What Are the Biggest “Health” Trends in Large Churches?

By Warren Bird, Ph.D.

The largest-scale national study of U.S. churches occurs every 5 years (2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and now 2020). It covers churches from 5 people to over 50,000 in weekly worship. It was my privilege in 2010 and 2015 to be involved with the large church (500-1999) and megachurch (2000-up) portions of the research – and now for the 2020 version, ECFA will be joining as a research partner.

Curious about what we learned? For 2015, here were some of the biggest findings for megachurches:

• The more intentional a church is about small groups, the greater the spiritual vitality. In one part of the survey we asked churches how intentional the church was in engaging people in small groups. An amazing 79% said it’s “central” to their discipleship strategy. A median of 40% of adults in megachurches are involved in a small group. In another question we asked the extent to which they agree/disagree that their church is “spiritually vital and alive.” Then we compared the two response groups.

• The more the global mission emphasis, the higher the per-capita giving. We asked churches which of three categories would best describe their global mission emphasis. Is there “some” emphasis? Is there “a lot” of emphasis? Or is global mission “our church’s specialty”? Then we calculated per-capita giving (total giving to all funds divided by worship attendance). The clear and unmistakable trend was that churches with greater emphasis on missions see higher financial giving.

• The greater the emphasis on personal accountability, the greater the participation. We learned this by asking churches for their “approach to how members hold each other accountable for active participation and living out one’s faith in daily life.” Options ranged from “no emphasis” to “important and regular practice.” Other questions asked about levels of participation. Bottom line: churches that implement intentional systems of member accountability show significantly higher levels of participation.

• The more intentionality about engaging young adults, the greater percentage of them in the congregation. In the typical megachurch, 1 in 5 people (20%) are ages 18-34, and 1 in 4 (28%) are ages 35-49. Contrary to stereotypes, large churches are successfully attracting young adults—both Millennials and GenX. Stated in research terms, the more intentional a church is about reaching young adults, the bigger the percentage of the attenders that they represent.

• Members are coming less frequently. As with all church sizes, regular participants are attending worship services less frequently. This is a question tracked in the 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015 survey—and will be in the 2020 version. When we asked a church its weekly worship attendance and then compared that number to its total number of participants, the percentage keeps inching down. For 2015, it was 82%.

Want More On Church Boards?

ECFA conducted a national study of church boards and released the findings in an illustrated free download titled Unleashing Your Church Board’s Potential: Comprehensive Report from ECFA’s National Survey of Church Boards, by Warren Bird, 46 pages. Please take a look, learn from it, discuss it, and let us know your thoughts about it. For additional materials on church boards, see the bottom half of my blog titled “What Are the Best Resources for Large Churches?” Finally, please do subscribe to this blog so that we can keep you current on future research findings.