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The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
1
Why MultiEthnic ChurchesWhy MultiEthnic Churches??
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
2
The Big Idea
Monoethnic Christianity has the tendency to subtly diminish the powerful Gospel.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
3
The Challenge
Christianity is losing ground in the United States. Why?
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
4
51,420,697
-
10,000,000
20,000,000
30,000,000
40,000,000
50,000,000
60,000,000
Church Attendance 1990 Church Attendance 2009 Population Growth 1990-2009
Attendance Vs. Population Growth for all Christian Churches 1990 - 2009
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
5
51,420,697 51,867,237
-
10,000,000
20,000,000
30,000,000
40,000,000
50,000,000
60,000,000
Church Attendance 1990 Church Attendance 2009 Population Growth 1990-2009
Attendance Vs. Population Growth for all Christian Churches 1990 - 2009
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
6
51,420,697 51,867,23756,819,471
-
10,000,000
20,000,000
30,000,000
40,000,000
50,000,000
60,000,000
Church Attendance 1990 Church Attendance 2009 Population Growth 1990-2009
Attendance Vs. Population Growth for all Christian Churches 1990 - 2009
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
7
446,5406
56,819,471
-
10,000,000
20,000,000
30,000,000
40,000,000
50,000,000
60,000,000
Attendance Growth 1990-2009 Population Growth 1990-2009
Attendance Vs. Population Growth for all Christian Churches 1990 - 2009
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
8
What is the Challenge?
Our country is becoming postmodern, postChristian and multiethnic. These 3 forces are like an earthquake striking the church. The ground under us has shifted, undulating like a snake held by its tail. The previously stable culture which formed the basis for ministry is now precarious. What worked in the 1990’s now produces a smaller harvest. The church faces an uncertain future.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
9
What is the Solution?
While the Solution is Multifaceted, Three Factors Stand out as Most Critical for the Restoration of American Church:
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
10
The Three Most Critical Factors for the Restoration of the American Church:
• Churches need to recover the powerful Gospel, replacing the anemic Gospel that many Evangelicals rely on.
• 20% of American churches need to become intentionally multiethnic.
• Evangelicals need to deal honestly with the corrosive effect of affluence in our personal lives, as well as in our culture.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
11
The New Multiethnic People of God
Israel was a __________ people.
The Day of Pentecost shows clearly that the new people of God were to be ___________.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
12
Currently, 93% of American churches are segregated. What are the unintended consequences of
this monoethnicity?
• They reproduce inequality;• They encourage oppression;• They strengthen racial division;• They heighten political separation.
(According to Michael Emerson)
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
13
Introduction to LukeThe Message, Eugene Peterson
Most of us, most of the time, feel left out – misfits. We don’t belong. Others seem to be so confident, so sure of themselves, “insiders” who know the ropes, old hands in a club from which we are excluded. One of the ways we have of responding to this is to form our own club, or join one that will have us. Here is at least one place where we are “in” and the others “out.”
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
14
But the one thing they have in common is the principle of exclusion. Identity or worth is achieved by excluding all but the chosen. The terrible price we pay for keeping all those other people out so that we can savor the sweetness of being insiders is a reduction of reality, a shrinkage of life.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
15
Nowhere is this price more terrible than when it is paid in the cause of religion. But religion has a long history of doing just that, of reducing the huge mysteries of God to the respectability of club rules, of shrinking the vast human community to a “membership.” But with God there are no outsiders.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
16
Luke is a most vigorous champion of the outsider. An outsider himself, the only Gentile in an all-Jewish cast of New Testament writers, he shows how Jesus includes those who typically were treated as outsiders by the religious establishment of the day: women, common laborers (sheepherders), the racially different (Samaritans), the poor.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
17
He will not countenance religion as a club. As Luke tells the story, all of us who have found ourselves on the outside looking in on life, with no hope of gaining entrance (and who of us hasn’t felt it?) now finds the door open, found and welcomed by God in Jesus.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
18
-1.1%
-1.8%
4.0%
5.2%
-1.0%
-2.0%
-1.0%
0.0%
1.0%
2.0%
3.0%
4.0%
5.0%
6.0%
Rural Small Town Large Town Suburban Urban
2000-2009 Evangelical Growth Rate Based on Location
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
19
-4.3%
-1.9%
-0.5%
7.0%
17.6%
-5.0%
0.0%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
Under $30,000 $30,000-$39,999 $40,000-$49,999 $50,000-$59,999 Over $60,000
2000-2009 Evangelical Growth Rate Based on Median Household Income
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
20
-2.7%
-1.3%
5.9%
8.4%
1.4%
-4.0%
-2.0%
0.0%
2.0%
4.0%
6.0%
8.0%
10.0%
Under 12.0 12.0-12.9 13.0-13.9 14.0-14.9 Over 15.0
2000-2009 Evangelical Growth Rate Based on Median Educational Level
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
21
-1.7%-2.1%
4.5%4.7%
0.5%
-3.0%
-2.0%
-1.0%
0.0%
1.0%
2.0%
3.0%
4.0%
5.0%
Under 50% 50%-79% 80%-89% 90%-94% 95%-100%
2000-2009 Evangelical Growth Rate Based on Percent of Zipcode Anglo
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
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81
103
143
183
215
-
50
100
150
200
250
Under $30,000 $30,000-$39,999 $40,000-$49,999 $50,000-$59,999 Over $60,000
2008-2009 Evangelical Average Size Based on Median Household Income
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
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-0.2%
-0.3%
-0.8%
-1.0%
-1.1%
-1.2%
-1.0%
-0.8%
-0.6%
-0.4%
-0.2%
0.0%
200
4 -
200
5 G
row
th R
ate
Under 5.0% 5.0%-9.9% 10.0%-14.9% 15.0%-24.9% Over 25.0%
Percentage of People in Poverty
2004 - 2005 United States Church Attendance Growth Rate Based on Percentage of People in Poverty in Church's Zipcode
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
24
What is Happening Here?
Get in groups of 2 or 3 and explain these charts to each other.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
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In the mono-ethnic world, Christians, pastors, and churches only had to understand their own culture. Ministering in a homogenous culture is easier, but mono-ethnic Christianity can gradually become culture-bound. The worldview and values of a particular culture can be transferred to Christianity. Where I live in Minnesota, Jesus can easily become a Scandinavian, with fair skin and blue eyes, instead of a Middle Eastern Jew. The culturally acceptable part of Christianity is embraced, but the culturally unacceptable part is ignored.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
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Miroslav VolfThe practice of 'embrace', with its
concomitant (accompanying) struggle against deception, injustice and violence, is intelligible only against the backdrop of a powerful, contagious and destructive evil I call ‘exclusion’, and is for Christians only possible if, in the name of God’s crucified Messiah, we distance ourselves from ourselves and our cultures in order to create a space for the other.”
Exclusion and Embrace
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
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Walter Brueggemann
The force of homogeneity is immense –
partly seductive, partly coercive, partly the irresistible effect of
affluence. (Prophetic Imagination)
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
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Two Challenges
1. Has your expression (both personal and denominational) of Christianity subtly diminished the powerful Gospel?
2. Are you willing to reject exclusion and create a space for embrace? How will you actually go to where the poor are in your city?
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
29
PowerPoint Presentations…A free copy of this PowerPoint is
available at:
www.theamericanchurch.org/ME.zip
Contact Dave at:
DaveTOlson@aol.com
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
30
Information on the Information
• The spiritual health of churches is multifaceted, and is obviously much more complex than an attendance trend can portray. However, following the example of St. Luke in the Book of Acts, who used the number of people who showed up at various events as a sign documenting the health and growth of the early church, I would suggest that attendance is the single most helpful indicator of health, growth and decline.
• Information has been compiled only for orthodox Christian groups – Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox. The Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Unitarian-Universalists and the International Churches of Christ have not been included. In addition, information about non-Christian groups has not been compiled.
• African American denominations publish very little that is statistical – often not even a list of current churches. This study used data from the 1990 Glenmary study on Black Baptist estimates and AME Zion churches, the average African American worship attendance (from the Barna Research Group), and a statistical model based on the population of African Americans in each county in 1990 and 2000. This was combined with the known attendance at about 10,000 African Americans churches to come up with as accurate an estimate as possible for each county.
• Independent church data is difficult to obtain. (There are actually many fewer totally independent churches than is assumed. Most are part of some voluntary association, which typically keeps some records.) Data from the 1990 & 2000 Glenmary study on larger Independent churches (limited to over 300 in attendance) was used along with a statistical model to estimate the attendance at smaller independent churches.
• In Catholic churches, the definition of what constitutes membership varies with diocese and church, making numbers sometimes inconsistent from state to state and county to county. In addition to actual mass counts from 1/3rd of Catholic parishes, membership information has been merged with attendance patterns from similar dioceses based on the size of the diocese and the region in which it is located.
• Orthodox Churches are included in Totals, but not included as a separate group because of smallness of size nationwide. Division into Evangelical and Mainline categories is based on the division by the Glenmary Study.
• This study only looks at how many people attend a Christian church on any given Sunday. The term ‘regular attender’ can be designated to mean someone who attends a Christian church on a consistent basis. Using a simple definition for ‘regular attender’ (attends at least 3 out of every 8 Sundays), between 21% and 23% of Americans would fit this category. Adding ‘regular attenders’ of non-orthodox Christian churches and other religions to the totals would increase the percentage to 24% – 26%.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
31
This Presentation is based on a nationwide study of American church
attendance, as reported by churches and denominations. The database currently has average worship attendances for each of the last 15 years for over 200,000 individual churches.
It also uses supplementary information (actual membership numbers correlated with accurate membership to attendance ratios) to project the attendances of all other denominational and independent churches. All told, accurate information is provided for all 305,000 orthodox Christian churches.1
1 This presentation looks only at people attending orthodox Christian churches. Approximately 3 million people attend non-orthodox Christian churches, and perhaps 3 million attend a religious service of another religion. Those ‘houses of worship’ would add another 35,000 churches in the United States and increase the 2008 percentage to 19.3%.
The American Church Research Project © 2010 by David T. Olson
www.TheAmericanChurch.org
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For More Information . . . • Presentations such as this are available for
the largest 90 Metropolitan Areas in the United States, for each State and for the Nation as a whole. Presentations can be downloaded immediately. A Combo Pack for each state is also available, which includes the National, State and any Metro PowerPoints from that state. For ordering information, please go to
www.theamericanchurch.org
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