Starting New Churches On Purpose (1)

I’m gonna share some ideas from Ron Sylvia’s book, Starting New Churches On Purpose, and process them out loud and see what you think. Here’s one:

Ron shares some of my least-favorite statistics, demonstrating that spiritually we’re losing America. For instance:

• We had a net gain of 4,600 churches from 1990-2000, however to merely keep up with population growth during that same period we would have needed a net gain of 38,202 churches.
• In fact, the combined membership of all Protestant denominations has declined by 9.5%, while the national population increased by 11.4%.
• The number of unchurched adults in America has nearly doubled from 1991 to 2004.
• If the current trend for church attendance continues in America, by 2050 only 11.7% of America will attend church.

Then he shares some of my favorite quotes:

• “The single most effective evangelistic metholdology under heaven is planting new churches,” Peter Wagner.
• “The strength of Christianity in the United States is based on over 300 years of starting new churches. Church planting is the most powerful growth mechanism for the American Church,” Dave Olson.

You know what this means? We need to start more new churches! Matthew 9:35-38