I appreciate the work to produce the State of the Church Report for The United Methodist Church. You can find it online here or use this link to download a PDF of the entire report. Here are a few tidbits that I found to be of interest:
- The median age of the population in the U.S. is 35; the median age of attendees in The United Methodist Church is 57.
- When asked if their congregation had a clear vision, goal or direction for ministry, 35% agreed that it did and stated they were strongly committed to those goals.
- Churches with larger memberships tended to grow, while smaller-membership churches tended to shrink.
- Professing membership in the U.S. has declined every year since 1968.
The craziest of these stats is that 65% of congregations did NOT have a clear vision, goal or direction for ministry. Then, what are they doing? Where do these congregations find guidance to make plans for the future?
