50% attend top 10% largest churches

To gain some perspective about church sizes and people's preferences, this summary by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research sheds some light -- taken from its Q&A section titled, "fast facts about church sizes":

Q: What's the size of U.S. churches? A: The median church in the U.S. has 75 regular participants in worship on Sunday mornings, according to the National Congregations Study. Notice that researchers measured the median church size — the point at which half the churches are smaller and half the churches are larger — rather than the average (186 attenders reported by the USCLS survey), which is larger due to the influence of very large churches. But while the United States has a large number of very small churches, most people attend larger churches. The National Congregations Study estimated that the smaller churches draw only 11 percent of those who attend worship. Meanwhile, 50 percent of churchgoers attended the largest 10% of congregations (350 regular participants and up). [emphasis added]

Doing some quick calculations, these additional observations surfaced:

• 50% of attenders go to churches under 350 in size
• or, in other words, half of churchgoers like smaller churches, while another half of churchgoers like larger churches
• 4.7 million church attenders (8.4%) go to megachurches
• out of the approximate 300,000 Protestant churches, 1,210 (0.41%) are megachurches (over 2,000 weekly worship attendance)
• 16% of attenders go to churches under 100 in size

Also see the table titled "Approximate Distribution of U.S. Protestant and Other Christian Churches by size" for estimates of how many people attend churches of different sizes. (Note: the above statistics seem to be based on 2005 research.)

Comments

[David]

You have said "half of churchgoers like smaller churches..." I think this type of value statement is flawed. The fact that someone attends a small church does not insinuate that they like it. While some do, others ask their pastor's why they can't have one type of ministry or another that they have seen in a larger church. I just don't think that many in smaller churches have thought through the question of whether they actually prefer their church to be a smaller one. Did the research actually do this kind of value survey?

[218Matt]

In working with both large and small churches, I have found that they both suffer from the "wouldn't it" syndrome. The small churches say "wouldn't it be great to have all those facilities and programs" and the large churches say "wouldn't it be great to be in a small church where everyone knew each other?". It is the American Church dream ...to be something that you are not, believing that things would be better. It is true for the pastors as well as the members. The key is to teach a church to embrace and build upon what they are and their unique/distinct role in advancing the Kingdom!

[djchuang]

David, thanks for your comment. The research did not make the value statement. "Half of churchgoers like smaller churches" is my personal commentary, and it would have been better to qualify it. The more accurate statement is "Half of churchgoers attend churches smaller than 350 in size."

Where I did take liberty to infer from the data is because there are 300,000+ churches in the United States, people have many choices for churches, so it seemed reasonable to say that people choose church based on size (and ther attributes associated with size) -- as one of many factors. And, this is based on my personal experience of hearing church-goers say that they like a church because of its size.

[218Matt]

I think that there is truth on both sides. Many do choose a smaller church in an area that have many options for their denomination or worship preference. At the same time there are those who are geographically limited to a smaller church, but would choose a larger one of the option was viable. Short of asking that specific question - the best you can do is go with your gut!