different type of pastor” implication listed above.

    Thanks!

    • Thom Rainer says on

      Josh –

      The most telling change will be that more search committees will be looking for co-vocational pastors instead of full-compensation pastors. Also, more churches are already looking for “revitalizing pastors” or “turnaround pastors.”

  • Hi Thom,

    Thank you for this. These numbers are a little surprising to me in a realistic way, mostly because they seem less inflated than prior data points has suggested.

  • Hi Thom. I guess I am not really surprised at the number of churches in the larger churches of 250 and above. I attended a seminar a few years ago with the pastor of what at that time was the largest church in our Conference with over 2000 in worship attendance. He shared about breaking attendance barriers but said that the largest barrier he was going to address was 250 as there were very few (like 12 if I remember correctly) United Methodist churches in our Conference that were over 400 at that time. That number is even smaller now.

  • I’ve heard you (and others) talk about this shift for a few years now and I greatly appreciate Church Answers’ efforts to resource church leaders in churches of various sizes. I just wish other church support/resource organizations would recognize this shift and also shift their resource offerings to help leaders of churches of less than 250.
    Sadly I still hear podcasts and read articles about churches with large number of staff and weekly attendance in the upper hundreds.

    • Thom Rainer says on

      Joe –

      While Church Answers was founded to serve all churches, we have intentionally made an effort to serve churches under 250 in attendance. We will continue to do so.