It is estimated that the unchurched populations of the United States and Canada are 195,000,000 and 24,000,000, respectively. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the population in the United States increased 11.4%, but the overall Church membership declined 9.5%. Less than 5% of all Canadians are evangelical. (1.)
North America contains a very diverse religious landscape, and the Church’s growth is not doing so well. Cults and other world religions are growing at a very rapid rate. Aubrey Malphurs noted in his book on church planting that the Mormons have tripled in size between 1965-2001 in the United States and that the Jehovah’s Witnesses did likewise in Canada. (2.) Christianity grew by 5% from 1990-2000 in the United States, but compare this statistic with the following growth rates:
- Nonreligious/Secular 110% increase
- Islam 109% increase
- Buddhism 170% increase
- Hinduism 237% increase
- Unitarian/Universalist 25% increase
- Native American 119% increase
- Baha’I 200% increase
- New Age 240% increase
- Sikhism 338% increase
- Scientology 22% increase
- Taoism 74% increase
- Deism 717% increase (3.)
“Most Americans, when asked to describe rural America, conjure up images of farm life, fresh air, wide open spaces, and small, somewhat isolated towns populated with hard-working, independent people (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2001). When we think “rural,” we imagine a time in our country’s history when life seemed more simple and straightforward. Folks raised their animals and crops, cared for their families and land, and met their neighbors at church every Sunday. In the twenty-first century, while parts of this image still hold true, close to 94 percent of the rural labor force is engaged in work other than farming (Johnson, 2006). New pressures from globalization, demographic shifts, migration, landscape transformation, and resource limits are reshaping rural life. Fifty million people live in small towns and rural communities— 17 percent of the nation’s population, living on 80 percent of the land. During the last four decades, jobs in rural areas have moved from agriculture, mining, and forestry to low-skill manufacturing, and more recently, to the service sector.” (4.)
1. North American Mission Board, New Churches Needed: Our Church Can Help!: A Step-by-StepHandbook for Planting New Churches (Alpharetta, GA: North American Mission Board, 2001.), iv
2. Aubrey Malphurs, Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 38.
3. http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html. Accessed February 18, 2005.
4. http://carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publications/Report_PlaceMatters.pdf
