Kerby Anderson

Churches are closing in significant numbers. Even the secular press is starting to notice this trend. They attribute much of the decline to the lack of relevance of Christianity to young people. Although that may be true, there are many reasons.

According to a survey done by Lifeway Research, about 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, while only 3,000 new churches opened. This is the first time the number of churches in the US has not grown since they began collecting these statistics.

The closures of churches are probably due to the fact that churches with declining populations did not have the finances and enough young people to continue. It is reasonable to expect that those numbers will go up in 2020 because of the pandemic and lockdown.

Church planting experts expected the decline in new churches since starting a church from scratch is not easy. And pastors from the baby boomer generation are retiring and looking for a successor. That is why church planting is slowing and church closures are growing.

The secular press reports that young people are leaving the church in significant numbers. Is that true? In my recent booklet on “A Biblical View on the Next Generations,” I document that the unaffiliated (often called the nones) have tripled in the last decade.

Christian leaders aware of this concerning trend have sometimes predicted that these unaffiliated young people will eventually come back to church once they marry and have children. I refer to this as the Field of Dreams Myth – “if you build it, they will come.” We have built over 350,000 churches, but there isn’t much evidence these young people are coming back to church.

What is the answer? They aren’t coming to us, so we need to go to them by using media and meeting them face-to-face. People are still searching, and they need the gospel.