One church family has made it their mission to plant 1,000 churches in our generation to offset the alarming rate of church closures.
About 4,500 Protestant churches closed their doors in 2019, the most recent year on record, according to Lifeway Research. Experts believe the rate of closures accelerated since the pandemic. About 3,000 new churches opened that year.
Pastor J.D. Greear, former Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) president from 2018 to 2021, told CBN News a growing population of ‘religious nones’ is likely part of the problem.
“So, every demographic study that I’ve seen as of recent, that’s growing maybe the fastest is this N-O-N-E group – ‘the nones,'” said Greear. “They’re very skeptical of institutionalized religion. One of the things we can get wrong is to think that they’re not interested in spirituality.”
Greear was president of the SBC from 2018 to 2021. At its peak, the denomination grew to more than 16 million members in some 48,000 churches, nationwide. Since then, a slow yet steady decline has stripped away more than 3 million of its members.
“Honestly, (they) were probably not practicing believers anyway – but they, them, and their descendants are dropping out,” said Greear.
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