Declining Birth Rates and Church Growth
New Demographics are Challenging Local Congregations
I’m a Jesus guy. Plain and simple.
That’s why an article I read a while back on the declining birth rates in the United States, caught my attention. The numbers aren’t good. Everywhere we look, young people, or the “nones” as they are called, are not only waiting longer to have kids, but having fewer of them.
Station wagons and then mini vans used to be ubiquitous on our roads. We’d see them loaded with kids, gear and everything else as moms and dads ferried their large broods everywhere from school to soccer practice and then on the summer family vacation.
Not so much anymore.
In the last sixty years, the US birthrate has fallen almost 50%. Now instead of the average family having about 3.5 kids, that number is closer to 1.75. We can argue all day about the reasons, but that’s not what struck me in the article.
What struck me was that the author was a Christian and he was writing about the impact of that low birth rate on our faith, Christianity and church attendance. Looking at the data he explains that churches and denominations are declining at a faster rate than our actual population rates. Add this to the advancing age of many Protestant churches and you start to grasp the problem we are facing.
This should be an all hands on deck four alarm fire for every pastor, Christian leader and person concerned about the Great Commission. And for some it is. But when you go looking for solutions to this problem, one idea keeps coming up again and again. In fact, it’s so prevalent, I’ve heard pastors and leaders share it in churches and have seen many articles written advocating for it.
Christians should have more kids.
Stop and think about that for a moment. Accepting the data as true, Christian leaders are stating that the best way to reverse the overall trends we are seeing and the decline in our churches is for Bible believing couples and families to have more kids.
Because those kids will be trained up and discipled while they are young in the church.
Now let that sink in.
“The rate has generally been below replacement since 1971 and consistently below replacement since 2007…”
Christianpost.com
What these pastors, leaders and writers are saying is that we cannot reverse years of decline in the church by convincing or effectively sharing with non-believers the need to follow Christ. Instead what we need to do is lean into what has been known as the Quiverfull movement.
As a missions guy, that kind of thinking, essentially defeatist, drives me nuts.
We can’t birth our way out of this problem
Professor Ryan Burge, self proclaimed data nerd and American Baptist Pastor plainly states, the “focus must be on conversion, not retention.” He goes on, stating that the low birthrate of the current generation means the church will have to bring in new members who were raised in other faith traditions, or potentially with no religion at all as they were growing up.
Here’s how I characterize what he is saying in a nutshell…
We can’t birth our way out of this decline.
We’re going to have to find a way to reach out to, and build relationships with non believers. And those relationships must be deep enough so that we can earn the sufficient trust necessary to be heard on the eternal questions about the reality of Jesus.
I know anecdotally people will tell me how their church is growing, so the numbers people like Burge cite cannot be true. And it’s true that many large, mostly independent evangelical churches are in fact growing and gaining new members.
But ask yourself this…
How many of those new members are brand new Christians? Not recommitments to Jesus mind you, but first time “I want to follow Jesus” with all my heart professions of faith?
Even before the pandemic I saw little evidence of that in most of the churches I’ve attended and visited. In fact, since 1999, new believer baptisms within the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest group of evangelical Protestant churches in America and certainly a group laser focused on baptism as a step of faith, has declined on a per church basis more than 200% to less than four a year.
Sadly, the problem is not confined to the states.
I see the same issues in Mexico. It’s one of the reasons Adventures does ministry in a holistic way. We believe people need to be strong not just in their spiritual health, but in their physical and economic health too. We believe that if churches and the people of God work across all three of these levels of a healthy life, new people who have never thought of walking through the doors of a church before will join us on our faith journey with Jesus.
This is the Adventures in Life three legged stool of mission and ministry in action.
For Adventures, everything we do is connected. A Vocational Camp, an Outreach Camp, a Health & Medical Clinic, clean, safe coining water and even sharing about Jesus in a worship service we’ve built, on a Sunday morning. They’re all about Kingdom now, as we await the Kingdom to come.
Think about it and leave your thoughts…
Dave Miller is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Adventures in Life Ministry. Since 1992 he has been leading and receiving short term ministry teams across Mexico. Having come to Adventures from the business world where he managed for Carl’s Jr, Miller’s Outpost and Mervyn’s Department Stores, Dave brings a unique real world take on faith, missions and the Christian life.