This section includes additional resources for building mature Christians and healthy Christian churches - select sermons, teachings, reading materials, and media. Enjoy!

The Data

USA Trends

The U.S. "Church" is large. There are approximately 315,000 Protestant houses of worship (Churches) in the United States - that’s compared to approximately 13,000 McDonalds and 4,000 Walmarts. This shows how many Churches permeate our society.

If there are an average of 200 people per entity, then there are easily 63 million Christians. However, the actual number of Christians is much higher since this does not include those true Christians that are a part of other types of groups, home groups, organic groups, and "closet Christians" that are a "hidden" or "underground" part of our nationwide Christian Church. From this we could easily extrapolate that there are 70 to 100 million Christians in the U.S, which is about one quarter to one third of the entire U.S. population.

A caveat to this is we understand that not everyone who attends a house of worship or similar group is a Christian, just as anyone that stands in a garage is not a car. However, this simply illustrates that one of the largest single groups of people in the U.S. are those who attend Christian Churches and similar environments.

>>> Overall Church health - this is possible to measure and define, but difficult to be exactly precise on a large scale across the U.S.A., since it is both quantitative (statistical) and qualitative (subjective, spiritual, emotional, relational) in nature.

However, as the criteria defined in the Bible are carefully applied, the number of healthy, vibrant, and on target Christians becomes smaller and smaller, indicating that overall Church health in the United States is at a critical low level.

  • 54% of churches had less than 10 people commit to Jesus Christ as Savior in the past 12 months, which is less than 1 person per month.
  • 8% of churches had no people commit to Jesus Christ as Savior in the past 12 months.
  • 35% of population are born again Christians – have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and believe that, when they die, they will go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.
  • 23% of population are Bible-minded – the Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches and have read the Scriptures within the past week.
  • 7% of population are Evangelical Christians – seven other conditions (detailed below), which are made up of a set of doctrinal views that touch on topics like evangelism, Satan, biblical inerrancy and salvation.
  • The number of people who think deeply about scripture has decreased 61% since 2011.

Global Trends

Recent studies show religious faith is growing faster than the irreligious. The number of Christians worldwide increased 1.17% from 2000 to 2022. The number of religionists (people identifying as “religious”) increased from about 5.3 billion in 2000 to roughly 7 billion now and is projected to approach 9 billion by 2050.

Conversely, while the number of atheists in the world has increased from approximately 141.5 million in 2000 to about 147 million now, the number of atheists remains below the record high of 165,156,000 measured in 1970. The number of atheists is predicted to decrease to approximately 143 million by 2050.

Other notable positive global trends include:

  • The percentage of people who know a Christian is increasing.
  • Christianity continues to spread out.
  • Christianity growth is fastest in global south.
  • Fewer Christians are dying from their faith. (However, the number who are dying is still high. This issue will exist until Christ returns, as stated in the Bible. We should continue praying for persecuted believers around the world.)
  • Christian denominations that experienced the fastest growth rates are Evangelicals (1.8%) and Pentecostals/Charismatics (1.88%).

3 Key Questions

These are key questions that need answered by every Christian and each church.

1.    Are you a spiritually healthy Christian?
2.    Is your church a spiritually healthy church?
3.    What are you doing to “build up” your spiritual maturity and the Church?

Contact TTC to get resources, support, and help becoming a healthy Christian and healthy church.

Sources

Barna Research – Studies – 2013, 2016, 2019.

Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary (2022) – Status of Global Christianity – https://www.gordonconwell.edu/center-for-global-christianity/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2022/01/Status-of-Global-Christianity-2022.pdf Research Study.

Lifeway Research (2022) – 7 Encouraging Trends of Global Christianity in 2022 – data collected by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Research Study.

Lifeway Research (2019) – Small, Struggling Congregations Fill U.S. Church Landscape. Research Study and summary.

Thom S. Rainier (2017) – Dispelling the 80 Percent Myth of Declining Churches. Research summary.