If there was an image to describe me 15 years ago, just replace Jedi with evangelicalism….
“I think the Jedi are a massive system of unchecked power, posing as a religion.” – Acolyte quote
If you’ve been here long enough then you know I used to write a lot on the whole missional church movement / church planting ‘industry’. It was my wheelhouse some 10-15 years ago. When it became evident I wasn’t going to carve out a space for my voice and expertise in an industry I switched gears. That doesn’t mean I have forgotten this bygone era, especially about the statements I made 10+ years ago, the ones the vast majority of leaders scoffed at. Turns out, I was right. So here is my post, let’s call it vindication, on what I said and what it means for church affiliation in North America. Enjoy! Let’s start with a graph: 
The graph was released a couple of years into the pandemic. It garnered huge interest among leaders who feigned surprise. It depicts consistent decline in church membership for the largest evangelical organization in North America (maybe the world), the Southern Baptists. To me, it confirmed what I was saying in the early 2000s–ironically the high-water mark of church attendance–that membership decline was in full-swing. Although this graph depicts the SBC, it is an indicator that applies to virtually all of the other denominations. It’s particularly poignant because despite cracks in the façade, evangelical leaders at the time loved to boast about how they were growing and mainline churches were declining. The reason, evangelicals had the true gospel™. Many bought into the lie that evangelicalism was still growing. Maybe there were exceptions, but the rule was the opposite. By the early 2000s it was clear, to me at least, that triumphant evangelical worldview of affiliation was in fact distorted. I saw decline despite claims evangelicals were immune. What catalyzed the eventual decline? I think mostly the inability for churches to adopt cultural change in healthy ways. The SBC is generally understood as the main embodiment of conservative Christianity. That includes some key characteristics like: exclusively votes Republican (or Conservative); hates queer and trans folks; bans women in ministry; would prefer an All Lives Matter month; and into banning churches from adding protections that flush out pedophile pastors (the most recent SBC resolution circa 2024). They are exemplar for most evangelical denominations. So when the biggest and baddest starts sinking all of the others will do the same. When I was looking at various data sources re: church affiliation in the early 2000s, I remarked how everyone was self-reporting data, which is a big deal when you want to get some accuracy. These SBC numbers are self-reported memberships which is important because in my opinion self-reporting rounds UP (cause pastors lie) and doesn’t take into consideration members who no longer participate but still hold credentials. It’s a good way to pad the stats and allude committed adherents are higher than they really are on any given week. Back to the data, which may have surprised some but not me, in fact they vindicate me from all of the pastors and denominational church planter folks who thought they knew better but instead put their head in the sand to keep their jobs a little longer in an obviously declining environment. I rang the bell and they just kept attending conferences across the continent on church dime to learn nothing in particular from planter/strategists in declining environments themselves.
(Here are some old blog posts distilling my thoughts from the era: https://www.rohadi.com/2014/church-life/evangelicals-boast-in-the-glass-bubble/; https://www.rohadi.com/2015/church-life/why-christianity-is-dying-in-north-america/; https://www.rohadi.com/2012/missional/rejoice-in-the-sinking-titanic-a-last-hoorah-for-evangelicalism-in-canada/; https://www.rohadi.com/2009/church-life/deathblow-to-evangelicalism-in-north-america/
I was saying all of these things and collecting data that I later included in my book, “Thrive. Ideas to lead the church in post-Christendom“, circa 2017. (You can get a copy since it’s still relevant especially the approach to change in the church. The ebook is super cheap and I have a few books in the basement.) It became apparent someone who looked like me, who wasn’t a nepo baby, was never going to have a voice in the conference/books/speaking missions industry. White men have a stranglehold on the discourse and hold all the keys of power where the richest, largest, and friends of friends in established networks, get the access. BIPOC leaders are mere tokens at best. (This is a clue why the church is on decline. They are asking the wrong people for expertise.) I predicted abject decline noting the incompetence most ‘evangelistic’ denominations had when it came to growth. This came during the era where churches thought if they just became more attractional (great programs and services), and if they sent their leaders to Leadership Summit (not discipleship summit by the way), they’d somehow stem the decline they were trying to hide in an attempt to turn their fledgling churches into thriving businesses–I mean churches. The approach sort of worked for the largest churches with big budgets. But as a whole every denomination in North America continued declining…. Now that was then, and this is now. Has anything changed? The answer? No. LOL.
How do you usher in change in white dominated institutions when the expertise comes from within the house and the core value is preserving power from a bygone era?
Let’s check some current data to be sure I’m not blowing smoke or just have a chip on my shoulder. 
Depicted above are the SBCs again (cause what they do the rest are sure to follow). This time counting baptisms. The boast, which is wild, is that baptisms have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Forget they were declining for 20 years straight before…baptisms have been on abject decline since 1999! Basically exactly where I noted church attendance was falling in evangelical institutions! If you look at the data, you don’t even see many years of straight increase since the 1950s! Back to the baptism number.
Those who’ve read my book Thrive will remember a few things. First, I posit church decline started with Baby Boomers. They started leaving first and catalyzed the exodus from the pew. (Don’t blame Gen Z or millennials.) I also paid close attention to baptism numbers because it struck me that even the most evangelistic organizations were having trouble baptism folks who weren’t their own kids. Remember that tidbit. We know decline accelerated in contemporary churches in 2000s yet the response was to wear tighter jeans on stage while adding a bigger band to play cooler music. Turns out, putting on a better show only serves to attract the already faithful consumers, and does little to attract new patrons. Even the missional church movement where the ornaments of consumer Christianity are critiqued wasn’t the answer because that movement remains largely racialized (white) and simply recycles already churched folks tired of big box stores.
Back in 2015, as I was building my data sets for my book confirming decline, as evangelicals boasted about their ‘growing’ tradition I knew it was BS. I even went further to explain that a) everyone was declining; b) the traditions that boasted ‘growth’ actually relied on transferring existing Christians from closing churches; c) births from within were key and; d) immigration of already churched folks were all keys to pad stats. I shared my findings but leaders scoffed. They didn’t think there was a problem. Or maybe they were happy to keep the lights on with new folks and pat themselves on the back for a job well done as the ship around them was sinking. Typical.
Ironically, blowing wind into the sails of evangelical hubris was Lifeway Research, the source of the two graphs above. They rely on evangelical monies to do their work so in light of that how do you think they paint their findings? I remember a church planting conference in Montreal feat. Ed Stetzer (president of Lifeway at the time). I asked him about his data cause I knew it wasn’t telling the whole story. The man brushed me off saying, “I don’t know…I have people who do that,” referring to data crunchers as he walked away. This was right at peak attendance in the first graph. He scoffed at my notion the graph was going to turn down and to the right. Today, at least Lifeway is reporting the data (albeit self-reported like I said) which is finally showing that I was right about decline. I. Was. Right.
So what about this supposed bump up in baptisms? It’s a positive sign right? I don’t think so. In my book Thrive I drill-down into baptism data to answer WHO was being baptized. Turns out very few churches baptize, and those that do very few if any actually baptize new members. The vast majority of baptisms are for the church kids. Which means, even if baptisms are returning to pre-pandemic levels, those being baptized are the few who never left and whose kids were looking to get baptized. The creep up in baptism numbers is not an indicator of any form of success, just a backlog from the pool of dwindling adherents. This number, I suspect, will continue declining as more and more people leave evangelicalism due to their incongruent culture with the teachings of Jesus. When you add what conservative Christians are doing politically in public, and how that witness besmirches the Christian faith, you get the idea why decline is unmitigated. Put it all together, America specifically is still on track to see half of the population claim no religious affiliation within a decade.
But what about everyone else? All the other churches? Sure, there are some (maybe more than some?) doing good things. I still see decline across the board. Doing good things still won’t stem the legacy of Christian dominance across these lands. Maybe some exceptions to the rule will hold steady, but that is likely the best some can hope for. Some will hold steady relying on immigration of already churched folks, and those births from within. What they definitely are not, and what evangelicals loved saying 15-20 years ago, is a “movement”. And that doesn’t include all of the folks who left during the pandemic and realize they were just fine without weekly or monthly church attendance.
Where do we go from here?
First off, let me dance a little jig and say again: I was right when I was clanging the bell that decline was already underway, saying the quiet part LOUD. Let me also say that decline remains unmitigated for essentially all church traditions in the West. The pandemic has only sped it up. Most churches are COMPLETELY incompetent when it comes to attracting new folks. For the SBCs, they are accurately characterized as a MAGA white nationalist cesspool, or if we’re being generous, a tired expression from a bygone era with little attraction to potential new believers. Too many churches today have little care for anything that doesn’t serve their own self-interests. There is little to no connection points beyond the safe confines of the church walls in areas like: creation care, housing the unhoused, racialized justice, immigration reform, disability justice, or full LGBTQ2+S inclusion. When the church and denomination are AGAINST the collective flourishing of marginalize members and society, the recipe is entrenched to produce anti-Christ-like behaviors. Certainly not an embodiment of radical love for thy neighbor and the enemy. Certainly not a posture of the last shall be first. No, these teachings of Jesus are too radical, too liberal, too woke, and to that I say good. Standing on the wrong side of history and the teachings of Jesus, standing alongside the powerful and the mighty, those are all recipes for disaster and those who align in this way I hope they never recover.
Let the small mish mashy communities on the outskirts seeking collective liberation for all take over from here.