Date: 2010-01-11 09:08:19
Title: Where will we be 20 years from now?
Stephen Gray, author of the book Legacy Churches, writes…
"In 2007 the American population climbed to over 300 million. While the United States population continued to explode from 1990 to 2005, the average worship attendance, as a percentage of the population, declined almost 3 percent...One of the major factors limiting a church’s growth potential is age. Research supports the fact that the older a church gets, the more it settles into a routine and quickly loses steam. Consider this, between 2005-2006 over 57 percent of churches, over 40 years of age, were in a state of decline...The Southern Baptist Convention, one of the largest church families in the world, is set to close 50 percent of its churches by the year 2030, if all things remain the same."
That is scary stuff. What that means is that over the next twenty years, around 16,500 Southern Baptist Churches are expected to close their doors. Here is the question: Will your church be one of the Churches that stays open and continues ministry, or will your Church be one of those, that due to low attendance, is forced to close their doors?
What is the solution? I think one of the things we can do is look at the Churches in the Bible. Here at Fannin we are looking at the Church of Antioch. I will keep you posted on what happens.
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